Hey friends, Dave here with Transfer Express and today we are talking all about creating
custom printed low quantity t-shirts with your heat press that you could still profit from
crazy i know right but with our new ultra color max transfers you have the ability to
print single images or gang sheets up to 22 by 22 inches unlocking so much potential for those
low quantity orders regardless if you're looking for single pieces for photo shoots
or prototypes for your own brand or maybe you have customers who just need those one or two
quantities we're going to cover how you could print those shirts without breaking the bank
and you'll even still make a profit so are you ready let's hit it
if you are new to transfer express we are the world's largest supplier of custom screen
printed and digital heat transfers heat presses free customizable designs wholesale apparel and
expert advice to help grow your t-shirt business if you haven't already subscribe we're kicking
out new videos like this one every single week now of course one of the main challenges when you're
printing lower quantities is meeting the minimum piece requirements for the decoration method that
you're using so take for example our goof proof screen printed transfers start at just a six
minimum quantity so if you just want one or two pieces you still have to buy the six sheets which
lead to an increase in cost and some waste if you're never going to use those additional sheets
now of course another option you could use for low piece quantity orders is heat transfer vinyl
and a vinyl cutter but if you don't have that equipment it might be a little expensive to invest
in a setup that allows you to do that with heat transfer vinyl and the product may vary especially
if you're just prototyping a few styles to print later on in screen printing or even if you're
taking product photography of course one of the standards for one offs and those prototypes or low
quantity in the apparel decorating industry right now is direct to garment but if you haven't made
the investment into one of the expensive printers and the pre-treatment or all of the equipment that
comes with direct to garment outsourcing it to a local director garment printer in your area
may be very expensive now of course with low quantity t-shirts when you're doing that one
or two quantity you want the customer to feel like that forty dollar price for a single printed
garment is worth it so you definitely don't want any banding or any quality issues in that print
this is where our ultra color max transfers really come in clutch now they are available with
no minimum quantity just a 25 order minimum now i always recommend adding as much as you can onto
the sheet so if we just needed say this large graphic we would need to print quite a few of
them to make it to that 25 minimum piece quantity but however when we start adding a few different
pieces of artwork for some other prototypes for different customers or just some ideas for our own
brand we could very quickly minimize the per image cost and get over that 25 dollar threshold by
just a couple cents making it extremely valuable for us to print these low quantity shirts now of
course another benefit is the lightning fast turn times for ultra color max if you order by 6 pm
they will ship the next business day which makes it really incredibly versatile and powerful for
you as an apparel decorator that any time within three days that you're going to get your transfers
and be able to print your shirts all of this artwork on our sheet here today was created in
our easyview online designer using the layouts and clipart that are available for you to use for free
as a transfer express customer at just 6 cents per square inch you could be confident that you
are paying a nice simple low price for all of your artwork when you're printing it with ultra color
max you're not charged by the sheet like our ultra color soft stretch or even our screen printed goof
proof transfers but just the size of your image making this incredibly profitable for when you're
doing say just smaller left chest graphics but it is completely fine to use and still profitable
when you are making those low quantity maybe full front or full back prints of course we
also have to talk about the versatility with the ultra color max you could be printing on cotton
poly cotton poly blends and even tri blends with absolutely no issue whatsoever want to prototype
some headwear it works on hats bags tote bags fanny packs pretty much anything you're going to
throw at ultra color max it's going to be able to apply to it has great stretch and rebound ability
and applies at a low 290 degrees so you could avoid scorching or damaging those heat sensitive
polyester garments all right say for this example here today we're going to have a customer approach
us needs a left chest and a back graphic on just a few different shirts and we have another customer
in mind who's been asking if we could do just some simple left chest shirts for them for a
photo shoot before they list the product on their etsy store or online shop also you have a design
yourself that you've been thinking about and wanting to prototype so that you could advertise
it on social media or maybe it's just showing that you could do these full color prints as one
of your apparel decorating capabilities regardless we're going to put it all onto one sheet here now
with our ultra color max we're talking about using these small micro gang sheets that we talked about
so here with our image if this entire gang sheet of all of our images grouped together
is just 15 inches by about nine and a half we're looking at about 25 for six total sheets printed
of this block of images or our gang sheet as we'll call it now producing these with screen printed
transfers would give us plenty of overs for all of the artwork that we have here on this sheet but we
would say we would be limited to just two colors instead of the nine plus that we are printing here
and we would be looking at a price tag of about a hundred and five dollars or about four times the
cost of what we're going to be paying for these ultra color macs now i'm not saying that you
wouldn't be able to profit with that and that's a scenario where maybe you're breaking even but
just with a 25 print cost for at least six of these full sheets you're going to still be able to
