The shirts with the kids

[Panky123]

I have had the idea of starting a small business type venture with my kids aged 8 and 9 in attempts to teach them monetary value, basic finances, how shops work etc.
So we are designing and creating our own brand of clothing that they themselves can then sell to there friends at school.
Each company that I have looked into printing the vinyls, the cost of these are crazy expensive!
I was wondering if anyone could give a rough guide to starting a basic training shirt business.
Buying the clothing isn't the hard part, I was wondering if maybe I could do the actual printing of the vinyl myself? And if so how do you actually print heated vinyl t-shirt stickers? Can joey blogs get such a type of printer?
The whole venture sounds doable, the only thing I am struggling on is the printing part (probably the main part lol)

 

[Clearaccy]

There are many websites on google who offer tshirts & printing services for say £2-£5, Fruit&Loom supply a lot of these tshirts.

 

[Panky123]

I have searched for a fair few companies both for just printing services and with clothing etc. But these services are costing in at around £12 minimum whereas I was hoping to sell at this price, the cheapest prices I have found are about £6-8 for just the printing which is why I thought about going out and buying a printer so we can design and print all we want

 

[Clearaccy]

Google "tshirt printing"

First none sponsored link "clothes2order", prices seem to be below £5?

 

[TomJ83]

Nice to hear that you want to teach your children about the monetary value. With printing, you will get better prices if you buy larger quantities. But I understand that this will be a venture for your young children, and that you don't want to stock too many products in case the sales wouldn't be good. I saw that workwearexpress offer t-shirt printing services. If you have smaller quantities you will pay £4.29 per item (1-4 t-shirts). 5-9 items cost £3.99 per item. 10-19 items cost £3.49 per item. They're selling plain t-shirts as well so you can order both from them.

 

[Matthew1982]

If you want to do it properly and print your own vinyl then heat press it on to the garment you need to buy something like a Roland BN-20 print and cut machine which will set you back around £5k from somewhere like Grafityp.

Alternatively you could just buy any inkjet printer and decent quality transfer paper such as JetPro SofStretch. That way you could be making t-shirts for under £1.50 total but the quality will obviously be lower.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Another way which I think may be simpler is to sell their old toys and household goods

1. Say give the new company £20-30 as start up money
2. Set a second-hand value for their old toys and anything else
3. Buy them with the money
4. Establish the selling prices on each item
5. Go to a car boot sale and let them sell them
6. Record all actions from start to finish including a nominal hourly rate
7. Calculate the profit-loss at the end

 

[Mike_Cartwright]

It's really great that you want your children to learn about the monetary value. I don't think it would be wise to print these shirts yourself since the printer alone would set you back thousands. Have you considered other ways though? Like buy and sell or bake goods, everybody loves food.

I wish you luck with whichever you go with. Again, great parenting skills.

 

[ADW]

Google tshirtforum and you will have all of the knowledge you will possibly need there. You can start up for low hundreds if you wanted to do it in house. A laser printer and A4 transfers can get you going. If it works you can invest more and develop other print methods. EBay has plenty of kit which would have had low use as it seems every man and his dog has had a go at t-shirt printing at sometime or other.