can lcd displays be put on clothing price

Unless you’re only screen printing for fun, you need to know how much you should sell your shirts to make a profit. The best way to know for sure how much you should sell your shirts to make a profit is to use a profit calculator. Following a calculator is helpful, but how does it translate to the real world? Here’s a crash course in pricing shirts as well as some pricing advice from real-life shops.

Before you even think about processing the cost of a specific job, your first step should always be to find out how much money per month you spend on simply having a business. That includes rent, electricity, internet/phone bills, insurance, equipment cost, and the amount of money you want to pay yourself as a business owner.

Find out what the total monthly cost of these expenses is, divide that by the average number of items you print each month, and you have the amount you have to charge per item to cover overhead for that month. This will help you figure out what you need to remain sustainable.

Alright, so you know what the overhead cost of your shop is per month and how that translates to each shirt printed. Now it’s time to calculate the total labor cost per shirt. This formula varies from shop to shop. Add up the number of hours it takes you to print a job. This includes pre-production, printing, cleanup, and anything else you do for a job.

You’ve calculated the overhead and amount of hours spent on a job. What about your time? It’s valuable, and you want to make sure you’re staying in the green, as well as paying any employees you may have. Here’s a formula to help you out:

Once you know how much it will cost to print the items, you have to calculate the cost of the materials that go into the printing itself. Here’s how to find it:

There’s one more step: calculating the price per item in a job. To do this, add the overhead, labor cost per item, and the cost of materials per item used on that job. You’ll end up with the total cost per item for that job.

Let’s put all of these formulas into perspective. Heather Mueller, owner of Loyal to the Press, a print shop in Vancouver, Washington, prices her shirts based on garment quality, color availability, print and placement, and whether or not a shirt needs an underbase or additive.

For a 50-piece, one-color order, their base cost is $6.64 per shirt plus the cost of the garment. Other variables include the garment, if the artwork needs to be re-worked in any way, and setup fees and ink charges.

Maher Hachem, or Munch, the printer behind Love Yourself Clothing, takes a few factors into consideration when pricing shirts. He starts by calculating the cost of overhead and labor and then does some comparison shopping. He checks out similar brands and messages friends to see how much they would be willing to pay for the shirt.

To find the cost of the shirt, he combines the cost of t-shirts, his per-print charge — usually about $5 per print — and increases that number by a few dollars if he’s using a specialty ink. Other factors include burning the screens, adding a fixed percentage on the invoice that can cover any damaged pieces during production, and the cost of making samples for each piece.

For a 50-piece, one-color job, Maher charges the wholesale cost of the blanks, adding 15% on top of the wholesale to cover any damaged goods during production. He charges about $5 per print on each shirt depending on color and then charges $35 per screen being burned (this covers the screen, transparency, & labor of making the screen). Other variables that would affect this could be the turnaround time for the project and any specialty ink used.

The point of a business is to make a profit, right? Depending on the situation, most businesses want to aim for 20% to 45% profit. In some shops, the set-up simply won’t allow for a 45% margin due to high production time, material costs, or overly competitive local pricing.

Check with local shops in your area to see what they’re doing. If you simply can’t keep up with your competition"s pricing, consider specializing in something they don’t offer. Here’s a formula to calculate the profit you’ll make:

When running any small business, pricing can be a worry. What if customers don’t agree with the prices? What if the price is too low, and you don’t make any money? While staying competitive is important, it’s also important to know that you are offering a service that takes time, energy, and money to provide. You deserve to be paid fairly for it.

Loyal to the Press advises printers not to worry too much about whether their pricing has hit the sweet spot. Instead, focus on gaining quality clients who appreciate the work you do.

“We find that if a client is ready to move forward with their print then the pricing won"t be an issue. With each quote, we do let our potential clients know that we are a custom hand screen printing shop, meaning each piece we print is hand created with care, which takes time,” Heather said. “They"re either ready to pull the trigger or they aren"t.”

Offering discounts can be a great way to get recurring customers or to get large accounts to pull the trigger if you do it right. Don’t go overboard with these, though. The goal is still to be in the green at the end of the job.

Flash sales encourage customers to buy products they might not normally purchase. These sales usually are quick and don’t have a lot of build-up surrounding them. They’re generally geared to people who are paying attention to the shop or brand and hop on it immediately.

Think about Amazon’s Prime Day. How likely are you to at least peruse the flash deals they offer? While it isn’t guaranteed they’ll have what you want on sale, you might buy something you normally wouldn’t just because it’s on sale. Offering these sorts of quick deals to customers who are tuned in to your shop may have the reward you’re looking for.

If you run a clothing brand, pricing can look a little different. Because everything in the brand is your creation, it has intrinsic value. You created the logo, the designs, and the feel of the brand from scratch. Because of this, you can charge a little more for your work.

Here’s an example: Converse shoes. There are a ton of knockoffs on the market that mimic the real thing pretty well, but nothing is quite like the real deal. Because of this, Converse shoes are more expensive. You’re paying for the brand and everything it stands for, not just a shoe with a rubber toe.

Love Yourself Clothing is a company focused on promoting mental health awareness through apparel. Munch, the creator of the brand, breaks down pricing completely differently than with client work.

“For Love Yourself, we do everything made to order so we don"t sit on any inventory. Once a week I place a wholesale order and begin production once the blank shipment arrives. For clients, we take their shirt quantity, design, and turnaround and give them an invoice based on that. Naturally, this causes a difference in payout since our model is based on drop shipping and the clients are based on having inventory.”

So you’re printing your own apparel brand. How much should you charge? Shop around to see how much other clothing brands are charging for custom-printed shirts. This can help you gauge what other brands are doing, and how to price your own shirts to be competitive.

Heather of Loyal to the Press used to print for an apparel brand. The prices of the brand shirts ranged based on the difficulty of the print, just like client work does.

