A screen printing job has two costs, and only one of them scales
Every print job splits into fixed cost and variable cost, and confusing the two is why so many shops quote profitably at 144 pieces and lose money at 24. Fixed cost is the setup: burning a screen, taping it, registering it on the press, and reclaiming it afterwards. That work is identical whether the run is twelve shirts or twelve hundred, and it happens once per colour per location.
Variable cost is everything that repeats per garment: the blank itself, the ink laid down on each impression, and the press time. Press time is the piece most shops under-count, because it is charged twice — once as the crew's wages and once as shop overhead. A press tied up for an hour consumes an hour of rent, power, dryer gas, insurance and equipment depreciation whether or not you have costed it.
The unit that ties press time to the job is the impression: one colour printed on one garment. A three-colour front on 72 shirts is 216 impressions, not 72. That is why colour count drives cost twice over — once through screens and once through press time — and why a one-colour job on 72 pieces can be less than half the cost of a three-colour job on the same shirts.
Cost-plus quoting on a target gross margin is the standard method here: total the real costs, divide by the quantity, then gross up to the margin you need the business to run at. It is not the only way to price — many shops price to a published matrix and check the margin afterwards — but it is the only way to know whether a given quote actually earns anything.
Margin is not markup, and the difference is large
Gross margin is gross profit as a share of the price. Markup is profit as a share of the cost. They are different numbers and the gap widens fast. A garment costing $5.18 marked up 45% sells at $7.52 and earns a margin of 31%. The same garment priced to a 45% margin sells at $9.42. Same intention, $1.90 a shirt apart, which on a 72-piece run is $137.
The arithmetic is simple: to hit a margin of m, divide the cost by (1 − m), never multiply by (1 + m). This calculator uses the division form throughout, and the output labelled gross profit is the difference between the quote and the total cost, so you can confirm the margin lands where you asked.
Gross margin is not net profit. It is what is left after the direct costs of doing that job, and it still has to cover everything you did not charge to the press hour: sales time, art and separations, quoting, invoicing, bad debt, and the owner's wage. That is why a shop targeting a 20% net margin typically prices at 45–55% gross. If you have loaded genuinely all your fixed costs into the overhead rate per press hour, you can target lower; most shops have not.
Watch what happens to margin on a short run. Because setup is fixed, the cost per garment rises as quantity falls, so holding the margin constant means the price per garment rises too. That is correct and it is what the quantity ladder shows: 12 pieces price at more than double the rate of 288 pieces from the same setup. Customers push back on this, which is why many shops quote setup as a separate line so the per-piece price looks flatter and the fixed cost is visible for what it is.
Worked example: 72 shirts, three colours, one location
An order for 72 shirts with a three-colour front. Blanks land at $3.25 each. You charge $20 a screen for setup. Your press runs 180 impressions an hour on this job, the crew costs $22 an hour fully loaded, and your overhead works out at $35 per press hour. Ink and consumables run 5¢ per impression. You price to a 45% gross margin.
- Screens. 3 colours × 1 location = 3 screens, at $20 each = $60 setup.
- Impressions. 72 garments × 3 colours = 216 impressions.
- Press hours. 216 ÷ 180 = 1.20 hours.
- Labour. 1.20 × $22 = $26.40.
- Overhead. 1.20 × $35 = $42.00.
- Blanks. 72 × $3.25 = $234.00.
- Ink. 216 × $0.05 = $10.80.
- Total cost. 234 + 60 + 26.40 + 42 + 10.80 = $373.20, which is $5.183 per garment.
- Price. 5.183 ÷ (1 − 0.45) = $9.42 each, so the quote is 72 × 9.42 = $678.55 and gross profit is $305.35.
- Breakeven. Variable cost per garment is 3.25 + (3 × 0.05) + (3 ÷ 180) × (22 + 35) = 3.25 + 0.15 + 0.95 = $4.35. Each shirt therefore contributes 9.42 − 4.35 = $5.07 towards the $60 setup, so the job covers its setup at 11.8 garments.
Now check the same job at 24 pieces. Setup is still $60, so each shirt carries $2.50 of it instead of 83¢, cost per garment becomes $6.85, and the price becomes $12.45. The shirts did not change; the arithmetic of dividing a fixed cost did.
Reading the quote before you send it
Look first at what share of the per-garment cost is setup. When setup carries more than about a third of the cost of each piece, you are quoting a job that screen printing is structurally bad at, and the customer will find a cheaper answer somewhere else. That is not a pricing problem, it is a process problem: below roughly two dozen pieces, direct-to-film transfers or direct-to-garment printing usually beat screens because they carry almost no fixed cost per design.