put some money back in your pocket now i mentioned outsourcing jobs too and i want to just do a quick
comparison for pricing here looking at an online competitor who does offer one-off t-shirts but
looking at the pricing that they're going to charge it's going to be 42 dollars for just a
one color on the front chest and a one color on the back which is incredibly expensive on that
lower end now you could sell your customer at this price if this is the going market rate online or
even in your area or you could undercut and while you're not making that large of a profit when
you're producing these lower quantity runs usually it is a kind of lead-in it's a foot in the door
for that customer to come back and order a bulk run or maybe even do these shirts again with a
different style or their next concept that they need for a photo shoot either way it's locking
you in as their go-to for when they need anything custom printed and that's really powerful for any
t-shirt business so of course after all these scenarios you could see why ultra color max is
the best and most affordable option for you to produce these t-shirts with so let's get into it
we're going to hop over into our easyview online designer at transferexpress.com and you can easily
jump in here and combine layouts with some extra clip art and combine it all here on the sheet
now when you go down here to the bottom left and select your print method as full color then select
our ultra color max transfers you'll see that you don't have a dotted line for your sheet size but
as we start combining artwork and adding more and building our own sheet here in the design space
you can see in the bottom left that our sizing is constantly updating with each new piece that we
order now if you select it all you'll see exactly what our sheet size is going to be for our pricing
so once we get to this 15 inches by nine and a half or about you're going to see accurate pricing
right down here on the bottom right hand side also with that accurate pricing you're also going to
see your estimated ship date and in this case you could see that this order is going to ship out the
next business day of course you don't have to build the artwork here in the easyview online
designer all you have to do to upload your own art is click right here on the upload artwork button
now you could upload pretty much any file type you want to throw at us from vector pdfs ai files
pngs to svgs tiff files or even jpegs now if your image is a little low resolution or has some
jagged or soft edges we're going to be able to show you that in the final step which we call our
heat map it's going to highlight any areas on your transfer that may run into issues printing now you
could select to have our artists here at transfer express work with you to provide a proof and fix
any small areas that may be dropping out or some edges that aren't going to print crisp and clear
or if you're happy with the way that your artwork looks here after we run it through our little
system you could just click proceed as is and run this through for just that six cents per square
inch now that our transfers have arrived we've got our blank shirt right here and this is the
one we'll be putting this left chest graphic on right on the left chest and then on the back side
we'll be grabbing this larger image put right on the back we're going to pop back to the heat
press and i'll show you just how easy ultra color max is to apply to cotton cotton poly blends or
even 100 polyester so let's do it now that we're back here at the hotronix autoclave we have it
set up printing for our ultra color max so our temperature is 290 degrees we have a five second
pre-press and a 15 second press so we're all ready to go we already have our pressure adjusted with
our over the center pressure adjustment knob to get it in that medium to almost firm pressure
range really you just need a medium for the ultra color max which makes it super versatile so we're
going to open up our t-shirt and thread it onto our heat press just like you would a pillow
case on to a pillow now that we're happy with the placement on our lower platen let's just go ahead
and give it a pre-press a little five seconds just to remove any moisture from this 100 cotton shirt
easiest way to eyeball a left chest placement and get it on is just go from where the shoulder seam
meets the collar right here trace a line straight down the garment and then you can either go about
four fingers down from collar but i think that's going to push this one just a little too low so
i'm going to grab our sleeve and make sure we're going up about a quarter of the way
through the sleeve and that's going to put to the middle of our image so we're actually in
a great spot right there right off the eyeball once we're happy with the print
placement we'll go ahead and press this one for just a 15 seconds for our ultra color max
and ultra color max is a hot peel
now all we'll do is just pull this one right off the press
and we'll load up the back of our shirt as well now it's so super easy to just slide this on and
off our press with the quick slip pad protector not to mention we're protecting that lower
printing surface of our press keeping everything nice and clean for years to come
just like the front side we'll print this back side but we're going to do this one
just about four fingers down from the collar to the top of this little baseball guy we'll get that
aligned happy right where we want to make it we'll go ahead and print this one and once the press
opens ultra color max is a hot peel so easily just peel this carrier right off and there you have it
press opens we get a nice hot peel
and just like that we are all set with our printed shirt so much cheaper than outsourcing of
course with the quick turn times and that simple production but if you guys are on the fence you
can go to transferexpress.com or click this link right here to go and request your own free sample
of ultra color max to see how quick and easy it truly is to produce these low quantity orders with
regardless of the color count of course here at transfer express we are releasing new videos
like this one every single week right here on our youtube channel so we ask you subscribe to just
stay up to date for all of the upcoming videos the tips tricks and t-shirt business expert advice
that we like to help you out with but until next time i'm dave happy pressing