No matter what you decide to charge, make sure it makes sense for your customer base and your shop. Make it something you’re passionate about and don’t be afraid to charge what it’s worth.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to pricing. It’s not just about getting the best bang for your buck. Stay competitive, but stay true to the profit margins you want to receive and the value that you place on your craft.

You can get extremely detailed with pricing. Some owners leave nothing for granted and account for things like their shop"s overhead, time on press, capacity, impressions, number of colors, t-shirt costs and so on – you absolutely should account for those nitty-gritty details. But that"s not all there is to pricing.

Instead of trying to develop an all-encompassing formula, it"s best to follow some general strategies for smarter pricing. The reality is that you"ll need to price every unique job differently.

You"re paying to buy t-shirts from wholesalers. This takes times and money, and it"s the first step to printing custom t-shirts. Your garment markup is the first place that you should make profit.

That t-shirt may cost you just $1.50. But there is a real labor cost for procuring, processing, and printing the shirts in your shop. This fixed cost does notdepend on how much you paid for the t-shirt.

Garments that cost $10 from a wholesaler are typically marked up by about 150%. A $10 sweater becomes $15 for the customer. Some examples of clothing with lower markups:

For example: a $20 wholesale price translates to a $30 customer price with a 150% markup. That"s before you"ve even applied the cost to print the garment!

To recap: having one garment markup for all types of t-shirts, jackets, and hoodies you sell and print on...is unwise. Appropriately price your garments for the customer. Lower cost goods need the highest markup, while higher cost items require a lower markup. Higher cost items are more profitable, but also riskier to print on.

You should never offer a customer a screen printing quote for a job that you don"t understand. This is why we can"t tell you exactly how much you should charge: there are so many variables that come into play. Each and every shop is unique, and each job is unique on top of that.

There are several common factors related to the screen printing process that we can use to anticipate your printing cost and price jobs appropriately:

If you have more than one print location, it"s like you"re printing 2 shirts.Removing the shirt from the press and replacing it for another print location takes more time and labor.

Novice screen printers may think a 4-color job is more complicated than a simple 1-color print in two locations. But this isn"t true. Printing a 4-color design on the front of a shirt takes less time than printing two separate designs: you have to remove and replace the shirts for that second print location.

Our advice? Price multiple location prints like you"re printing a new garment each time. This could mean charging your print fee two times. You could offer a different price for sleeve prints, neck label prints, and so on. Perhaps the back print is 50% of the original print fee.

Don"t discourage multiple print locations. Correctly raise your prices for the additional labor, supplies, and complexity that multiple print locations introduce.

Printing one ink color on every job would make the world a more boring place – for your screen printers and for your customers. But you have to charge more money for the increased complexity that colors introduce.

So how should screen printers price colors? Build a "plateau" in your pricing model.One color should always be affordable. The jump to two colors is sharp, but not so sharp that customers can"t get what they want. And the jump between four colors and eleven colors should be massive!

A two-color print job with a 60 second flash is not the same as a two-color job with no flashing. Flashing will take more time, introduce more risk, and present more possible production problems.

If your shop prints manually, you must account for flashing in your pricing – your workers are the ones that have to pull that squeegee and wait while the shirt cures!

Add 1 to 2 colors to your standard pricing when you have to flash a job. I"ve created a separate price matrix for flashing jobs. To get an even more accurate picture, try timing two jobs with similar prints – one with flashing and one without. How large of a difference is there?

Remember: underbases often require flashing. Be ready to discuss underbases with your customers and explain why a simple print that is only one color may require an additional fee.

Screen printing pricing is volume-based. Most print shops really want customers to order as many goods as they can: it"s far more efficient to print 300 shirts than three.

But if you"re a small shop (or just starting out) doing a four-color job with flashing on 75 pieces will take a ridiculously long time to print manually.

Therefore, you need to adjust your pricing based on whether you use an automatic press or a manual press. Even if you are using an automatic press, you still need to account for flashing costs.

Once you cross the threshold into automatic printing, you can begin to distribute price breaks a bit more generously. Until then, be sure to account for the added labor & time constraints that manual printing adds to the process.

You can tell this creates a bit of a problem for new screen printers: the guy with the big automatic press is cheaper than you are. But there are still lots of ways that your small shop can add value to customers.

There"s a huge opportunity to make sales to groups, teams, and organizations that are challenging to deal with – you can simply make an online store into your ordering platform.

In my shop, we add a flat fee on top of our traditional screen printing prices (between $1 to $5 per garment depending on the job). It will add costs to your business (such as bagging-and-tagging) – but it can also boost your revenue and open up new sales opportunities.

Need help getting started with online stores for screen printing? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Online Stores for Print Shops and Screen Printers – with custom sales and marketing materials you can download.

Difficult customers and jobs drag your team down and cut into your profits. It"s administrative and customer service work tacked on to design and art work.

On the one hand: they really push our shop"s limits, challenge our skill set and bring out the inner artisan. They"re rewarding when they work out! More importantly, these customers can be converted into lifelong customers and educated about how to make the process easier.

On the other hand: they can be costly, they"re risky, they might lose you money and they can easily ruin customer relationships if they don"t turn out well. Bad reviews are a huge risk with this kind of job, so carefully consider whether you can realistically handle the extra workload for a needy customer or a really challenging print job.

The discount can be a percentage per garment, a percentage off the total order, or even a different cost per garment as you climb the ladder toward large orders.

A customer that orders 100 shirts is more valuable than a customer that orders 15 – and a customer that orders 10,000 garments is making you orders of magnitude more money than either of those. It simply makes financial sense to offer a discount to your largest customers.

The pricing matrix generator below allows you to implement breakless pricing, which is really just a fancy way to say you calculate your prices for every quantity individually.

Instead of having one price tier for 24 to 48 garments, you price out every garment quantity individually. This way, your customers are not incentivized to order "just a dozen more to get a discount." They get the appropriate discount every time. This prevents Mark Coudray"s "print shop pricing trap" where your quantity breaks actually work against you (see the video for a further explanation of how this works).

