Screen Printing Business Plan, With a 12-Month Projection

A screen printing business plan sets out what you'll print and for whom, what a shirt costs with its share of the screens and setup, the press, dryer and screens, and the first year month by month. Screen printing's arithmetic turns on the order: every color needs its own screen, burned, registered and cleaned, so setup is a fixed chunk of time spread over the shirts in the run. Big one-color orders are cheap a shirt; small multicolor orders aren't. That's why screen printers quote by quantity and color count, and why a shop's own-brand shirts, printed in long runs, are its best margin. In the example below, a shop in Fargo prints team and business orders, hoodies and its own tees, makes a profit from month 4, and ends the year about $23,200 ahead on $92,100 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the printing. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: what you print, for whom, the shop, the goals.
• Cost a shirt: the blank, ink, the order's share of screens and setup, printing time, bagging, fees.
• Quote by quantity and colors: setup is the same for 24 shirts or 240.
• Set a minimum order and a per-color charge, so small multicolor jobs pay.
• Print your own designs in long runs for the best margin.
• A manual press, an exposure unit, a flash and a conveyor dryer are the startup.
• TaroStack keeps blanks, inks and screens counted and every order costed. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Red River Print Shop, a made-up screen printer in Fargo, North Dakota, I use in these examples, writes:

Red River Print Shop screen prints shirts and hoodies for teams, schools, businesses and events, with a minimum of 24 pieces, and sells its own regional designs online. In our first year we plan to fill about 160 orders.

Part 2: what a shirt costs

Setup is the screens to coat, burn and register, a test print, and the cleanup afterward, about half an hour a color. Spread over 48 one-color shirts, it's little; over 24 two-color shirts, it doubles twice. The own-brand tee prints in runs of hundreds, so its screen and setup share almost disappears. How to cost the bag and mailer properly is in packaging cost per unit.

Part 3: customers and prices

The two-color price is $4 more a shirt, roughly the second color's screen, setup and ink at 24 pieces. An own-brand tee leaves four times what a one-color order shirt does, but it has to be designed, photographed and sold one at a time, so it's the line that grows with marketing rather than with the phone. Team and business customers reorder each season; a wholesale order form template keeps their sizes on file.

Part 4: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,915 a month: shop rent ($1,200), utilities and dryer power ($200), insurance ($80), marketing and samples ($300), equipment upkeep ($60), the website and online shop ($40), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11:

The year's sales are $92,072 and the profit $23,242, on top of $20 an hour for the printing. Blank prices move with the market and the season; a dollar more a blank is nearly $1,000 every month at full speed, so the quote sheet lists blanks separately from printing, which lets a price follow the blank. How to track supplier prices is in supplier price tracking template.

Part 5: the startup budget

Get the template

Download the screen printing business plan workbook. Four sheets: your orders and products with price, variable cost and monthly volume at full speed; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Blanks in ten colors and eight sizes, inks by the gallon, thirty screens in rotation, twenty open orders with due dates, and an online shop. A sheet can't say whether there are 48 black mediums for Thursday, which inks are low, or which orders earned their setup time.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps blanks, inks and screens counted and every order costed.

Blanks and inks in stock. Each blank by style, size and color, each ink and emulsion is an item, counted on a phone and kept at what you paid; units convert: ink bought by the gallon, used by the ounce.

Orders against the shelf. Orders are sales orders that show whether the blanks to fill them are on the shelf while you're still typing, so a 48-shirt order doesn't find 30 mediums. Own-brand designs are recipes of their blank, ink and mailer, so a run takes them off stock at what you paid.

And what each order earns. The reorder list works in days of cover against each supplier's lead time, and margins are reported by product and by customer, so the customer whose small multicolor orders never pay shows up.

Recipes, batches, sales orders and margins by product and customer are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is screen printing profitable?

It can be. In the example, a shop printing team and business orders, hoodies and its own tees ends the first year about $23,200 ahead on $92,100 of sales, with $20 an hour paid for the printing.

How much does it cost to start a screen printing business?

In the example, $13,750 with a manual press, exposure unit, flash and conveyor dryers, screens, inks, a washout booth, first blanks, a website and $3,000 of working cash.

How much does it cost to screen print a shirt?

In the example, $5.55 a shirt for a one-color order of 48: a $3.50 blank, ink, the order's share of screens and setup, 3 minutes of printing, a bag and fees.

Why do screen printers have minimum orders?

Each color needs a screen and setup that take the same time for 24 shirts or 240, so small orders cost much more a shirt. A minimum keeps every order worth its setup.