Printing T-shirts: how to calculate your cost per shirt

The six items that belong in every price per piece

Before you calculate, write down what actually costs money. Hardly anyone forgets these six on purpose, but one of them usually slips through:

• The garment: your purchase price, not the list price. Volume steps at your wholesaler shift the whole calculation.
• The transfer: the printed area, not the design. How to work out that area is in the next section.
• Your labour: checking the file, cutting, placing, pressing, peeling, inspecting, packing. Measure it once with a stopwatch instead of guessing.
• Waste: placed crooked, a faulty garment, a design sitting too low. It happens, and it belongs in the calculation instead of in your mood.
• Packaging and shipping: box, filling, label, the trip to the post office, and the care instructions you add.
• Preparation: preparing the file, cutting it out, talking to the customer, correction rounds. That is working time your customer often takes for granted.

Only once all six are in place do you add your markup. The order matters, otherwise the markup quietly shrinks.

What the transfer really costs you

On the custom length you pay for the area. One metre is 600 mm wide and 1000 mm long, so 0.6 square metres. The metre costs €12.60 net, and the more metres come together in one order, the cheaper each one gets:

Important for your calculation: all files in one order count together. If you collect jobs and order them at the same time, you move into the next step without using more material.

How many designs fit on one metre?

Calculated with 5 mm between the designs, across the 600 mm width:

These are guide figures. How much really fits depends on the shape of your design, a landscape design uses the width differently than a portrait one. How to fill a sheet properly is shown in Gang sheet building for true kings.

Sheet or custom length?

Ready made sheet formats are convenient, but they cost more per area: an A4 sheet at €2.30 works out at roughly €37 per square metre, A3 at €5.10 around €41. The custom length sits at €21.00 and lower in the scale. For a quick one-off the sheet is right, for any series the custom length is.

If you are in a hurry, the express custom length costs €16.00 instead of €12.60. That is €3.40 more per metre, so around 57 cents per shirt with six chest designs on the metre. Put that on the invoice of the customer who needs the date.

A worked example: 25 shirts with a chest design

A club orders 25 T-shirts with a chest design of 250 x 300 mm. Here is the calculation. Only the transfer is a real price from us, everything else is an assumption you replace with your own numbers:

All assumptions are rough figures. Garments are available at €1 to €2 and just as well at €7 to €20, depending on supplier, quality and quantity. Your hourly rate, your waste and your packaging look different too. Take the table as a frame and put your own values in, then the result is right for you.

Only after that comes your markup. At 60 per cent you end up at €13.87 per shirt in this example, at 100 per cent at €17.34. Which markup works for you depends on your market, not on a rule of thumb from the internet.

Two things stand out: the print is not the largest item at €2.10, and at small quantities your labour costs more than the garment and the transfer together. That is exactly why it pays to work on your routine, not only on the purchase price of the transfer.

Five adjustments that really help

• Fill the sheet: collect jobs and put several designs on one metre. A half empty sheet is area you have paid for and thrown away.
• Check the width of your design: 10 mm sounds like nothing, but it decides a whole row. A design 300 mm wide fits only once across the 600 mm web, one 295 mm wide fits twice. That halves the transfer cost per piece.
• Press it right the first time: pressing twice is lost time. Stick to our press settings and test new garments on a sample first.
• Set up files properly once: every correction round costs you more than the transfer. The most common pitfalls are in The most common mistakes and how to fix them.
• Use express only when the date demands it: express is its own item and belongs on your customer's invoice, not in your standard calculation.

What you tell your customer

• Quantity steps instead of one price: show 10, 25 and 50 side by side. The jump convinces better than any argument.
• Show one-off items separately: file preparation or a sample make sense to a customer when they appear as their own line.
• Offer a sample: our sample pack costs €0.01 net, the colour chart €16.80. That is cheaper than a discussion about colour after delivery.
• Add care instructions: include the washing guide. What the prints can take is in How long does a DTF print last?.

And if you are not sure which product suits the job, Which product suits my project? will help. Which fabrics work is in Which textiles are suitable for DTF printing?

Frequently asked questions

What does a DTF transfer cost per shirt?

That depends on the area of your design, not on the shirt. On the custom length, a chest design of 250 x 300 mm costs around €2.10 and a small logo of 100 x 100 mm around €0.28, net, on a well filled sheet and at the base price of €12.60 per running metre.

When do I get the lower price per metre?

The scale starts at 5 running metres with €12.40 and goes down to €11.00 from 500 metres. All files in one order count together, so collecting jobs pays off.

Why is the custom length cheaper than a single A4 sheet?

On the custom length you pay for the area once and use all of it. An A4 sheet at €2.30 works out at roughly €37 per square metre, the custom length sits at €21.00 and lower in the scale. A single sheet is right for a quick one-off, not for a series.

How much labour should I calculate?

Use your own times and measure them once with a stopwatch: check the file, cut the transfer, place the garment, press, peel, inspect, pack. A real number beats an estimate from the internet.

How much waste should I plan for?

Better to plan for some than to pay for it later. How high it is depends on your materials and your routine. If you follow the press settings and test a sample first, waste stays small.

Are your prices net or gross?

All prices in our shop are net, because we supply businesses and resellers. How you invoice your own customers is up to you.

Is express worth it in a calculation?

The express custom length costs €16.00 instead of €12.60. Treat the difference as its own item and pass it on when the customer needs the date. For a normally planned series you do not need it.

What does a sample cost?

Our sample pack costs €0.01 net, so you only pay shipping. For colour matching there is the colour chart at €16.80.

View custom lengthView single designSample packPrint data

Also useful: Your benefits at DTF-King, Press settings and FAQ.

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Good luck with your calculation

DTF-King Team