Maybe you call it the "friends and family discount," but the best way to think about it is that a discount can act as a gesture to keep a great relationship with a customer.

It"s worth keeping a good rapport with a customer that"s going to return again and again to your shop, even if it means keeping a lower margin on their orders.

Be sure you point out any discounts on your invoices. Something small like a 3% discount can be meaningful if you present it as a gesture of kindness & appreciation.

"Always point out what you"re giving away. Even if the price of the shirt actually accounts for it. We show a line item for "FREE" screen output and set-ups at $20 per color and side. Customers love this. They love getting something for free."

The discount is psychological – setup fees are already baked-in to my pricing! –but if I present it to a customer as a discount, they"ll be very grateful.

Cover your costs: pay your workers, yourself, your bills and everything else. Don"t starve your business because you"re worried about competitors offering a slightly lower price.

You"re probably not going to be able to compete with Custom Ink for market share. You may not even be able to compete with your rival shop, much less a local contract printer on price.

Keep your work high in quality and keep your relationships with customers in great standing – it"s easier to say no today than to explain why that big & challenging order didn"t turn out well to an irate person that"s highly respected in your city.

The #1 question screen printers and print shops have is "How do I set my prices?" This is a topic as controversial as it is difficult – every shop we talk to at Printavo has a different strategy for their screen printing pricing.

We"ve spent several months developing a way to encourage responsible pricing. We are not accounting or pricing experts, but we knew that we could add something valuable: what if we could help print shops generate a price matrix for every job they print?

There are lots of tools, softwares, and methods for developing a pricing model for screen printing shops. We wanted to arm you with something simple that you can use to generate a screen printing pricing matrix.

Update for version 2:a huge thanks to Andrea Harmon from Idaho Shirt Stack for her help. She corrected several errors on the first version of this spreadsheet.

To use our screen printing pricing matrix generator, there are 7 essential steps. It"s important to understand them all so you can get the most out of the spreadsheet (and modify it for your own purposes). The 7 basic steps are:

Define your shop"s monthly costs.While your costs may change, we suggest using a "slightly higher than average" number for your monthly costs. We"ll use these values to help calculate a "cost per impression."

Your utilization rate.How much of a working day is spent actually printing? We give you a range of values (from 5% to 50%). Be aware that the typical shop operates at less than 30% utilization!

Tell us how long setup and break-down will likely take.How long do you estimate spending on administration (sales, communication, data entry, etc.), artwork, and pre/post press activities (screen burning and reclaim, setup, etc.)?

Initially, you may need to estimate certain values (or develop a plan to collect more data) to get an accurate value. As the saying goes,good stuff in, good stuff out.The more accurate your inputs, the more accurate your price matrix eventually is.

The first step is defining the percentage profit you want to make.You select a percentage from the drop-down menu. The higher the percentage, the more the tool will charge per screen printed impression (and the higher your shop’s suggested hourly rates and daily revenue targets will be).

How this number is used:this value is used to calculate an idealized cost per impression. Since you are not inputting your revenue – and this is aforward-lookingcalculation – we provide you a “target revenue” based on your costs plus the desired percentage of revenueabovethose costs.

We’ve provided three extra cells for additional costs.This is where you may want to play your variable costs: office supplies, inks, tape, and other consumables.We can’t anticipate every shop’s different costs, but these covermostof the bases. We’ve found that labor expenses, rent, and equipment leases are typically the lion’s share of a small-to-medium print shop’s monthly expenses.

Break-even targets.These are how much you have to make daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to cover your shop’s costs. If you’re trending below these numbers, you are off track.

Profit targets.These are how much you have to make daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to cover your shop’s costsandmeet your defined profit percentage. If you’re trending at or above these numbers, you are on track.

Let’s be transparent: this is where things get a little bit more challenging.Let’s dive in to each area separately and help you understand what values to input.

Impressions per hour. This is an estimate of your production capacity. Don’t think of this as how manyshirtsyou can print in an hour, think of this as how many times you do animpression(in other words: dragging the squeegee across the screen).

Tip:calculate the number of impressions for a job, and then time how long printing takes. Do this repeatedly to get an estimate for how many impressions per hour are likely in your shop.

Total impressions per hour. Unless you are planning on operating more than one press for this job, you don’t need to alter this field. If you are using one press for the job, this value should be the same as your impressions per hour.

Tip: to change this value, alter the Number of Presses in Operation cell. It will simply multiply the number of impressions per hour by the number of presses.

Utilization rate. This is the most important metric in the spreadsheet. Your shop’s utilization rate is the percentage of time your presses are actually printing. We have discussed shop utilization with dozens of shop owners and industry consultants and found that shop utilization tends to be no greater than 40% (and, typically, is much closer to 20-30%).

Tip: utilization willalmost neverbe higher than 50%. We have given you more options but we strongly suggest keeping your utilization around 10% lower than you believe it actually is.

Number of presses in operation.This is NOT how many presses are in your shop. This is how many presses will be in use forthis particular job.Typically, this should just be left as “1.”Changing this value will alter the “Total impressions per hour” cell and affect your pricing.

With the info provided, we can create simple metrics to judge your shop’s performance and gain a high-level overview . The image above shows several interesting calculations:

Hourly shop rate (with utilization included)is the amount, per operating hour, that you need to hit to get to your profitability goalswhen your actual shop utilization is factored in.

Tip: these values may seem higher than you anticipate. It is worth examining how utilization plays into your shop’s hourly rate: as utilization goes up, your hourly rate goes down (you’re more efficient per hour).

Cost per impression.This is an estimated cost per impression. You’re provided with two different numbers, but only one is used in the pricing matrix calculation.

