What are screen printing setup fees?

What the screens actually are

Screen printing reproduces artwork mechanically, one color at a time, and every color needs its own physical stencil. Getting there takes three steps before a single shirt is printed. The artwork is separated into its individual colors and a film positive is output for each one. A mesh screen is coated with light-sensitive emulsion, exposed through that film and washed out, leaving an open stencil of exactly that color. Then the screens are mounted on the press and registered so the colors land precisely on top of each other.

That work takes the same time and the same materials whether the run is 36 shirts or 1,200. Rather than bill it as a fee underneath your quote, we divide it across the run and quote it inside the per-piece print price. Nothing is free and nothing is hidden: the price per shirt simply already contains it, which is how our printed price sheets have always read.

Why the per-shirt price moves the way it does

Because the screens live inside the rate, two things move it. Color count moves it up: each color is another screen, another film and another pass through the press. Quantity moves it down: the same prep divided over more shirts is less per shirt, which is why the number falls steeply in the first few tiers and then flattens out. Runs of 24 pieces or fewer carry film and a press setup per location as well, included the same way, which is the other reason a slightly larger run costs much less per shirt than the piece count suggests.

Reorders are the clearest proof of it. We keep your artwork and stitch files on file, so reorders are quick, and a screen-print reorder of the same design carries no setup. Tell us it is a reorder when you ask for the quote and the prep comes out of the rate altogether.

First run against a reorder

The table below is the engine's own per-piece price for a 1-color front print at five common quantities, first with the screen prep included and then as a reorder, which carries no prep. The gap between the two columns is the prep, spread across the run. It is decoration only; the blank garment is priced separately from the live wholesale catalogs at wholesale times 1.75.

Colors drive the price, shirts spread it

If you are trying to bring a quote down, the two levers are the color count and the number of print locations, not the piece count. Removing an ink color removes a screen, a film and a pass through the press, so it comes off the per-shirt rate twice over. Dropping a back print removes an entire press setup and roughly halves the decoration cost of the job.

A well-drawn 1-color design almost always looks better than a 4-color design drawn to justify the colors. If the artwork genuinely needs the colors, that is what halftones and simulated process are for, and we will tell you honestly which side of that line your file sits on.