Need Help with new business venture

[John & Dawn Roddick]

To give us an idea of your position, how much do you charge for a standard mug, with sublimation print photograph and text? How much do your competitors charge? What is your outlay and time for each mug? Same for Tshirts.

Dawn

[matkinson]

Thanks for your reply, Dawn. Firstly we don’t have any competition in our area for personalized printing. With regard to mugs though we charged £6.49 and people were happy to pay that price up to Christmas. We considered dropping that price to about £5.00. Just curious on what a typical markup should be. Other outlets close by sell mugs for less than a pound and £1.49 with text on such as a name or whatever but not personalized. T Shirts we sell for £10 with whatever the customers want on them. We pay approx £1 for the mug and I guess around 50p to a pound to print. T Shirts cost up to about £4. Takes about 20 minutes I guess to do either including the design, resizing photo, etc.

[John & Dawn Roddick]

I wouldn’t think that £6.49 is too expensive as I would assume that the mugs at £1whatever close by are screen printed, which is a much cheaper process and can be done on any old mug. People tend to pay more for things when they can be personalised – are you marketing your product and it’s benefits properly and to the right people?

[Dale Hughes]

Hi we have just opened as well about the same time as yourself we did alot of looking around the internet and other places to see what prices we should charge now we charge £6.99 for a personalised sublimation mug and alot of people have said that it is very well priced.there is a printers near us that sell digital images on mugs that are really a transfer and can be scratched off their price is £13.99 so £6.49 for your mugs is a very good price and i think you should stick with it dont forget you have overheads to consider and January is notoriously a bad month for all businesses we have friends with varied businesses and they are all feeling the pinch right now.

[Kevin.Beck]

i personally wouldn`t open a shop (building) selling personised sublimation products.

an internet website, yes,, but not a high street shop. there just isn`t enough people turnover and profit in the items.

certain items have a set value. will folk pay £15-£20 for a mug, jigsaw etc. these items have a low value. £10 is about correct.

but selling at £10 a mug, you would need 10 sales per day just to make £90 profit. overheads would kill you. i doudt very much if you`d get 10 people a day, every day.

we use sublimation for various products, but wont take orders of 1.

by the time the customer has explained what they want etc, and you`ve taken the order 15-30 minutes could have easliy passed.
you have then got to scan in the image, print it out and wait 3 mins before peeling the paper of the mug etc.

total time for 1 mug could be closer to 30 -45 mins a mug.

i personally would use the equipment to print various designs on mugs etc and then sell on ebay.. get a production line going.

i don`t mean to be rude or hurtful, just my thoughts.

we bought a colour photo copier to do full colour images on tees and stuff. i thought, i might as well advertise colour copying as no one in my area does it.
do you know how frustrating it is to be interupted in the middle of job to to do 1 paper copy of 50p. ……….bloody frustrating..

we now say the copy is broken, it just isn`t worth the agro.

[matkinson]

Thanks everyone for your input, some interesting comments made there. Ebay is one area we are currently working on and we are currently aiming to reach local businesses for promotional work. Not quite sure how to go about the pricing on that though as we would then be talking about quantities and subsequently discounts for bulk buying. The shop we have is very small and above it we have two large rooms we use for the printing. It is viable that we may close the shop and use it as a reception area and concentrate on the commercial aspect, something we may consider but all your points are good and food for thought. Thanks for your replies.

[Dorian Marks]

What else do you do apart from mugs, and where do you see your enterprise going over the next 12 – 18 months?

[photogifts]

im just dropping a line to say im in same boat ive just started out on sublimation aswell what im doing is indoor markets my first month and my website i havnt sold anything on sublimation front yet and im getting bit dishearted i have some other things that sell at markets but aint nothing to good money wise i got made reduntant so thought would try this out im hoping something comes good soon

[matkinson]

Hi all, once again thanks for your comments, some food for thought there. hamlet, we basically do anything that we can get our hands on that can be sublimated and we also do the T Shirts both sublimated and other. We have only done one T Shirt by way of sublimation as we feel the quality is not as good. Generally we use an inkjet to reproduce the image on to T Shirts with transfer paper.
Ideally we wanted to build up the shop side of it first and then launch in to the commercial side producing workwear and promotional items. The idea behind getting an income from the shop first was because in the commercial sector i would envisage they would not be paying up front it would be say in 30 days minimum assuming you get them paying on time.

This was what I was hoping for in the next 12 months but obviously it hasn’t worked out that way so far. Hope this gives you an idea of where I was going with this venture.

Thanks again,

Mark

[Martin Forsyth]

Hi Mark

I think your prices are fine for subli (especially from a shop).

You need to be careful not to drop your prices, else it simply wont be worth your while.

As for ebay, there are lots of people doing subli on there (I have done in the past too), I wouldn’t recommend using ebay as a big part of your business. There are too many people who will simply undercut, undercut, undercut or copy your ideas.
How some of them make money, after the ebay cherges/paypal fees I’ll never know. Probably working from home, as a sideline, not paying tax etc.

Perhaps, rather than lower prices, offer discounts on bulk purchases??

Also, service counts for a lot too – people will pay if they get a great service.

My rule from day 1, has always been – any problems, and I will replace/refund – no questions.
I have had one or two take advantage, but I have had far more, recommend me, and bring in more business,

All the best

Martin