Cost per impression (with utilization included) is calculated the same way but includes a markup equal to your utilization rate. For example, if your utilization is 30% and your cost per impression is $0.50, this cell will populate as 30% of $0.50 ($0.15)plus$0.50 for a total of $0.65.This cell is used for calculating the price matrix.

These numbers capture what you need to take in to cover your costs (break-even targets) and also provide a high-level target revenue to match your desired profitability.

These are highly idealized values, but they can still be useful as a benchmark to check against. You can do basic back-of-the-envelope calculations about how long a job will take and compare the price to your revenue targets. This could help you know whether to take a job, raise or lower the price of a quote, or subcontract a money-losing job.

"How do I know what to charge as a markup?"You can choose a percentage markup from the drop-down menu. It will calculate the specific dollar amount and display it beneath the drop-down menu. Ultimately, the markup you charge is based on your judgment.

Administration.This is the time and effort expended to get the job into the shop. It could include sales, gathering information, getting approvals, ordering garments, etc. – anything that is required to administer the job and get it on press.

Enter an estimated amount of time (in minutes) to be spent on the job.While you may not have a clear picture of exactly how long it will take to set-up and break-down a job, this is a great way to estimate the the cost of pre-and-post press activity.

Once you’ve entered data, your price matrix will automatically generate in the "Step 3 - Matrix" tab (no need to do anything but enter your data – the spreadsheet updates in real time).

You can modify the quantity that the matrix displays to your liking. Feel free to change the green quantity values to anything you like. It may be helpful to use dozens, but for a very accurate picture you can replace dozens with single garments.

But we think this can give you a boost. With this tool, you can start to examine the relationship that pricing has in relation to your shop"s productivity, your shop"s costs, and your revenue goals.

We will continue to update and improve this tool as time goes on. We really want your feedback, so don"t hesitate to let us know what you think! We owe thanks to Andrea Harmon from Idaho Shirt Stack for her corrections and feedback – and we want yours!

With thousands of SKUs, products, decoration methods and variables to control, it"s no wonder that pricing is the single most common question in the garment decoration industry.

Want to start pricing your jobs correctly? Develop one pricing calculator based on your best guesses, then compare it to jobs you"ve already done. Are you close to your target, or way off base?

Once you"ve implemented a price matrix, keep checking up on it. Are you still profitable? Are your customers still happy? Revise your prices quarterly!

It"s easier to get specific when we know the details – this is a general guide for what to consider before making your price matrices, not a plug-and-chug equation you can jot down and use later.

About the co-author:Steven Farag is co-owner of Campus Ink in Champaign, IL. He regularly writes for Printavo and works closely with us to offer feedback, advice, and guidance for how to make Printavo even better. Steven"s focus on improving processes and workflow – as well as a relentless pursuit of new productivity-boosting tools and automations – has made Steven a leader among the newest generation of print shop owners.

The pricing breakdowns listed above represent our most common order sizes. We are happy to work with you on orders of more than 1500 shirts. Just ask us for custom pricing on larger orders!

We love vinyl here in Mesa, everyone should, it can do so many things. We are talking about printing custom clothing right now but vinyl can be used for stickers, vehicle wraps and graphics, realtor signs, anything really. In general, vinyl is a synthetic plastic that in our case, can be printed on and transferred by heat onto clothing. Our wide format printer puts your design onto the vinyl, cuts out what needs to be removed and is then ready for us to peel of the excess vinyl and press it onto fabric.

Compared to screen printing, vinyl does not necessarily have to be ordered in bulk, nor does it increase in price when adding more colors. With vinyl, anything is possible for your custom shirts or clothing!

There’s an abundance of retail product display options for today’s store owners. Knowing what they are and when to use each type can impact your retail sales revenue.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what retail product displays are, how to display products in your store, and the most popular types of product displays.

The look of retail product displays relies heavily on your visual merchandising strategy. Generally, the first interaction customers have with your products in-store is via your displays.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, retail product displays are a must. You or your visual merchandiser can arrange displays to showcase your products and increase sales.

It’s also a visual merchandiser’s responsibility to manage and maintain your retail product displays over time. Fixtures may break or become worn down.

Use Shopify’s analytics and reporting to make the right merchandising decisions at each of your store locations. Spot seasonal trends, see which products require promotion, measure your display"s impact on product sales, and more.

There’s an endless list of ways you can display products in your store. It depends on what types of products you have, who your customers are, and how creative you want to get.

Strategic placement of each retail product display can impact your sales. It’s key to keep your visual merchandising strategy in mind when choosing how to display your products.

Think outside the box.Creative signage like “Insta worthy” wall art can get the attention of your shoppers. It can encourage people to engage with your products (and share a picture on their Instagram feed).

Use cross merchandising.You can merchandise by color, product type, or theme. Cross merchandising complementary products on the same retail display is one way to use secondary product placement to increase sales.

Location, location, location.You can place displays that house new products and bestsellers in high-traffic areas. Smaller, impulse buy or add-on items can get displayed near the checkout counter.

Change displays on a weekly basis.Changing retail product displays on a regular basis keeps your retail store looking fresh. It can also help your regular customers discover new products with each visit.

Add decorations. Go above and beyond to improve the shopping experience by adding decorative items that suit your customer’s lifestyle. For example, if you sell yoga clothing and mats, add plants, candles, and lighting on or near your displays to set the mood.

Maintain your retail displays. It’s important to always keep retail product displays clean, spaced, and organized so customers can easily find (and buy) products without feeling overwhelmed.

Every retailer’s visual merchandising strategy is different. Take a look at other stores to see how they set up their displays. We don’t suggest copying directly, but pulling different elements from displays you like is a great way to get started.

Retail product displays can be broken down into three categories: standalone and point of purchase (POP) displays, store shelving displays, and clothing and furniture displays.

Trying to decide which layout is right for your store? Download these free templates to learn which types of layouts work best for different industries and draw inspiration for your own design.

