Screen Printing Business — Starting Up

Screen printing is actually an easy thing to learn. Once you get use to it, the process will become faster and a lot easier. Although this is true, let’s accept the fact that learning screen printing is different from actually learning how to start a screen printing business.

As someone who owns a small screen printing shop here in the Philippines, what I really observed a lot is that most screen printers here are currently doing it the old-fashion way. I don’t have anything against the old school process, but I think it’s the main reason why the screen printing industry here is very much behind in terms of adaptation of new technologies and innovations related to the industry.

If you’re someone who wants to open a shop on any part of the Philippines and have done some research on how to start, you’ve probably talked with other screen printers, personally or online, who told you how you SHOULD do it. And I bet you’ve also been told to do things the “mediocre” way, or the infamous term “pwede na”.

You Need To Know Your Reason — Your WHY

Based from personal experience, starting any business is hard. There are so much things that will go through your mind, and starting a screen printing business is no exception. Unless you’re a big fan of mediocrity — of being satisfied on low to medium quality works, you’ll have a hard time filtering out all the ideas that you want to incorporate into the business, especially if your just starting out.

But before you overthink all of these things, it’s a good idea to clearly define first your BIG WHY: Why do you actually want to start a screen printing business?

I understand that when you try to answer that question, you’ll probably consider the fact that it’s actually a business that can make you money. But as mentioned, it’s not that easy. And because it’s not easy, you need to have a better, deeper, and much more meaningful reason besides money.

I believe that regardless of how much money you make, if you’re not happy in what you do and you’re not helping others, you’re wasting your time.

Defining Your Goal

Screen printers have different goals for their respective shops. Some wants to simply be a printing service business, and some wants to sell their own shirts (with their own design and print). Whatever the case may be, I think it’s very important for us to know what we want our business to be in the future.

Having a clearly defined goal is very important because it will be the main basis of our business decisions. If we, as the business owners, have a definite plan for our business, it will help us a lot in choosing the right customers, the right equipment, and the right people to connect with.

Know what you want your business to be in the future.

In my opinion, this is also one of the main reasons why most screen printers here in the Philippines are not into using modern equipment and innovations in screen printing. Since the only reason they have is to make money, they refuse to invest for the long-term business (which means investing on high-quality equipment and materials).

Investing For The Long Term

If you’re just starting out, investing for DIY or low to medium-quality equipment and materials is understandable. But if you have a clearly defined long-term goal for your business, it’s absolutely important to reinvest, and invest for more.

Investing on higher quality equipment and materials is important not only in improving the quality of our service and products, but also in proving to our clients that we’re a real business: a business that is growing and can catch up with the demands of its clients.

Reinvest, and invest for more.

On the other hand, if it’s not your goal to actually grow your screen printing business, don’t invest for more because you’ll just be wasting your time and money.

Asking For Business, And Building Relationships

If you know your goal for the business, you’ll know whom to ask and do business with. This is one of the most important reasons why you should clearly define your business goal first.

If you’re goal is to offer printing service and won’t be investing on better equipment, you’ll probably be charging at a standard rate, which means that direct consumers are your target audience. But if you’ve invested to higher quality equipment and printing materials, you’ll probably be yielding higher quality prints and products, and you can charge more for that. In that case, you can target other businesses to be your clients.

Whatever the case may be, what’s important is that once people start to go to you, build a good relationship with them. In today’s very connected world because of social media, one relationship can lead to another, which means one customer can lead to another, and so on.

Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate your time! If you find this post somehow valuable, please share it to others who you think will find this post helpful.

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Regards,

Alwin (Instagram: @alwin_rys)