In a discussion on a Facebook Group “Screen Print Pros” there was a thread about how much to charge for a 30K piece one color job. I think most of the replies were about prices that were too low.

One of the first replies I made was that if you do the job for basically break-even, what happens when you screw up a job like that? Somebody said, “that’s what insurance is for.” I replied, then you at least you need to charge enough to pay for that expensive insurance. Then a squeegee brother-in-arms said, “Maybe I’m naive, but how can you screw up a white t-shirts with a 1 color print?”

Maybe paranoia and bad experiences run in my veins, but all too easily I fired off a reply of what could go wrong. Hope for the best, but plan for what can go wrong. Anybody have any other examples of a simple job gone wrong? Some of the following are based on real experiences (a diligent employee destroying the good film instead of the bad film) and some based on my active imagination.

“A dryer problem you don’t see that makes ink not cured or scorching so slight that it isn’t seen right away. . A spelling mistake (I know of a printer that did 120K shirts with a spelling error that at least 20 people saw it and didn’t catch it.) A sleepy crew printing crooked for an hour or two or missing a dry brush or lint in a bad place. Wrong version of art is printed (they approve one version, then change to another version, everyone doesn’t get informed of change.) Some diligent person throws out the bad film or bad file but they throw out the good version by mistake (that’s a real story..) Company that hires you goes bankrupt and final payment doesn’t go through. You allocate the time and turn away work and then they cancel at the last minute. Your crew all gets the flu and you have to pay OT to get the job done when they come back. Your press(es) break and you end up doing overtime after they are fixed or you have to sub some out to get it done in time. That’s all off the top of my head, I’m sure I know more stories.”