Pricing a print job from scratch — the fundamentals nobody teaches

Question

New shops undercharge because they price off "what the other guy charges" instead of what the job actually costs them. Here's how to build a price from the ground up so you're profitable on purpose, not by accident.

Step 1 — Total your real cost per job:

Blanks (garment cost, at your actual supplier price).
Ink / film / consumables — more on darks (underbase) than lights.
Screens or setup — emulsion, film, coating, burning, reclaim. Amortize across the run.
Labor — art/setup time + press time × your real shop labor rate. This is the line most people leave out, and it's usually the biggest.
Machine time / overhead — the press, dryer, rent, and power don't run free.

Step 2 — Apply your markup to hit your target margin. Costing a job and then marking it up is how you get a price you can defend.

Step 3 — Build quantity breaks that reward the right behavior — repeat customers, standard colors, camera-ready art, and advance scheduling all lower your cost, so tier for them, not just for raw volume.

Step 4 — Charge for the hard stuff: dark garments (15–25% more to produce), extra print locations, specialty inks, and rush turnaround.

The goal isn't to be the cheapest — it's to know your number and hold it. A confident, itemized quote closes better than a nervous lowball anyway.

Kontraktr Team · Accepted Answer

The single most common mistake in shop pricing: leaving labor out of the cost. People count the blank and the ink, mark it up, and call the difference "profit" — but they never paid themselves for the 45 minutes of setup. Do that on every job and you're busy and broke.

Put a real hourly rate on setup + press time and fold it into the cost before you mark up. Your prices will jump, and the customers worth keeping won't blink. The ones who leave over an honest price were never profitable for you anyway.