Hello to everyone in the Screen Printing world and a Special Thank you to Castspit Productions LLC for this opportunity.


I know that everyone has their own way to calculate shirt pricing and that there are several programs or spreadsheets out there to help you out with this.

After a lot of trial and error I have come up with a solution that made sense to me and works quite well.

This will work whether you have a store front or are working from home the pricing will work out the same no matter what your business volume.


when Pricing your jobs you will have to take into account everything involved in the making of a single shirt. Everything from the cost of your shirts right down to your monthly overhead.

the equation should be as follows

shirt cost+ink+emulsion+your time+overhead= the pricing of your job.

Shirt blanks usually run around $1.49 (for white) before shipping and handling.

Ink cost run, at most, .39 per shirt

Emulsion will run you at least $30 per quart and depending on how how you coat your screen will render you about 30 screens so your cost of emulsion will cost, per screen, $1.00. this is an estimate you will have to figure out about how many screens you can make from your current emulsion and then divide that number by the cost of the emulsion and you will have a per screen cost.

You will have to figure out how much your time is worth, the amount of time it will take to complete the job from artwork to the finished project

Finally Overhead. Hear is where a lot of beginners have a hard time. You need for figure out how much it will cost you to restock all your supplies and keep that number handy. Now you take all your essential expenses (phone, internet, electric water and equipment financing) for the month and you have a baseline to work with. for your bills, if you are working from home, you should subtract about 20% from each bill then add them together. The next thing you need to do is sit down and add all your expenses and take your total monthly bills and divide them by the number of weeks in a month, usually 4 weeks is standard. this will tell you how much you will need to make each week to cover your expenses. so if your business expenses are around $1500 a month you divide $1500/4= $375.00 per week. then divide this number by how ever many days your business will be open, we will use 5 days per week, $375.00 / 5 = $75 per day.

The next step is to figure out how much you want to make in order to live comfortably. Never set you eyes on the highest number because if you set you number too high and you don't make it then you start to lose interest in the business. so you will want to do the following. Let's say that you want to make $3,000 per month free and clear. then you would use the 4 week division and brake that down by the number of days you will be open will equal how much you will need to make per day to reach your monthly goal. Equation

1500+3000/4=1125/5=$225.00 per week is what you will be basing your shirt pricing. again these are just examples and work whether you have a store front of you are working out of a spare room in your home...

I am trying not to make this too complicated when in fact it is quite simple if you just write down the equation with your own numbers... in order to reach your goal you will have to do some marketing and a little footwork. in the end it will be the quality of your work, your professionalism, your pricing and your personal conduct that will decide whether or not your business will succeed or tank.

if there are specific questions please feel free to ask them and I will be more than happy to answer them...

I do hope that this is much easier to understand and show you the potential for your business.

Shirt Cost formula
Monthly Goal /30 days=daily goal
Daily goal/8 hr work day= hourly goal
Hourly goal / then number of consistent shirts you can produce= shirt price.

You will need to figure out how much you shirt supply will cost
You will have to figure out how much it will cost you to restock everything you use
You will have to figure out your Utility bills (10-20% of each bill)
Then you will have to put a price on your labor

Now I have noticed that, around here in North Carolina, the screen fees usually go for around $20 per screen now you can use setting a screen fee as a way to get the money to resupply. Then just use your shirts to pay yourself and your utility and rent out of.

Example:
If you have a total of 6 one color jobs per day time 5 days you are looking at 300.00 just in screen reefs alone. With a minimum of 12 shirts per order at $5.50 a shirt you are looking at $396.00 per day. Add your screen fees and your shirt sales together which is $516 per day. Now your total monthly goal is lets say $3500.00 per month to cover everything. Just follow the above formula as follows and you will see how much you will be making with a $5.50 cost per shirt and $20.00 per screen fee on just one color jobs.

So here goes

3500 divided by 30 day =116.66 per day divided by 8 hours= 14.58 per hour.
Now if you look at it this way you will see that your screen fees will more than cover you what you need for your monthly goal..
Keep in mind the above is merely an example and not everyone’s daily business will be the same and make note that there might be days where you have no work at all… so factor this in as well…
But a $5.50 per shirt and $20 screen fee is a good starting point…

Hey very nice post. You’re very welcome and we’re all very happy to have you post such information. I’m sure many will find it useful. I appreciate the detail you went into here and I’m sure others will too.

Thank you very much for suggesting this category as I was contemplating something like this just this week. I had a misprint that was approved by the customer so I took some photos of the fix we did and I wanted to tell the story so now I will.

Thanks for posting!

using the above formula the bottom line is really how much you want to make in a month and if you have the consistent enough jobs to maintain your goal every month...

to actually estimate the price of the shirt there are a lot of variables to consider but in the end I will make it even easier than was stated above...

it takes at most .39 worth of ink and about 2 seconds to print the final shirt if you are doing a one color shirt and a base price of $1.49 per shirt blank at wholesale... so for pricing the shirt itself is the easy part and working from home allows you to keep your pricing lower than your competition.. I will upload a picture of the work space I started out in and am still using for one color prints. The total room is a 10 foot by 10 foot room..... all I did was takeover the unused bedroom and went from there... So my overhead is very low...lol...

I am currently working on a DVD series on Just the Business side of our industry and possibly doing a webinar series as well... As soon as I figure out how and where to set things up on the web...

So if anyone has questions about anything that has to do with the Business side please feel free to ask them and we would be glad to answer any and all questions you may have..

Another great post...I have seen these on other forums and happy to see it show up here. Now that business is getting better I need to start plugging in numbers to do a better job of pricing each job for clients. Thanks!

Thanks a lot for offering to ask questions on this blacktalon!

Very cool thread, thanks again.

Catspit Productions wrote:Thanks a lot for offering to ask questions on this blacktalon!

Very cool thread, thanks again.

Anytime... and Thank you for the chance to let me share my information....

I will answer all questions concerning the business side of things.... I think I spend too much time trying to work out ways to be more efficient and to make it easier... I actually sat down last night and worked a formula out that will tell you, down to the penny, what you need to make per shirt in order to reach your goal... I do suggest that, if you are just starting out, you try to work the formula on a month to month basis and see how it goes....

Leadfoot wrote:Another great post...I have seen these on other forums and happy to see it show up here. Now that business is getting better I need to start plugging in numbers to do a better job of pricing each job for clients. Thanks!

I do hope this works out well for you and if you need a specific pricing done you can msg me and I will be glad to help out... the formula is not that hard to work and to some it may sound complicated... and you are quite welcome for the advice and I am happy to help Catspit with the posts....

blacktalon wrote:Anytime... and Thank you for the chance to let me share my information....

I will answer all questions concerning the business side of things.... I think I spend too much time trying to work out ways to be more efficient and to make it easier... I actually sat down last night and worked a formula out that will tell you, down to the penny, what you need to make per shirt in order to reach your goal... I do suggest that, if you are just starting out, you try to work the formula on a month to month basis and see how it goes....

It’s my pleasure really. Your knowledge of the business side of things will help out many people and I appreciate such contributions. Feel free to share any of your ideas and formulas.

I’m very happy to have you aboard.

Hey very nice and teachable post... I was wondering if you uploaded the picture of your work space like you said. I have a 10' by 10' room too and maybe I can get some ideas from yours. Thanks bro!