We"ll also send you updates on new educational guides and success stories from the Shopify newsletter. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe.

Clothing and furniture can be displayed using standalone POP displays and store shelving, but there are also retail product displays that are perfect for these types of products. Creating product displays for apparel and furniture is distinctly different from grocery store merchandising.

Racks are a good way to display clothing. They come in several configurations, including circular, multi-level, and with shelves. Garment racks also come in a range of materials like metal, wood, and plastic.

You can create a clothing display that showcases items grouped to create an outfit along with accessories. Or display home products that can be purchased together to complete a set.

Use mannequins to give shoppers a visual presentation of your products and how they go together. This is a great opportunity to promote add-on purchases and impulse buys.

Make a lasting impression by immersing your customers in the environment or experience where they’d use your products. The example above of an apartment setting is simple and cozy.

Both examples are simple, but follow a unifying theme that makes the overall effect powerful and persuasive. Immersive product displays pull people in and help them visualize using the products.

You don’t need to build something extravagant. Use themes and simple fixtures to display products and personalize the customer experience. Tell a story your customers relate to and they’ll be compelled to stop and take a look.

For example, a furniture store may have various material options for the same sofa. Shoppers can test the product by sitting on it, and alternative fabric swatches can be placed nearby for people to touch and feel.

A point-of-purchase display (POP) is an in-store display that is used to attract customers to a special offer or particular brand in your store. In some cases, the displays are made of cardboard and printed with advertisements. It’s more common to see printed POP displays in grocery or box stores.

Unlike wall shelving, a more permanent retail display fixture. You can change POP displays completely—from the display itself to the merchandise it holds.

Standalone displays are a type of POP display that stand independently of common aisle shelves. These displays are usually seen in the middle of large store aisles, also known as “action alleys.”

You can use standalone displays anywhere there is open space. They play a vital role in your visual merchandising strategy and require thoughtful design to make an impact.

Dump bins are stocked with small impulse buy items. Consider using bins when you need to show a lot of low-price merchandise quickly. Bins can be accessed from all sides and are easy to move throughout the store.

Freestanding displays are also simple to set up and can be made of cardboard or other materials. They are usually filled with larger items than dump bins and are more organized.

With a freestanding display, you can showcase products on hooks or shelves. They’re accessible from all sides and give you the opportunity to cross merchandise similar items.

Display cases are usually encased on all sides in glass, plastic, or Plexiglas. They are standalone displays, sometimes accessible from one side, sometimes from all around.

Customers usually can only access products in the case with the help of a store employee. These cases are used to securely display high-end merchandise.

You can also use these cases to entice shoppers with a beautiful product display and then store the products for purchase on a shelf or in a separate storage case nearby.

Window displays are found in the front window of a brick-and-mortar store. This is a way to make a first impression with your shoppers. Make sure your display showcases your store’s merchandise in a visually appealing way to draw customers in.

They can be used at your checkout counter to encourage customers to buy impulsively. Or you can place countertop displays throughout your boutique on tables or shelves to showcase small products and add-on accessories.

Retail shelving is fixed and sturdy and can display a variety of different goods. Shelving is the core of many grocery and big-box stores. However, they are also a great option for boutiques of all sizes.

Shelving helps to direct the flow of traffic and display items in an orderly fashion. It can be single-sided and placed along walls or double-sided to create aisles.

Think of these displays as little islands of merchandise in the sea of your store. They are freestanding and accessible from all sides. In some cases, they rotate.

A shelf stopper is signage that highlights an item on a retail shelf. The signage sticks out perpendicular to the shelves and gives the item increased brand recognition and stopping power.

A small pop-up display is called a sidekick or power wing. Like freestanding displays, they are an effective merchandising tool to increase basket size.

These displays set products apart from other items on the same shelf. You can use additional branding, trays, or other items that break the visual monotony of shelves.

The shelving on end caps is sturdy so that you can display heavier merchandise on them. Use them to highlight specials or new inventory and cross merchandise complementary products.

A glorifier is a small glass or plastic box that stands out from a standard shelf and highlights an item. This is a unique and non-traditional way to showcase your products.

For example, if you’re selling perfume, you can use a glorifier to make each scent stand out from the shelf. Think of it as a podium for your products.

Developing your visual merchandising and retail product display strategy takes time, creativity, and testing. The results can mean the difference between great sell-through rates and dead stock that you need to markdown.

Deciding which retail displays are best for your boutique gives you a chance to roll up your sleeves and have fun. Use retail product displays to tell a story and help your customer discover new items.

Whether you use garment racks, display tables, or shelving, the return on investment makes spending time and money on retail product displays a no-brainer.

The effectiveness of retail product displays is not dependent on how flashy they are. Keep it simple. As long as you keep your visual merchandising strategy and your customers in mind, the right product displays can increase sales.

Use Shopify’s analytics and reporting to make the right merchandising decisions at each of your store locations. Spot seasonal trends, see which products require promotion, measure your promotions’ impact on product sales, and more.

A retail display is a physical structure or space used to promote and sell merchandise in a retail environment. Retail displays can be found in both physical stores and digital stores. They are typically used to showcase products in an appealing way, to attract customers and encourage them to make a purchase.

Product display is the way in which a product is presented to potential customers. This can include factors such as packaging, color schemes, and labeling.

Heat transfer vinyl (HTV) and screen printing are two processes for making promotional T-shirts or fabric items. If you want to make shirts branded for your company, these are usually the first two options you’ll come across. Here’s what you need to know about screen printing before you make your choice!

Printed promotional apparel is among one of the most popular categories of promo items. From casual to formal, outdoor to accessories, apparel is something everyone loves. This go-to choice turns your recipients into walking billboards for your brand!

When it comes to customizing t-shirts and other apparel items, there are two main ways to get a logo or other artwork onto the product: heat-transfer printing and screen printing. While both methods essentially transfer an image onto fabric, there are plenty of differences and situations where one method might be better suited than the other.

