Screen Printers Open - A Forum for Screen Printing and Embroidery

I decided to create this new board for event shirt printing. I figured it would help keep topics about it more organized. I also made it a members only board so you must be logged on to view it.

Well we did the Kemah Classic Car Show this last Saturday and even though it rained we did pretty good considering.

The first hour we did about 60 shirts and then it slowed down a bit and would come in spurts. Over all we did 158 shirts. Not bad for a one day event where it also rained.


We did a 4 color process print on white, ash, natural and a sand color that was more a khaki. On the khaki I dropped in a highlight white. We sold the shit out of the khaki as it was very popular. The shirt was a Port and Company PC61 Sand but their sand color is a lot darker brown than Gildan's sand color.

Sorry for those who wanted pic's but I was just too busy to stop and take any.

On a funny note, about 2 pm a guy came by the trailer and asked me if we new of Sanmar. I told him yes and that is were we buy most of our shirts. He said he had seen a Port and Company box up by the car show registration booth and was just wondering because he was a Sanmar Rep. I asked him if he had a card and he said not on him but but it was easy to get in touch with him. He told me to just call city hall and ask for the mayor. Turns out he was also the mayor of Kemah.

Preston

If I'm getting too nosey just say f-off. I'm really thinking about this event printing concept. What type of numbers do you need to do in order to make it work. I would suspect that you were clearing about $9 and change per shirt. How far do you travel? And are all you sell "event" shirts?

Jeff

Well the numbers depend on several factors and it is not always the same. Events that are close to us and with people we have worked with before get a better rate than events that are farther away from our FOB. I look at it on a case by case bases when I am working a deal with the event people. In other words I do not just have a flat price per shirt that I would charge the event. The event we did this past Saturday was 5 miles from our place. We turned a little less than $300.00 worth of shirts and ink into $1,400.00 in about 6 hours. To me that is not bad for goofing off on a Saturday at a car show.

As for how far I will travel? Well I try to keep it within a 75 mile radius but I have gone a lot farther for a large event.

We mainly provide the official event shirts but we also provide the dash plaques and award plaques if they want them. I guess you could sell/provide anything you could decorate if you had the means to do it on site. I am thinking about getting a mug press and pressing mugs with the same art on site. That should be a big hit.

The main thing to remember is do not (I repeat, do not) give a portion of the proceeds to the event or pay for vendor space. If the event wants to make money off the shirts we make them sell tickets for the shirts. Then people buy the tickets from them for what ever price they want to charge and then redeem the ticket for a shirt. You must remember that you are providing them with a service. You are not there as a stand alone vendor.

If you want to get into this I would strongly suggest you find a trailer to setup as a mobile print shop. We have a 24 foot enclosed car hauler. Darell has a 16 footer, Joe has a 20 footer and a 28 footer.

Some pics of mine.

Why tickets? Do they get a discounted price on the tickets? Do they sell the tickets for shirts for more than you are charging? That doesn't make sense. Is it a thing where you don't sell directly to the attendees, and the only way they can get a shirt is to buy a ticket from the promoter? If that is the case why not just give a piece of each shirt to the promoter? Could you clear this up a bit?

Jeff

Ok here is to low down on the ticket thing. Most car show type events provide a free t-shirt to the registries and include a ticket in their registration pack to get the t-shirt. We will have a set price that we charge the event for each shirt that is printed for a ticket. At some events we print the registries shirts for a ticket and sell directly to the public on walk-ups.

At other events where they want to make a little on the shirts then we make them sell tickets and we only accept tickets for the shirts. Now you ask why we do it that way instead of just giving them a piece of the action? Very simple, by making them sell tickets we do not have to deal with any change, credit cards, personal checks, counting shirts and figuring the kick back plus we do not even have to sell them as we make them do all that work. For example lets say at X event we sold the shirts to the event for $10.00 each. They are selling tickets for $15.00 each. At the end of the day/event we just count the tickets and hand them a bill.

Trust me on this one, no mater if your just providing the registries and event staff shirts to them and selling direct to the public or just doing straight to the event across the board, have them use tickets to redeem for shirts that the event is paying for. It is simple, there is no guess work for who gets how much and most importantly there will never be an instance to where the event people think you are changing the shirt count in your favor.

Now lets say we were doing an event that they wanted to sell all the shirts and not have us sell any direct to the public. I look at the details ( distance and stuff) and then tell them $10.00 a pop and a 100 shirt minimum for us to show up. Now believe me , they are going to hustle selling shirts because I am walking out of there with a minimum of 1 grand no matter what. Now if they were only paying for the registries and event staff shirts and I thought the numbers looked good on that amount of shirts and distance from us, I would probably not require a minimum as I would also get all the higher dollar direct to public sales.

The main thing is that no matter what it is a crap shoot but I have yet to ever loose money. Some events are so so and others have been very good. Plus you are out there marketing your company in front of a large crowd. And today the event we just did notified us that they will be ordering more of the shirts this week that we did for their event.

I could'nt open pics of trailers....could you e-mail them to me please...
send them as jpg or pdf....thank you....HUTCH

Fixed the pics so you can now view them.

Sure would like to see some of the other set-ups of trailers on here. We did a carshow event in So. Ca. for about 4 years in a row. We always set-up a big canopy type with plywood on the ground. Lot of time consuming set-up and knockdown doing it this way. Would like to see other people's set-ups.

how big a generator do you use ? -or- are you using site power?

Sometimes we are on site power and sometime on generator. I have a 13000 watt generator.

Thats is something I can do with Dye Sublimation on white shirts. Nice and easy and a good mark up too

What do you have to do to view the photos.

Should be fixed.