So let's talk about pricing! What should you charge your customer for a t-shirt?
The answer is simple, or not so simple, but the answer depends on you!
The formula is simple: Time + Materials = Customer Price
Time
The hard part is figuring out what your time is worth. What is the value of your labor?
I consider labor to be a cumulative thing. Meaning, that I've spent months and years developing the skill to do this, I've purchased the necessary equipment to produce this item for you, and I can produce said item with good quality in a timely matter. My customers have to pay for that "cumulative" experience. Otherwise, what's stopping the customer from figuring out how to do it on their own, purchasing their equipment, and doing it themselves? They have 3 choices, pay your price, someone else's price, or figure it out on their own. So the question for your business is, what is your time worth to you?
An easy way to think about it is to figure out how much you want to make an hour. Do you want to make more than you do at your current shop or do you want to replace that salary? Or maybe this is just fun for you and you're only trying to supplement your income.
Let's say that you charge the customer $25 bucks for a custom t-shirt, but it takes you 5 hours to create it. That's $5 an hour. Sounds insane, right? But we do it all the time. We spend an hour talking to customer about the design concept, then we spend 2 hours in photoshop putting together the mockup. Then we may spend another hour with the customer reviewing the mockup. Then we have to get the shirt; cut, weed or print the shirt. Deliver the shirt, etc.
So what is your time worth?
We all have to sacrifice something to be able to dedicate time to making a product. I'm a mom, that's time away from my family. Everyone's labor is different. The value of the labor is different. The key here is to make it worth it for you.
Materials
This is the easy part. For example; a 12x12 sheet of vinyl (or DTF Transfer) cost $5, the blank shirt...$5.
So you're starting at $10 in materials, plus your value of time. Don't under cut yourself
Happy Printing!