In addition to their advantages and disadvantages, the two designs come out quite differently, so customer preference also comes into play. Let’s take a closer look at these two imprint methods:

A somewhat recent innovation, heat transferring images to fabric has become more popular in the last 20 years. A heat transfer uses a combination of heat and pressure to print images onto t-shirts and other items. There are two main kinds of heat transfer methods: vinyl and digital print. Both methods require the use of a heat-press machine. Here’s a 10 second video to show you:

The vinyl heat-transfer process uses a machine to cut out individual letters and designs from pieces of colored vinyl. The full image is then pieced together on the promo item and pressed with heat to transfer the image to the item. This method is best suited for printing sportswear jerseys, slogans, or small, multi-colored graphics.

A digital print heat transfer is accomplished through a process much like a home printer. The full graphic image is designed on the computer and digitally printed onto high-quality paper using a special, solvent ink. When the paper is pressed to the promo item with heat, the ink adheres to the material and the graphic image transfers to the item. T-shirts and other garments printed using this method offer high-resolution images and are ideal for complex designs with many colors.

Screen printing basically uses screens and ink to transfer an image onto a t-shirt or promo item. While original forms of this art date back to around 960 AD, screen printing in its current form was not discovered until the 1910s after several printers stumbled upon the modern emulsion process. It wasn’t until Andy Warhol began popularizing the practice in the 1960s that screen printing (or silk screening as it’s also called) really started being used in the mainstream.

To get the desired effect, the screen is first cut to create what is essentially a stencil for the design. The ink is then spread over the screen with a squeegee, passing through the “stencil” to the t-shirt or promo item underneath. Only one color may be used for each screen, so for a design with multiple colors you will need multiple screens.

During the printing process, the printer uses special ink to create the exact colors you want. They flatten the shirt, put it inside a metal press, put the screen down and add the ink, using a squeegee to apply it. Then, the printing company dries the T-shirts and inspects them to ensure the design looks perfect and is positioned in the right location.

This process can be more time-consuming for designs that have many colors; however, screen-printed art tends to last much longer than heat-pressed art. It also requires more chemicals and equipment for it to work.

Screen printing T-shirts create a durable, long-lasting design that can endure between 40 and 50 washes in the machine. The ink used for screen printing is extremely thick and penetrates the fabric deeply. Using the gentle cycle, washing the shirt inside out or hand-washing it can prolong the screen printing design even longer.

Screen printing is an efficient process that makes it easy to get shirts with promotional images or messaging for any business. When you reach out with a design idea, we’ll create a mock-up of it. With your approval, we’ll make it into a stencil on a mesh screen to complete the printing process.

When it comes to printing quality, there are a couple ways to look at it: durability and resolution. While heat-pressed items yield a higher resolution image to start with, the image won’t last as long as one on a screen-printed item.

Freshly printed it will likely appear that the graphic produced using the heat transfer method is of better quality; however, over time graphics produced using the screen-printing method will appear of better quality.

During the screen-printing process, the ink actually becomes part of the fabric as opposed to a heat-pressed ink that just sits on top of the fabric. That’s why heat-transfers don’t hold up as well to machine washing and drying – they may crack and fade over time whereas screen prints tend to hold fast and true.

While screen prints may hold up better in the long run, you’re limited in the complexity of the design with screen prints. Heat transfers allow more freedom in color and sophistication making a more crisp-looking image (but keep in mind the crisp look will not last as long).

Heat transfer vinyl is another option for putting designs onto T-shirts. Both methods offer pros and cons. For example, screen-printed shirts are more durable than HTV because they are made from ink. The ink goes into the shirt material, while an HTV design stays on the surface. This surface-level exposure makes the HTV design more likely to crack or fade during use and wash. A screen-printed shirt should last for numerous washes, if not the entire life of the shirt.

That said, HTV is an easier process than screen printing — so there is a benefit if you’re on a tight timeline! However, because HTV printing is easier and quicker, the results are often of lower quality compared to screen printing.

In terms of budget, both printing methods are often cost-effective in their own ways. Since screen-printed designs can be reused, they often outweigh the low cost of vinyl.

While both methods offer solutions to getting a design onto a t-shirt or other product, screen printing and heat transfers are each great for different reasons. If you are printing customized designs with different names (such as sports team uniforms), a heat transfer might be the most cost-effective way to go; however, if you are printing a larger order of the same image and want a more durable design, screen printing is likely your best bet.

At ePromos, we create screen-printed, HTV and embroidered promotional T-shirts for companies. Whether you want to get a message out or commemorate an event, we can help. Shop our promotional apparel today or contact us for further assistance!

For more imprint method options, check out our glossary. And if you have any questions about heat transfer vs. screen printing or other imprint methods, give us a call! Our friendly and knowledgeable staff is happy to help you find the best possible imprint and item for your unique situation.

Announced in a press release on Thursday, the stretchable display has a resolution of 100ppi and is capable of displaying full-color RGB. The prototype was created using micro LEDs with a sub-40μm pixel pitch that were built into a silicon substrate typically used in contact lenses. According to LG Display, this gives it a consistency “similar to that of a rubber band” and allows it to be stretched in any direction by up to 20 percent.

Other styles of flexible display technology have been commercially available for some time, such as LG’s own rollable OLEDTV or the LG G Flex phone. Foldable devices also often utilize a malleable screen, though this new stretchable display technology is theoretically more flexible while providing better durability — supposedly capable of comfortably withstanding heavy external impacts.

“Stretchable displays are not only thin and light, but also can be attached to curved surfaces such as skin, clothing, and furniture,” LG Display says in a press release. The company hasn’t announced any products that will feature the technology but expect it will eventually be utilized within industries such as wearables, mobility, smart devices, gaming, and fashion. This stretchable screen is the first prototype being developed by LG Display as part of a government-led development project, with the Korean-based company hoping to improve on the display technology by 2024.