Look next at breakeven. It should land far below the order quantity. If breakeven is close to the run length, the job's entire profit depends on nothing going wrong — one misprint batch, one late blank delivery, one re-registration and it is gone. A breakeven under about a fifth of the run is comfortable.
Then sanity-check press speed, which is the input most shops guess at and the one that moves the answer most. Press speed depends on the press, the crew, the number of heads, the flash count and the garment. A single flash between colours can halve the effective rate, because every shirt waits on the flash unit. If your quotes always look profitable but the month does not, the usual culprit is a press speed on paper that the shop never actually achieves.
Finally, remember what this quote does not contain: art and separations, which most shops bill separately; screen reclaim if you have not built it into setup; garment handling for folding, bagging or individual sizing; and spoilage. Build a spoilage allowance into your blank count — ordering a few extra pieces on any run of size is standard practice — and quote art as a line item so the customer sees it.
How the quantity ladder moves the price
| Quantity | Setup per garment | Cost per garment | Price per garment | Total quote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | $5.000 | $9.350 | $17.00 | $204.00 |
| 24 | $2.500 | $6.850 | $12.45 | $298.91 |
| 36 | $1.667 | $6.017 | $10.94 | $393.82 |
| 48 | $1.250 | $5.600 | $10.18 | $488.73 |
| 72 | $0.833 | $5.183 | $9.42 | $678.55 |
| 144 | $0.417 | $4.767 | $8.67 | $1,248.00 |
| 288 | $0.208 | $4.558 | $8.29 | $2,386.91 |
| 576 | $0.104 | $4.454 | $8.10 | $4,664.73 |
Variable cost is $4.35 at every quantity. Everything that changes down this table is the share of the $60 setup that each garment carries, which is why the curve flattens: doubling from 288 to 576 saves only 19 cents a shirt.
Costs shops routinely leave out of a quote
- Overhead on press time. Rent, power, the dryer, compressed air, insurance and equipment do not stop while the press runs. Divide annual fixed costs by billable press hours and charge it.
- Art and separations. Redrawing a customer's low-resolution logo and separating it into printable channels is real labour. Quote it as a line, not as goodwill.
- Screen reclaim. Stripping emulsion, degreasing and re-coating is part of the cost of a screen, and it happens after the job has shipped and been forgotten.
- Spoilage. Misprints happen. Order a few extra blanks on any run of size and count them in the cost, or the first ruined shirt eats the margin on ten.
- Flash time. A white underbase on a dark garment adds a flash cycle that can halve the effective press speed. Enter the speed you actually achieve on that job, not the press's rating.
- Handling. Folding, poly-bagging, size-sorting and boxing take time per piece and are invisible in a press-speed model.
- Freight in and out. Blanks land with freight attached, and shipping the finished order is a real cost that belongs in the quote or on the invoice.
- Payment terms. Thirty-day terms on a large job is money you have financed. Price accordingly or ask for a deposit.
When screens are the wrong process
Screen printing wins on volume because its variable cost is very low — ink is cents per impression — and loses on short runs because its fixed cost is high. Two alternatives invert that. Direct-to-garment prints from a file with no screens at all, so its cost is almost purely per-garment and it is usually cheaper below about a dozen pieces, especially on full-colour artwork. Direct-to-film transfers sit between the two: a printed film costs money per design and per placement but far less than burning screens, and it handles many colours at once.
Embroidery follows a different cost law again, driven by stitch count rather than colour count, with a digitising fee standing in for screen setup. If you are quoting a decorated apparel job that might go either way, run the numbers both ways: the embroidery stitch count calculator gives the stitch count that embroidery pricing is built on, and the comparison often surprises on left-chest logos.
Whatever process you use, the structural insight transfers: any job with a fixed setup and a variable per-unit cost has a price curve that falls steeply at first and then flattens, and a breakeven quantity you can compute. The same shape governs candle and resin batches, print runs and machine time in every craft business — see the candle wax calculator for the materials-cost side of the same problem in a different trade.
One last discipline: rerun the quote when your inputs change, not once a year. Blank prices move, energy prices move, and the overhead rate you calculated when the shop was doing 900 press hours a year is wrong if you are now doing 1,400. The rate per hour falls as utilisation rises, which means a busier shop can quote lower and still earn more.