Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing is on the cutting edge of garment decoration and easily can become the foundation for successful business with just a single printer. The process is fun, exciting, cool and creative, but a successful business is all about the money. This means you must know how to appropriately charge for your services.

The beginning of a new year is always fun to me. It represents a clean slate, a fresh start, and another opportunity to define goals and develop a plan on how I intend to make them happen. These are all good things because I can be a procrastinator and a pile-maker extraordinaire at times. Here are the top five things that I do to set the stage for creating my best year yet:

Direct-to-substrate technology raises a lot of questions. Joe Abreu of The M&R Companies takes questions from Printwear's publisher Stacy Marshall to clear some of the air.

The final stages in screen making are washout, drying and finishing. Even though these are relatively straightforward processes, there are still a number of key factors that you need to get right in order to produce a good screen.

For those with an entrepreneurial spirit and drive, direct-to-garment (DTG) printing can open up a world of business opportunities. A DTG printer uses digital inkjet technology to print directly onto textile substrates, making it a cutting-edge T-shirt printing machine. Even though this technology is fairly new to the industry, it’s already been welcomed by printers due to the incredible benefits it offers small businesses.
Below are four of the most impressive advantages of this technology.

Bad artwork is an everyday issue for screen printers. There are two kinds of color separation customers: the easy ones who send 300 DPI artwork at the final print size with all the images high-resolution or vector, and the new customers who don’t understand computer graphics and often provide low-resolution, low-quality JPG images obtained online.

As an industry professional, are you tired of dealing with dye migration, trying to find the correct additives or other headaches related to decorating polyester? You may think the solution is as simple as buying a sublimation printer and the required accessories to start production.
While that is a decent starting point, it’s likely you would invest in a small-format printer, which has a width less than 42 inches. Most sublimators use such systems, but that’s just the tip of the figurative iceberg when it comes to this technology.
Literally thinking bigger can lead decorators down the road to wide-format, roll-to-roll sublimation. It’s a process that has its advantages, but also misconceptions that need clarifying. Doing so also will enable exploration of potential markets that this type of sublimation allows decorators to access.

One of the most common issues we have witnessed as a screen-printing supplier in the industry is the process of burning images into screens. Creating a proper image is not a process that you should take lightly for it will greatly define the success and quality of your printing. Poor decisions in this process can lead to various problems including a weak stencil that doesn't hold up during prints, loss of detail in images, the emulsion getting locked up in the screen, spending a lot of on-press time covering pinholes, and many other headaches. Here are some tips that can help!

When faced with a looming catastrophic event, we know your first priority is—as it should be—the safety and well-being of your family.
However, if you are facing such an event—and have time—please take a few minutes to document, prepare, and secure your M&R equipment. Below are instructions for screen printing equipment in general, as well as specific instructions for M-Link printers and i-Image CTS machines.And even if you don't appear to be in harm's way, many of the suggestions below (like taking photos of your facility and equipment and storing them—along with serial numbers and documentation—in a safe, remote location) are steps that should be taken by every prudent person. A few minutes invested now could save you years of heartache later. After all, fires, floods, tornados, and earthquakes often come without warning, so please be prepared for the worst.

Each month, leading manufacturers and DTG print shop owners share their know-how in our new DTG column. This month, Geoff Baxter from M&R's digital division gives the lowdown on pretreatment and the benefits of automated pretreatment application