We don't really do custom printing at the shop. We sell to a couple of small print shops, and we point customers there when they need a logo on a hoodie. So when a guy came in in late 2021 asking if I could do 60 hoodies with a custom design printed for a charity motorcycle ride he was running, my first instinct was to send him to the print shop on Forest Ave.
He'd already been there. They'd quoted him $42 a hoodie, all-in. He had $1,800 from the charity. The math didn't work for him.
I didn't want the job. It wasn't my expertise, I didn't have a printer, the margin was thin even before I figured out how to get it printed. But the cause was real — the ride was for a kid in his neighborhood with a serious illness — and the guy was sincere. I told him I'd see what I could do.
I called around. Found a print shop in Bayonne who could do plain fleece hoodies at $14 wholesale and a one-color screen print at $4 per piece. That was $18 per hoodie. I could sell sixty at $28 each, which covered the cost, gave me a small margin, and got him in for $1,680 — under budget by $120.
I made $360 on the job. Probably $5 an hour after I added up the time on the phone, the time picking up the order, and the time bagging and labeling the hoodies. Worst per-hour rate I've ever earned in this business.
Here's what I got out of it that I didn't expect. The guy was so appreciative that he told everyone he knew that I'd done him right when his quote was tight. Over the next three years, four contractors who knew him through the bike club opened accounts at the shop. Two of them are now top-twenty customers by annual revenue. The lifetime value of the relationships I built off that one $360 job is in the high five figures.
I'm not telling this story as a 'do free favors and get rewarded' moral. That's not always how it works. I've done other favors that didn't lead anywhere. But sometimes the right thing to do is the thing that doesn't make sense on the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet catches up later. Sometimes it doesn't. You can't predict which.
What I'd tell another shop owner: be honest with yourself about whether you want the job. If you really don't want it, send it elsewhere with a clean handoff and a real reason — that's also good service. But sometimes the job you don't want is the one with the long-term return that the spreadsheet can't see yet. Those are the ones to take, even at $5 an hour.
We still don't do custom printing as a service. We refer it out. But once a year or so, somebody comes in with a story like that guy's, and I help them get to a yes. The shop is the shop. The relationships are the actual asset.