Most shops price screen printing by feel, then wonder why the busy months are not the profitable ones. The fix is not a bigger markup. It is separating the three costs that behave completely differently as quantity changes.
The three costs
Blank cost scales linearly. 100 tees cost 100 times one tee, less whatever supplier break you hit.
Decoration cost scales linearly too, but it is driven by impressions, not by how the art looks. One position, two colours, plus an underbase, is three impressions per garment. Your press runs at a certain number of impressions per hour whatever the design is.
Setup cost does not scale at all. Separations, screen making, exposure, registration, ink mixing and a test print cost the same for 12 shirts as for 500. This is the number that decides whether small runs make money.
The formula
unit price = (blank + (impressions x cost per impression) + (setup / quantity)) x markup
Everything hard about pricing is working out your real cost per impression and your real setup cost. Both are knowable in an afternoon.
Cost per impression
Take last month. Total press-related cost (operator wages, ink, a share of rent and power, press maintenance) divided by total impressions run. Most small shops land somewhere between 8p and 20p per impression. Use your own number, not a number from a forum.
Setup cost
Time your own process once: separations, coating, exposure, washout, taping, registration, ink mix, test prints, teardown, reclaim. Multiply by your loaded labour rate and add consumables. Per screen. Shops that measure this for the first time are usually surprised, and it is almost always higher than what they had been charging.
Worked example: 100 black tees, 2 colours, 1 position
Two spot colours on a dark garment means an underbase, so three impressions per shirt.
| Line | Calculation | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Blanks | 100 x £2.40 | £240.00 |
| Impressions | 100 x 3 x £0.12 | £36.00 |
| Screen setup | 3 screens x £18 | £54.00 |
| Fully loaded cost | £330.00 | |
| Cost per shirt | £330 / 100 | £3.30 |
| Price at 2.2x markup | £7.26 | |
| Sell at | £7.50 | |
| Order value | £750.00 | |
| Gross margin | 56% |
Now change one thing: 24 shirts instead of 100.
| Line | Calculation | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Blanks | 24 x £2.40 | £57.60 |
| Impressions | 24 x 3 x £0.12 | £8.64 |
| Screen setup | 3 screens x £18 | £54.00 |
| Fully loaded cost | £120.24 | |
| Cost per shirt | £5.01 | |
| Price at 2.2x markup | £11.02 |
The setup is 45 percent of the cost of the small job and 16 percent of the large one. That is the entire reason quantity breaks exist. If you quote the 24-piece job at the 100-piece price, you are not being generous, you are working for nothing.
Where shops lose the money
Forgetting the underbase. Two colours on black is three impressions, not two. Quote it as two and you have given away a third of your press time.
Not charging for the second position. A back print is a second setup and a second run through the press. It is not a small addition to the front.
Absorbing artwork time. Separations on a badly supplied file can take an hour. Charge an art fee, or ask for print-ready art, but do not eat it silently. See what to send your digitiser for the embroidery equivalent, and the glossary if separations, underbase or halftones need unpacking.
Quantity breaks on round numbers. Your breaks should follow your setup cost, not 12 / 24 / 48 out of habit. Work out the quantity at which setup drops below 20 percent of cost and put a break there.
Do it once, then never do the arithmetic again
This is a price matrix, and it does not change often: blank cost, cost per impression, setup per screen, markup, break points. Once it exists, quoting is lookup rather than mental arithmetic, and it stays consistent whoever is at the counter.
That is exactly what a quoting tool is for: garment cost, decoration cost, setup and margin on the quote line where you can see them, with the price recalculating as the quantity moves. If your quotes currently live in a spreadsheet, the cost of staying manual is mostly this: the arithmetic gets done differently every time.
Once the formula holds, look at your minimum order quantity next. It is the same maths pointed at the question of which jobs to accept at all.