January 2009
How to Sell Screen Printing to Clients
An easy way to break down screen printing and effectively sell it is to look at the three components that make up a screen-printed sale: the artwork, the garment and the process.
The challenge of working with clients and decorated apparel is to find the right fit for the customer’s needs and budget. It’s helpful to know the fundamentals of different decorating solutions so you can guide your clients into a solution that will be a great product for them and make you a decent profit at the same time. Screen printing
is an ideal process for creating a wide variety of decorated garments that can be used for identity, promotional and merchandising applications – creating excellent finished garments that are very profitable. Screen-printing fundamentals aren’t that complicated, and they’re important to understand so that costly errors in estimating and production can be avoided.
A simulated process print such as this one can be accurately reproduced using more colors than in a process print, but the final product will be easier to produce and look far more vibrant on a dark shirt than attempting a four-color process version.
The Artwork
“It is important to be able to determine how many colors are in a design so that you can estimate it for the client,” says Joseph Fisher, an account executive from D&F, a distributor of design, print, apparel, promotional products and fulfillment. “It’s common for the client to think a print is four-color process when it can actually be spot-colors or recreated in a simple way.”
The biggest challenge with determining the number of colors in a design comes from prints that go on dark backgrounds and designs that have a lot of blending in the colors (see Figure 1). When a design is screen printed on a dark background, the brighter areas of ink in the image will need to be under-printed with white ink so that the shirt color doesn’t dull the brighter colors on top. For example, a red print on a black shirt will need to have a white ink printed on it first. The white ink is gelled, or partially cured, by a flash cure on the press; then, the red ink is printed over the white ink. This under-base print enables the red color to be a bright red even on black.
A good way to estimate is to write down every solid area of color in a specific design and then see if any of the solid colors can be blended to form other necessary colors. Always remember to count white, black and gray as colors if they’re shown in the design or if the design is on dark shirts and may require a white under-print.
“Most of our clients already know apparel and have a fair idea of how to judge colors in printing,” Fisher says. “The challenges come more from determining the best method for photographs and finely illustrated work. The cost is considerably higher to do a four-color process screen print than a spot-color, and it can be hard for some clients to understand why it costs so much more.”
The more complex artwork becomes, the more difficult it is to determine the number of colors necessary to reproduce it. Some images may need an under-print of white ink and others may not, depending on the garment color.
The added costs of printing in four-color process are caused by the delicacy of the process and the fact that it’s far more troublesome to print. The printer must have very good films, screens, press balance, inks, squeegees and a persistent nature to achieve great quality process prints. Not that many screen printers can print four-color process with a lot of consistency, and very few do outstanding work using four-color process on dark shirts.
Spot-color designs are the easiest designs to recreate (see Figure 2), and can often be the most profitable designs to sell and for the printer to print. In a spot-color design, each color maintains its own separate area on the garment without a lot of blending. The biggest challenge in selling spot-color screen printing can be color matching to a corporate logo or image. In screen printing, ink manufacturers don’t like to refer to color “matching” because the only way an ink that’s printed onto a shirt could perfectly match a Pantone Corp. reference book is if that shirt was made out of paper. Similar reasoning can be applied to the inks when they’re printed on top of a white under-base print on a dark garment. The under-base print is rarely a bright white comparable to paper, so the color that goes on top of it will be modified slightly by the garment’s hue.
A design that at first appears to require a four-color process may in fact require more colors, but actually be cheaper to print depending on the printer’s ability to select colors and use certain inks in the design to create additional colors (see Figure 3). Determining this level of technicality requires a good relationship with a printer that a distributor can trust and ask about the final process.
“Buying screen printing is more about the service and business relationship than it is about the printing,” says Maurice Chalonec, president and CEO of RCSilk, a screen-printing company that has a long history of working with distributors and brokers who send his company screen-printing business. “All the other things that happen before or after the order is placed are critical to keeping everything running smoothly. A printer should be able to work with a broker and give them information on how things can be done the best way to achieve the best product.”
The Garment
Apparel is definitely on the upswing. “We always try to cross-sell apparel products when we’re providing other services to a client,” such as commercial printing or promotional products, Fisher says. “Lately, the economy seems to make clients look more at screen-printed garments as an economical way to decorate for and promote their company. A printed shirt is like getting free advertising when a customer wears it.”
A simple spot-color design can quickly be broken down to show how the screen-printing process would separate and print it. In this case, the red and blue need a white under-print; note that in the final print no white is showing.
Depending on a company’s client base, or its target audience, the types of garments that they’ll likely print on may vary dramatically. The heart and soul of screen printing still remains the standard T-shirt, with its economical price and lasting appeal; a screen-printed shirt will provide some of the best margins and trouble-free production of all decorated apparel. Second in line would be fleece hoodies, crewneck sweats and sweat pants. Quickly rising in popularity are the fashion versions of traditional T-shirts, with their lighter-weight fabrics and stretchy fit that hugs the body more. The decorated apparel market has seen an enormous influx of new styles, fabrics and colors in the past few years - especially for juniors and women.
“Clients are much better informed than they were even three years ago,” Fisher says. “It’s common for a customer to shop on the Internet before he talks to you and he’ll call or walk in with specific shirts already picked out that he wants.”
It’s important to know which garments are good for screen printing and which may cause problems (see sidebar, “Garment Control,” page 62) so that the broker doesn’t try to sell a customer a garment that simply won’t print well. Even if the apparel is perfect for screen printing, selling garments may require additional steps that aren’t needed with some of the other print and premium services. “Clients still like to touch and feel the fabric of a garment before they buy,” Fisher says. “Even customers who’ve been working with your company for a while will prefer to have a personal sales call with actual samples whenever possible. On bigger sales there is no substitute for having an actual sample, because presentation is everything. A printed garment with a company’s logo on it becomes part of their business, such as an official uniform, so when they see it, they can visualize it better.”
The Process
Screen printing is remarkably similar to a lot of service businesses in many respects. One of the most important is how systemization of the different steps is directly proportional to each area’s profitability. Selling screen printing without a clear process may sometimes feel like herding sheep or avoiding mines because there are so many variables that need to be properly navigated.
“Order catastrophes are never just one oversight or small misstep. They’re always a series of small mistakes in procedures from many people that end up causing the problem,” Chalonec says. “We created a complete online system that allows a broker to log in and check the status and details of his orders at multiple stages in the process to avoid these issues.”
Even if a screen printer doesn’t have an interactive online system, the company should still be reactive enough to be able to give process details and updates that create a reliable system of consistency and a good measure of confidence to the distributor that her job is in good hands. The buying and selling of screen printing from a broker through a printer and then back to a client is best established through a quality relationship between the printer and the reseller. “The biggest single point for a new broker who’s marketing screen printing and sending it to a printer is to have all of the information captured and organized,” Chalonec says. “What garments, sizes, colors, designs and what goes on what should be all spelled out in the clearest method possible. Not only will this prevent mistakes, but it’ll also create a good feeling from the printer. We give preference to orders that are completely organized, because we can print them first without a lot of questions going back and forth. That whole scenario makes everyone more money in the end.”
Selling screen-printed apparel doesn’t have to be a puzzle or cause headaches if you work with a quality printer that communicates effectively with you and there is a workable system in place. The better a distributor can assess a customer’s artwork, determine the proper garment to print it on, and then process it quickly and efficiently, the more business will flow right back into that distributorship.
Garment Control
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Thomas Trimingham has more than 17 years of experience in screen printing as an award-winning artist, separator and industry consultant. Contact: www.art4screen.com.
