Starting a silk screen printing business is an amazing undertaking and one that you should be proud of! Starting a business is always an incredible achievement. Sometimes, however, reading up on all of the logistics can feel overwhelming. You should do your research when you start a business, but where do you begin? And how do you keep up with everything you need to know?
Knowing the basic steps of how to get started can go a long way in helping you figure out what you’ve got handled, what you might need assistance with, and how to make the most out of your business as you get started. Hopefully, this guide will help you get a general idea of what you need to do to start your own silk screen printing business at home with the help of Holden’s Screen Supply Corp.
This article is not a comprehensive guide, but rather, a general overview to help you get started and figure out what is most important. Before you make any major business decisions, be sure that you speak with both a financial advisor and a legal advisor to make sure that you are good to go in the creation of your business.
Deciding the Basics
Before beginning any other aspect of your business, you need to decide the basics. One of these basics is deciding what focus you’d like your screen printing business to have. Choosing a specific group, like creating wholesale company t-shirts, can help give you a direction that you didn’t know you needed.
Choosing Your Type
Choosing the type of silk screen printing business that you want to become a part of is a major decision to make and one that will affect the rest of your business going forward. There are several common types of screen printing businesses; namely franchises, retail, and e-commerce.
Franchises are stores that have already developed business and have the brand name and brand association. If you purchased the licensing for a franchise, you’d likely already get the basic screen printing supplies and screen printing equipment from them. Franchising may be a good idea if you aren’t positive in what creative direction you want to go, but it may limit your creativity in the future.
Retail printers are typically located in stores and focus more on small batch printing, and e-commerce stores are hosted entirely online and can create custom orders through that venue.
Whatever you decide to do, it will affect the course of your business going forward, so be sure to think it over and choose wisely.
Money, Money, Money
Decide your budget before doing anything else. Your startup costs can vary depending on what type of business you’re planning to host, how much money you want to invest in inventory at the outset, what type of screen printing supplies and screen printing equipment you already have, and more. Depending on the answers to these questions, your startup costs can be as low as a few hundred dollars or as high as a hundred thousand or more.
Make Sure You’ve Got the Right Equipment
If you don’t have the right equipment for screen printing, then you’ll never be able to have a successful screen printing business. Ensuring that you have the highest quality equipment is paramount to your success as a screen printing business owner.
Equipment and Supplies
In order to create the screens for your silk screen printing, you need to make sure that you have the correct technology. T-shirt designs can be designed using digital editing and art software, but you also need to have a printer that can actually transfer that design to your screens.
Once you have the technology that you need, then you need to ensure that you’re using the highest quality mesh, squeegees, frames, inks, and more. If you have poor quality equipment, then your screen printed designs simply won’t be as high quality as they could be with your amazing design skills and attention to detail. Holden’s Screen Supply Corp. is your go-to solution for purchasing the best products possible to give you the best quality screen printing results.
Naming and Marketing
The name of your company is going to be what everyone remembers. Your name and branding is what will come to define you as a company, so if you don’t have a solid plan in place, then your company may not be as successful as you’d like it to be. It’s important to get this part right upfront.
Choose the Right Name
Choosing the right name can be difficult. You want to ensure that your company name at least gives the idea of the product you’re trying to sell, even if it doesn’t state it directly. If you use a name that’s easy to identify and associate with the product you’re selling, it will make it easier for consumers to find you and purchase your product.
You also want to ensure that your business name is easy to remember and easy to spell. Having an entire sentence for a company name isn’t doing anyone any favors when it’s difficult for your potential customers to find! Make your business name short, sweet, and to the point, and you’ll have more longevity when potential customers go to search for it.
Get Online
Once you’ve established your silk screen printing business name, it’s time to get online! Go and register for a .com domain right away to be positive you’ll have a solid online presence–and to be sure there isn’t already another company that has branded itself with a name similar to yours. If there already is one, you may need to go back to the drawing board to avoid confusion in the future.
Your online business is likely going to be one of your biggest revenue streams, so making sure that you’ve got at least the bare bones for a solid online presence is vital for your success.
Get Ready for Customers
You’re not going to get very far in your business if you aren’t properly prepared to bring in customers! Your silk screen printing business relies on your ability to bring in clientele.
Equipment and Inventory
Having the proper equipment and the right amount of inventory is vital to bringing the customers the best experience possible. After all, you won’t be able to sell any kind of product if you don’t have anything to sell and nothing to create it with!
Finding the best quality screen printing supplies and screen printing equipment is paramount to your success. Without a good quality product, your customers will not become repeat customers, and that kind of word of mouth is hard to bounce back from.
Decide what you want to have in stock in your shop and how you want to pay for it. After all, the goal of starting a business is to make a profit!
Figuring Out Space
When you’re working out of your home, you need to determine how much space you’ll actually need for the creation of your product. Your screen printing equipment and screen printing supplies are going to take a lot of space to house, not to mention the amount of inventory you’ll need to have covered as well.
When working from home, you might want to set up in your garage, a spare bedroom, or a shed in the backyard. You just want to make sure that you have enough space to create all of the amazing orders you’re going to get!
Holden’s Screen Supply Corporation
One of the keys to success in any business is to provide a quality product created from the best supplies on the market, and Holden’s Screen Supply can help you with that. Our wide selection of inks, frames, mesh, and more are key to giving your product the quality it needs to leave your mark in the silk screen printing industry.
We hope that when you start your silk screen printing business, you’ll look to Holden’s to get you the supplies to get started.