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Basikboy
11-11-2015, 12:11 AM
Hello all, very glad to have found these forums. I run an online custom novelty t-shirt business that has over 400 designs and has done quite well over the years. What I am starting to question however is my process and wether or not to carry a staff. I have always produced all my t-shirts to order, meaning when a customer places an order on my website myself or one of my employees screen prints the design the customer chooses on the size and color the customer chooses. Anyone that is in the screen printing business may know this is kind of a crazy idea when considering setup time BUT 95% of my designs are 1 color and are super easy to setup and I carry very little to no overhead operating this way. Staffing can be a challenge with work flow somewhat of a roller coaster being that we are very busy around the major holidays and slow down quite a bit the rest of the year. I have a full time manager and a full time printer but I bring on part time employees throughout the year when we need extra help but training someone to only work for a month or two is tough. And when you do bring basically seasonal part timers they don't seem to be as serious about whats going out the door as I am.

I have been doing more and more thinking and I honestly believe If I could just narrow down my t-shirt designs to say my top selling 100 and just print them myself or even outsource it I can run this business entirely by myself again. Especially when customers receive a badly printed shirt or the wrong shirt design entirely or I look around and employees are just sitting around looking for something to do when its slower. Only problem Is if i went back to the route of me doing everything and stocking designs I would be sitting on thousands of dollars worth of Inventory Instead of printing to order and keeping my overhead low.

Thank you In advance for any feedback and or advice.

tallen
11-11-2015, 06:48 AM
Why not a combination? Keep an inventory of selected designs and styles "in stock," but still offer to print custom shirts to order, but at a higher price point (and longer lead time). Also, if your records are good, you could look back through the past couple of years of sales data to see which designs are selling when, so that you don't necessarily have to maintain a full inventory all of the time, but can build specific inventory in anticipation of the peak demand periods. Maintaining an inventory does have a cost, but as you note, so does bringing on temporary seasonal help -- will the cost savings of not having to train the temps (or deal with their screw-ups) more than offset the increased cost of holding inventory?

Fulcrum
11-11-2015, 08:13 AM
Or take the opposite approach and push sales to grow the business so you can make that employee full time and train out (if you find the rare good one) the mistakes.

Basikboy
11-11-2015, 08:26 AM
Or take the opposite approach and push sales to grow the business so you can make that employee full time and train out (if you find the rare good one) the mistakes.

I have actually tried this approach and while we have produced better sales year after year we have still not achieved this status. We can go from our staff processing, printing and shipping 350-400 shirts a day during our busy times to 40-50 shirts during our slow times. On average the way our current system is setup we can print 20 shirts an hour.

I feel to keep my better employees I have to assure them full time hours but when business slows down I have to admit it drives me nuts keeping them on the clock when work is just not there for a full day.

Again, thank you for all and any feedback or advice.

Basikboy
11-11-2015, 08:27 AM
Thank you for replying Tallen. Your idea is not a bad one but I just feel at this point it is one way or another. Being in between I don't believe solves my dilemma.

Fulcrum
11-11-2015, 06:05 PM
Any chance a mod can move this thread into the proper category?


We can go from our staff processing, printing and shipping 350-400 shirts a day during our busy times to 40-50 shirts during our slow times. On average the way our current system is setup we can print 20 shirts an hour.

Before I touch on the employee situation, I want to address this. I don't know much about your type of business so I'll stick to generalities.


Do you know what is driving your slow season?
Would a product or design shift increase sales during this time?
Have you considered doing printing for businesses?

I think there is a market available with respect to the final point - especially for more custom clothing (all natural fibers, high visibility, low volume, etc.)


I feel to keep my better employees I have to assure them full time hours but when business slows down I have to admit it drives me nuts keeping them on the clock when work is just not there for a full day.

The joys and frustrations of make to order with a high SKU, low volume product mix. This is how I operate when I sell new product. I fully understand how erratic and spiky this can be. If you get someone in as a temp that you don't want to lose, it isn't always a bad idea to have some make work projects in mind for the slower times (general cleaning, reorganizing to improve efficiency, maintenance, reducing setup times, washing the car, etc). They might not be making money every moment of every day, but if you can pick up efficiency's for during the busy times, the investments should pay off. During these slower times is when you need to be beating the proverbial bushes to bring in more work.

I hope this helps.

Basikboy
11-14-2015, 10:18 AM
Thank you for the feedback Brad :)