buyers remorse kicking in...

[Joohlyauk]

Wow, now that was inspirational Ross. I sold all of my gold to pay for some of my gear and I'm determined that it will be worth it. Good idea about taking pics of countryside etc as I live in it. I'm going to get onto that tomorrow, plus I have mates with horses so that's a good one too! Well done.. deffo feeling on the up now, Julia :biggrin:

[rossdv8]

Thanks Joohlyauk,

Something I didn't mention in my post was not to sell product at give away prices. My joking reference to $200 beer money (whatever that is in UK quids) is in reality your return for the time to design, print and press a carton of mugs and wholesale them. And wholesale barely makes it worth while. Far better to retail and pick up another $200-$250 a carton. Yoou really have to remember even if it is a hobby, it takes up time, a valuable commodity. Think how long it takes to design a pring, take photos when you are out and about, enhance the photos with GIMP so they look perfect, print and press. For heaven's sake don't bring it back to an hourly rate though hahaha.

Another thing with direct selling. It is a numbers game. Keep asking. A lot of people will say no. Eventually one will say yes. Take a few of your product everywhere you go where there are people. Don;t be afraid to offer your product to friends and family - you might be surprised how many people you know, and again - it is a numbers game.

[NikGrey]

I am new to this and something I have always said since starting is "I Will Not sell anything below a certain price as if I have something cheap everyone may feel that everything else I sell will just be me making a huge profit" (Can hardly type I am so cold in here).

So I am selling Mugs above the average price, as I intend to make more from other things (as I have had more interest in mugs than anything else, that alone will bring them to me -), easy to make Mugs Once you have the templates - that's another story though..

I cashed in my shares, my Premium Bonds and the last pay check from my previous job to start this - I am now close to my overdraft limit (So working in my workshop in practical things to get some cash in desperately for car tax and food, heating, electricity - beer). I realise some of you know I have other cash flows but I am saying right now that I have pushed things as far as I can now with this so will make it work.

Tony (Buyers Remorse) you MUST have your Ricoh by now?

[soulclaimed]

my ricoh came on friday not had the chance to set it up yet but got a mug to print for a friend at work by monday so hopefully will have it running tomorrow looking forward to getting it going, its a good quality looking bit of kit i must say

[rossdv8]

For other people like us who spent money on the equipment and have taken a gamble, there's a sneaky trick to make you feel better. Again, the math is for no other reason than to make you feel better about it.
Say the press, ink, paper mugs and printer cost $3500.00.

Say you are managing to sell a mug for $15.00 And we already know there will be wasted mugs and stuff. You can make about 100 practice prints (paper wrapped aroud a mug, then 100% poly bed sheet wrapped around that) for about the cost of 3 blank mugs, without wasting mugs - if you have been pressing mugs to see layouts. Obviously this method doesn't help with colour problems due to mug heating times because you only press the poly sheet for 40 seconds.
Of course, you will still waste a few mugs and also there's the cost of ink and paper, but once you realise how little ink you use in dye sub compared with pigment, even sawgrass dye sub ink is amazingly cheap.

So grab a note book, write the total outlay for equipment at the top of a page, and every time you sell an item, subtract it.
$3500 less $15 leaves $3485, and you might wonder why you ever bothered.

Sell 10 more mugs and $3500 less $15, less $150 leaves $3335, and now we're getting somewhere. Once you pass the first $500 you suddenly realise you own the mugs and maybe some of the ink. Once you pass the $1000 mark you realise you ARE going to make money from this.

I'll have to stop dumping these random thoughts in the forum, but I like seeing people remember why it 'seemed like a good idea at the time'.

It IS a numbers game, you DO need to keep your eyes open for new opportunities, and absolutely nothing happens unless you 'show and tell'. By all means have a web site and hope customers flock to it. But also have some fun. Take a product everywhere, make sure everybody in your area knows what you are doing and has an idea of the price. Don't spend money on presents. My Christmas gifts and birthday gifts, thank you gifts and even wedding presents these days - are all things I have made.

[NikGrey]

I think I speak for all when I say that your 'Random Thoughts' are helpful - they certainly make me think.

in fact I have the missus working out all of the 'Set Up' costs as we speak - going to put this idea into action.

[soulclaimed]

well tried out the ricoh on my first mug since scrapping the epson over the weekend and it came out great first time had to check printer settings though as power driver has a mirror tickbox and so does the main print screen so they were cancellin g out at print lol

[rossdv8]

Isn't it a great feeling when it all comes together? Not wasting blanks means less wondering about the real cost of each mug

[NikGrey]

I got my cheap press back today, I had to send it back as it was 100f less than the display said.. (it's now 2 weeks later) so have been catching up on orders (fortunately I am not open yet so only had about 20 to make).

Anyway, I decided NOT to fanny about and used the 180c for 180secs (360f) as suggested here - FANTASTIC, the very first One came out perfect as did the others

If I hadn't been a member here and listened to advice I would have wasted many Mugs trying to set this up.

Only thing I have to get my head around now is the Silhouette Designer software, It's not the most user friendly software I have ever used

[rossdv8]

As a beginner (my first year will be ending soon) I've got so much help from this forum. And one thing I learned from the forum is the manuals are only a rough guide. I have two mug presses. an expensive 'old' one that ruins more mugs than it presses, probably because I have not got the patience to learn about it. It was the first press I got and I almost gave up.
Then I got one of those cheapo chinese presses like the ebay ones. It was not much better until I read some stuff on here.

I changed my paper and got high release texprint (I think that's the name). With our humidity, that paper sticks to the mug, but the solution is to dunk it immediately and peel wet.

And after a lot of fun and games I discovered using too short a 'dwell temp' allows the imprint from the heating element to show on the mug. It seems when the new mug cools the element, the time taken to bring the whole thing back up to temp is important. And the manual's times and temps were so far out.
Eventually, instead of
230F dwell, 325F press, and 40 seconds at light pressure,
I discovered my press works best at
300F dwell, 360F press, and 120 seconds at what I call medium pressure.

And even though the output result is consistent, I am still tweaking the press settings.