LG Display isn’t the only company exploring stretchable displays. Samsung has previously showcased the viability of the tech in real-world applications after creating a stretchable OLED screen in a prototype heart rate monitor back in June 2021.

Smart packaging is arguably the low-cost display application with the greatest scope for growth. Displays can be integrated into both shelf-level and item-level packaging, with the former likely to emerge first since the lower volumes enable higher unit costs. At present, electroluminescent displays are sometimes incorporated into limited edition production runs for marketing processes, but these are not regarded as an effective long-term solution due to their high power requirements.

Another application for low-cost displays is small consumer goods. This has long been the case for some premium items such as electric shavers, with small displays that show the remaining charge, for example. However, as displays get cheaper and electronic functionality/wireless capability is integrated into more devices, this could be expanded to an ever-growing range of devices and appliances. Indeed, it might not be long before bank and travel cards contain a low-cost display to show your balance and/or recent transactions.

Wearable technology is another promising application for low-cost displays. While OLED displays are widely used smart watches, they are generally too expensive at present to incorporate into clothing and skin patches for medical/fitness/therapeutic applications. The key attributes for displays in clothing and skin patches are durability, flexibility, and low power consumption. This example demonstrates that for many emerging display applications, the traditional key performance indicators of resolution, color gamut and refresh rate are no longer especially important.

LG Disply has developed a 12-inch stretchable display that can be extended in size to 14 inches, the company announced. The displays could one day be used in materials with irregular surfaces like clothes and wearables to display messages on the uniforms of first responders, for example.

Stretchable displays, or free-form displays as LG Display calls them, can be pulled, bent and twisted. They go a step farther than the flexible displays used in Samsung"s Galaxy Fold and other smartphones, which can be folded and bent but not stretched.

To make the display so stretchy, LG Display built the base substrate material from a silicon similar to that used in contact lenses. It also micro-LEDs smaller than 40-micrometers for the light source, allowing for high resolution and durability. And finally, the company used circuits shaped like springs to accommodate bending and folding.

"The stretchable display’s revolutionary technology offers next-level versatility for various daily scenarios," LG Display wrote. "Easily attachable to curved surfaces such as skin, clothing, furniture, automobiles and aircraft, this unique innovation expands the potential of the display in various industries including fashion, wearables, mobility and gaming."

We"ve seen stretchable displays in the past from Samsung and others, but the best you could do with those was put a small dent in them. This one appears to go much farther, showing the potential for displays with real potential for wearables. LG Display has been working on the technology since 2020 in collaboration and the research is expected to conclude in 2024.

Now, plenty of people get away with wiping a smartphone screen against their t-shirt or pants or using a sleeve to clean a laptop display, but this is not the best way and can itself damage the display.

Do a quick search on the internet, and you"ll find that isopropyl alcohol is the weapon of choice in cleaning displays. This is true, but if used incorrectly, this chemical can also damage the display.

The big DON"T of using isopropyl alcohol is this -- don"t pour or even spray isopropyl alcohol on your display. If you put too much isopropyl alcohol on a screen, damage can occur in two ways:The isopropyl alcohol can seep between the layers of the display, completely ruining it and requiring the device to have a replacement screen fitted

Apple has, naturally, published detailed information on safely cleaning a whole range of products, from notebooks to tablets to smartphones. While this is aimed at Apple users, the information applies to other brands too.

If you want to add logos and other designs to clothing and other textiles, embroidery and screen printing are your two primary options. Both of these options can produce quality work, but they each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Embroidery is often viewed as the more long-lasting choice, and can deliver professional results for uniforms and more. Screen printing can sometimes be more cost-effective, especially when using local services, and is often a better choice for larger designs.

Before you decide whether embroidery or screen printing is right for your purposes, take a look at what each one could offer you for whatever purpose you need it for.

Cost is likely to be the biggest concern for any entrepreneur who wants to have garments or accessories customized. It already costs a little more to have something personalized than to simply buy it as its made, so you don’t want to overspend.

One thing to keep in mind is that neither option will always be cheaper. Which one is more cost-effective will depend on a number of factors, including the complexity of the design, where you have the work done, the size of the design and the quality of the garments that you use.

Most embroidery will allow you to have up to 15 colors at little to no extra cost. However, large logos and designs are likely to be cheaper with screen printing, and large orders can reduce the costs too.

Durability is another concern, and this is where embroidery is often the better choice. An embroidered design, which is stitched straight into the fabric, is much more likely to last for longer than a screen printed design, which is printed on top of the fabric.

One of the issues with screen printing is that the design can crack and fade as time goes on. This is especially likely if the garment isn’t cared for properly, which means washing it carefully. Embroidery, on the other hand, is less likely to fade or show any damage. With quality stitching, it can last for a long time.

A screen printed garment could be ruined in a flash if it’s put in the washing machine at the wrong temperature or ironed on the wrong side. Embroidered logos don’t present such problems, although the stitching can be snagged or damaged occasionally.

Embroidery creates a design with a nice amount of weight that looks sophisticated and should last for a long time. The design is in 3D, as opposed to the flat design of a screen printed logo, and the strong thread presents a shine that makes the logo eye catching too.

You also need to think about the most appropriate applications for both embroidery and screen printing. Each of them can be more suited to different types and qualities of garments. For example, embroidery is more suitable for heavier garments.

Thinner and lower quality garments aren’t necessarily the best choice for embroidery because thin material tends to pucker when embroidered. Embroidered logos are excellent for good quality uniforms that you want to last for a long time.

Polo shirts with logos and perhaps even names stitched onto one side are a classic choice. However, if a larger logo is required on the back of the shirt, screen printing can be a more suitable choice.

Screen printing can be the better option for T-shirts and other thin or stretchy garments. The printing doesn’t create the tension that embroidery does so it doesn’t cause the material to pucker up.

