Money Saving Tips For Success!

With the cost of goods rising in all areas of the economy, we as consumers and business owners must rethink our spending priorities and business practices.  Business owners need to look at every aspect of their business to find areas needing improvement.  Top priority as a business owner is finding ways to save money, cut costs and increase production.  Are there products  we cut from our budget or lower cost options to products?   What are some things we can change in the production process that will enable us to save time and speed up production?   What areas are we wasting money?

Getting a business off the ground can be a financial strain so saving money when possible has always been a top priority to me.  Over the last few months, I have learned some tricks to save time, money and speed up production.  I also found areas in my business where I wasted money as well as areas I should have spent money.

Enjoy!

Trade Shows and Professionals
My biggest mistake so far has been NOT attending a trade show such as ISS or NBM.  Trade shows pull together professionals in all aspects of apparel decoration and screen-printing.  You can talk to professionals about heat transfers, embroidery, bling, screen-printing and more.  Apparel manufacturers are there to display new and top selling styles.  The information available at a trade show is invaluable. Take the time to attend a trade show or you will spend unnecessary money and many, many hours searching for products and the answers to your questions.

Know Your Strengths
There are many steps to the screen printing process and you may or may not be proficient in all of them. However, the good thing is there are people out there who can fill in the gaps.  If you are not an artist…hire one.  If you do not know how to turn art to vector graphics, hire someone who can do it for you.  If you do not have a printer for your transparencies, there are companies who will print them for you.  So, know what your strengths are and hire someone to fill in the weak spots.  It will save you time, money and lots of stress.

Be Organized
It is so important to have thing your shop organized before, during and after printing.  Taking 10 minutes to find screen tape means 10 minutes you are NOT printing shirts.  Have a list of things needed for printing and make sure you have it BEFORE you start.  It is wasted time if you stop printing to find a bottle of screen wash 147. If you are not printing shirts, you are NOT making money.  Keeping things organized lessens the chance of mishaps like broken screens, spilt ink or chipped scoop coater.

Clean Up When the Job Is Finished
You just finished an order of 100 shirts.  All you have to do now is clean up the mess but you are hot, sweaty and tired so you put it off until tomorrow.  Tomorrow rolls around and you get busy with another project so more time passes before you start on the clean up process.  Finally, you go to clean the screens but the ink is tough to get out. It takes more time and more chemicals to get the screens clean.  After 30 minutes, you still cannot get the ghost image out of one screen. Is this a familiar scenario?  I know it has happened to me.  Clean up when the job is finished or it will cost you time and money later.



TIPS TO INCREASE PRODUCTION...
Cooling Your Pallet
Waiting for your pallet to cool between flashes can be very time consuming.  Buy yourself a small fan ($6 at Wal-mart) and use it to cool your pallet.  You can attach it to your flash dryer or somewhere on your press. This will increase production time tremendously.

Use a Timer When Curing
Curing each shirt the same way and for the same amount of time is very important.  This really comes into play if you are using a flash dryer instead of a conveyor dryer.  Forgetting how long a shirt is under the flash dryer can cause under curing or even burning a shirt, both of which cost you money.  Buy yourself a timer ($9 at Wal-mart).  When the timer beeps, the shirt is done!!  No more losing count because you were jamming out to a song on the radio. :)



SAVING ON EMULSION...
Expose More Then One Image per Screen
You spend a lot of time (and emulsion) getting a screen ready to burn a 2” image.  Instead of wasting the space, try burning another image on the other end of the screen.  You can use a blend guide or a piece of wood as a stop between images.  I have used this method with smaller images and it works great.  This can save money on emulsion costs.

Scoop Coater Scoop
It gets difficult to put excess emulsion back into its container.  Spatulas, putty knives and goop scoops can only remove so much emulsion.  Make yourself a scoop coater scoop!  Take the end off an empty scoop coater and trace the inside angle of the scoop coater onto a piece of cardboard.  Cut out the shape and you now have a scoop coater scoop.  After coating screens, pop the end off your scoop coater and use your new scoop coater scoop to put remaining emulsion back into its container.  You will be amazed at how much emulsion you can save! (Wipe off your scoop coater scoop with a wet rage and re-use it.)

Test Prints
Save money by using shirts for test prints.  Use your misprinted shirts, pick them up from the thrift store or ask friends for used shirts.  Print on every space possible.  Turn the shirt inside out and print on the inside of it. You can save a ton of money this way.

Rags For Clean Up
You can use a ton of paper towels in a screen-printing shop.  Paper towels are expensive!  Cut up your test print shirts and use them for rags instead.  Throw them in the wash and use them over and over again.  They wash up great!  Wow, the money you can save!

Other Money Wasters
Disposable gloves!  How many disposable gloves does your shop go through?  I know it is easy to just pull them off and throw them in the trash but you are wasting a ton of money.  Just because they say, “disposable” does not mean you can’t reuse them.  I use mine many times before they go in the trash.

Foil!  Do not throw away used or crinkled foil. You can use crinkled foil for a distressed effect. Take your used foil and use it for smaller projects. Foils are not expensive but why not get as many uses out of it as possible.

Thanks for reading!
Jeanette