Screen print · Embroidery · DTF
Your prints look better than the system you run them through
This is the trade we actually work in. One of us runs Alpine Apparel Co, a water-based shop in Castle Rock, so none of what follows is research. It is a list of things that have gone wrong on our own press and been fixed.
Decoration has a problem the other trades do not. One order can be three decoration methods, thirty sizes, two locations and an artwork approval, and every one of those is a place it stalls.
Twenty minutes. We look at how work moves through your business and tell you what we would fix first. No pitch.
The order is right. Getting it to the press is the problem.
Thirty players, thirty sizes, four late additions, and a proof somebody may or may not have approved by email. None of that is the printing. All of it is you.
Art approval and size breakdowns are where decoration differs from every other trade. One order can be three methods, two locations and an approval, and each of those is a place it stalls waiting on you specifically.
Between somebody deciding they need shirts and you being paid for them, here is where the job falls on the floor.
Quoting across seven variables
Garment, method, colors, locations, quantity break, setup, turnaround. Seven things, priced from memory, differently on a Thursday than a Tuesday, and nobody else in the shop can produce the number you would.
Art approval in a text thread
A mockup goes out as a photo of a screen. The reply is a thumbs up in a thread that also contains a lunch order. Nothing about that is a record, and you find that out on the day it matters.
Group orders as a spreadsheet plus forty texts
Thirty players, thirty sizes, four late additions and two payment questions. You are the collection system, and the collection takes longer than the print.
Press scheduling and screen reclaim
What runs Thursday, what is waiting on garments, which screens have to be reclaimed before Friday. It lives on a whiteboard and in your head, so one slipped job reshuffles the week by phone.
Reorders starting from scratch
Same team, same design, next season. New artwork hunt, new size collection, new quote, because nothing from last time was kept anywhere you can find it in a hurry.
The reprint argument
They say the sleeve print was supposed to be on the left. You think it was approved. Neither of you can produce the proof that went out or the date it came back, so you eat three hundred shirts.
The reprint argument is the one to design against first. Which proof went out, who approved it, and when. That is the difference between an awkward conversation and eating a run, and it is also the cheapest thing on this list to fix.
August is when this stops being survivable
The setup that works in March does not work when schools and teams land at once. Volume does not break it dramatically. It just means the quote you did not send on Tuesday is a job somebody else printed.
And the reprint you ate because nobody could produce the approved proof is not a bad month. It is the same month you were too busy to fix the thing that caused it.
Same road, different nouns
A shop that quotes custom work, books it, prints it and chases the invoice is the same animal as a window cleaner or a fabricator. The nouns change. The road does not.
What we bring to a print shop on top of that is the trade itself. The decisions are pre-made: minimums, screen charges, contract tiers, blended methods on one order, the seasonal rush that wrecks August. We are not learning how a shop works on your budget.
- Alpine Apparel Co, water-based screen printing in Castle Rock, Colorado, since 2017.
- Startup Screen Printing and the YouTube channel, 120+ videos on technique, pricing and running a shop.
- The Print Crew and Screen Print Collective, where shop owners talk about real decisions.
- Published and interviewed at The Apparelist and ScreenPrinting.com.
Three steps, and you know the number before anything starts
We talk for twenty minutes
You walk us through how a job moves from inquiry to paid. We tell you where we would start, whether or not that involves us.
20 minutesWe show you the build and the price
Scoped after we talk, quoted before anything begins. No open-ended hourly.
In writingWe build the base and hand you the keys
You own it. You pay Airtable directly. No monthly fee to us.
Yours to keepWhat we build for businesses like yours
Which one you need depends entirely on where yours is leaking. Nobody needs all three at once, and starting with everything is how a project stops halfway. Not sure which platform? See how we pick →
Quoting that holds
Your garment costs, screen charges, quantity breaks and contract tiers, applied the same way every time. Anyone at the counter produces the number you would.
How it works →Jobs, art and approvals in one record
One record per order, inquiry to paid. The proof, the approval, the timestamp, the sizes and the in-hands date attached to the job instead of scattered across a phone, an inbox and a folder.
How it works →The part nothing off the shelf covers
Group order and team store pages that collect names, sizes and payment themselves. A wholesale channel. A customer portal for the account that reorders monthly.
How it works →The version where the press is the bottleneck, not you
A quote goes out the same afternoon, priced the same way it would be on any other day, by whoever is at the counter.
The proof has a timestamp and a name against it. The team collected their own sizes. What runs Thursday is visible without asking you, and next season's reorder is a confirmation rather than a project.
Next step
Tell us where the shop is leaking
Twenty minutes. You tell us how work moves through the shop, we tell you where we think it is leaking and what we would fix first. If your setup is already fine, we say so.