Anatol Blog

You likely went into the screen printing business because you enjoy designing and printing – marketing probably wasn’t a skillset that was on your mind. But without effective marketing, your business can’t succeed. Your potential customers need to know who you are and understand why they should be doing business with you.

When you decide to make a go of printing t-shirts for a living, you’ll soon realize that in order to produce garments in any significant quantity, you need a conveyor dryer. But there are so many choices, from tiny tabletop models to giant industrial dryers six feet across. How do you know which is right for your shop?

When many screen printing veterans first got started, they may not have realized just how many variables factored into properly curing their prints. As the industry has advanced, new technology has made it even more difficult to get fully caught up. Fortunately, by familiarizing yourself with the basics of curing and doing some careful tests, you can make it easier to get a proper cure.

As screen printing has advanced, new fabrics and inks have increased in popularity and brought with them a number of different challenges. In this day and age, it’s more important than ever for screen printers to develop, test, record and implement conveyor dryer procedures to properly cure their prints.

One of the most effective ways to succeed in screen printing is to create a niche for your business – focusing on one particular strength and developing and marketing it to the best of your ability. Having one special skill that people can count on you to deliver is great, but you want to be careful you’re not restricting your product offerings too much.

All retailers walk a fine line with inventory. You want to have the right goods on hand to meet your customers’ needs in a timely manner, but you don’t want to get stuck with a stockroom full of merchandise that doesn’t sell for months on end. Screen printers are not exempt from this dilemma.

Developing art into film positives poses — for many screen printers — the biggest challenge in the screen printing process. Printing film positives that result in crisp, sturdy stencils does take some digital know-how, but like most of screen printing tasks, you can create film positives successfully by carefully following a process and paying attention to detail.

There are many variables that can affect the quality of your screen prints. One tool that has a profound effect is your squeegee. If your squeegee isn’t in good shape, your prints will suffer.

As a screen printer, the last thing you want is an unhappy customer wanting to return items. In another blog post, we shared some tips on how to keep your plastisol prints from washing out. Those tips will go a long way towards keeping your prints vibrant and making them last, but there’s another issue you may run into: dye migration.

A screen printing shop can accumulate a lot of ink. Storing that ink can prove a challenge, and often shops will simply look for a quick and convenient spot in which to store their inks. It’s important to put more thought and consideration into your ink storage, however.

Samples are a staple for marketing your screen printing business, attracting customers and nabbing new orders. However, there’s a fine line between samples increasing your business and overdoing samples and eroding profits.

As a screen printer, some of your daily operation is sure to include creating artwork for customers. Keeping as much of the screen printing process as possible under your control is the key to getting good results – you have plenty of variables to deal with. However, your clients will often want to provide the artwork for their orders themselves. If your customers know what they’re doing, this can save you some time. But more often than not it can cause a big headache.