If you want to customize T-shirts, hoodies and similar items, or you want to print larger logos, screen printing is likely to be the most suitable option.

However, for other garments, including polo shirts, outerwear and caps, embroidery is the most durable and sophisticated option for your logos. It looks smart and will last a long time, plus it’s suitable for a wide range of garments and other items.

Embroidery has been around for centuries, making it an ancient method of applying decorative touches to garments. With that in mind, here are some of the most interesting facts about embroidery:

An archaeological excavation dug up the remains of a Cro-Magnon with clothing items decorated with embroidery. The Cro-Magnon were believed to be around in 30,000BC – this shows how old embroidery is!

Machine embroidery was first introduced in 1828 by a man called Josue Heilmann. This sparked the trend of being able to produce embroidery on a mass scale.

Despite what you might think, screen printing was around as far back as 960 CE during the Song Dynasty in China. Back then, it was used as a way of printing money.

Screen printing can be applied to glass, metal, gold, wood, electronics – the list goes on! So, it’s more versatile than expected, with uses extending beyond t-shirts and clothing.

The first example of a promotional t-shirt using screen-printing was when The Wizard of Oz came out. After that, many other movie producers used screen printing to promote their upcoming films.

Both screen printing and embroidery have their advantages, but you need to consider a few factors before deciding which one is best. Take into account the size of your logo design, your budget, the items you want to customize and the size of your order before deciding which one is best.

In college, I had a friend with strong aesthetic convictions, and often I find myself thinking about his opinion of “Project Runway.” We were at school in the heyday of Heidi Klum and (the man invariably introduced as) “top American designer Michael Kors.” This friend would join the group viewings that took place on a grubby dorm-room couch, but he would express the belief that the show was fundamentally bogus because no one got to feel the clothes. Strong aesthetic conviction is not always the most appealing quality in a nineteen-year-old. But, about “Project Runway,” I think he may have been onto something.

Clothes have always been designed to be seen, of course, but, with fashion increasingly browsed, bought, shown off, and resold via screens, now less than ever do they exist to be felt. Fast fashion—with its promise of endlessly replaceable visual variety—is an industry built to take advantage of this shift in priorities. Probably no company has done so more adeptly than Shein, an online retailer operating at a scale and pace that makes the Zaras and H&Ms of the world look artisanal. (Zara reportedly releases some ten thousand new products annually; Shein has released that many in a day.) The business is built on data-driven manufacturing, and trends on TikTok, where “Shein haul” videos show shoppers emptying boxes in an avalanche of plastic-wrapped purchases. Prices are dizzying—twelve dollars for a sweater dress, two dollars and twenty-five cents for a tube top, marked down—and the general consensus, even among Shein devotees, is that you get more or less what you pay for. “I"d be really careful,” one poster on the Shein subreddit warns another, who is contemplating ironing a new pair of pants. “I went to iron a ‘100% cotton’ shirt from Shein and it melted onto my iron.” These are garments whose physical reality is an afterthought.

Fast fashion has created a shopping landscape far removed from the one surveyed by Claire McCardell in her exuberant 1956 guide to getting dressed, “What Shall I Wear?” The book has now been reissued (with a new introduction by Tory Burch) and fashion critics have praised McCardell’s enduring relevance—and, although much about the world of clothes has changed, her voice retains its jaunty authority. McCardell was an American ready-to-wear designer known for pioneering women’s separates and sportswear. She favored adaptable shapes and simple materials, such as wool jersey, even for formal occasions; her innovations included ballet flats and skirts with zippers on the sides, for easy reach. McCardell, who grew up in Maryland, had studied fashion in Paris as an undergraduate at Parsons, but she came to eschew European influence—she was more interested in solving American women’s everyday style problems than in copying the French. Her emergence in the nineteen-thirties and forties helped bring about the beginning of homegrown U.S. fashion.

In the book, she guides the reader through the process of assembling a wardrobe, in chapters that address such questions as “Where Do Fashion Trends Come From?” and “Is It the Fault of the Dress?” She starts from an assumption that fashion need not be exclusive, and urges readers to take an interest in it without taking it too seriously. Interspersed through the pages are playfully loose sketches of silhouettes and accessories. The attitude toward fashion McCardell brings to the page is practical but also lively and personal. “I like hoods because I like my ears to be warm,” she notes at one point. She prefers costume jewelry to the real thing, never misses the chance to wear a long dress, and believes that coats should be fun and affordable rather than expensive and boring.

The “number one rule” she offers shoppers is to “wear the fabric you feel best in”—a perfectly simple guiding principle that’s all too easy to forget for those of us clicking through online retail in search of something new for fall. Even while bargain hunting, people should pay attention to their senses, she writes. “Avoid the inexpensive dress that is made of hard unyielding fabric. . . . Feel the material—is it soft, a pleasant surface to touch?” Everything about the shopping process that she envisions runs counter to the ethos that fast fashion inculcates. Instead of imitation, open-ended possibility: “If your mind is a squirrel-cage jammed with impressions you’ve picked up here and there, you are apt to come away with a headache and a bad purchase.” Instead of constant novelty, familiarity: “You must never look as if you were wearing a dress for the first time.” McCardell’s goal is the kind of physical confidence that an itchy collar, a tugging seam, or a faltering zipper will only undermine.

The book shows its age in plenty of ways. It is hard to wring much that’s relevant today from a disquisition on gloves. The nineteen-fifties were a time before “body positivity,” and asides about dressing to please a husband or a husband’s boss strike a distinctly pre-feminist note. (A new afterword attributes some of the retrograde social material to McCardell’s ghostwriter, Edith Heal, the author of such works as “The Young Executive’s Wife: You and Your Husband’s Job.”) But, more than that, what’s remarkable about reading McCardell is how much she considers clothes as objects, and how much pleasure she finds in their materiality: the possibilities they offer to be altered, improved, and reimagined, but also the sheer physical experience of we