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We can practically guarantee that once you get through your first Christmas season as a newbie sublimator, you will spend January thinking about ways to improve and streamline your process.
If that’s you, CONGRATS! on trying to improve your business so that you can enjoy more profits next season.
Today, we’re going to talk about best practices when it comes to pre-printing transfers and why it’s an absolutely fabulous idea! But first, let’s answer the burning question:
How long do Sublimation Transfers Last? We have pressed transfers up to 14 months after being printed and the results were perfect. It’s worth noting that we use high quality sublimation paper and we store our prints in a dry, cool, dark environment.
Frankly, we think as long as you print on quality sublimation paper and store them wisely, there is no reason to think they wouldn’t last even longer. In fact we’ve heard of people buying prints at estate sales that were years old and they pressed just fine.
Now let’s dive into Why we would Print in advance, and then we’ll review the 5 Golden Rules of Pre-Printing Sublimation Prints.
Good Reasons to Pre-Print Sublimation Transfers
Reason 1 – Make More Money – The main reason to pre-print your regular stock, sublimation transfers is to save time during the busy seasons so that you will have more time to make more money.
Since you cannot print customized orders in advance, having your regular hot sellers ready to press will actually give you MORE time to accept customized orders. And we all know those customized orders bring in bigger bucks! Cha-Ching!
Reason 2 – Avoid Ink, Paper & Printer Shortages – The best way to describe sublimation supplies during the holidays is: SCARCE. What’s worse is that prices can jump due to simple supply and demand.
We have paid twice as much for paper and we’ve also been through “no paper to be found” anywhere. Pre-printing will ensure you don’t miss out on these incredible profit generating months altogether.
Reason 3 – Ability to Delegate – We’ve all been there. You’re doing great keeping up with orders and them BAM! Cold, flu, migrain…you name it and now you cannot function. Maybe you turn off new orders, or customized orders, but having pre-printed transfers can save the day when you return to work.
In addition, pressing is EASY to delegate, printing…not so much. Crazy as it may sound, we don’t let anyone near our sublimation printers!
Reason 4 – Avoid Murphy’s Law – We all know Murphy is one cruel dude. Murphy’s law is that sublimation printers stop working during the busiest time of the year. Good luck finding a printer, and ink during the busiest time of the year.
By pre-printing our sublimation transfers, we avoid Murphy’s Law like the plague.
Her’es how we take advantage of slower times so that we make more money during the busy times.
How Far In Advance Do We Print Our Sublimation Transfers?
Here at QuickSPI, we start printing our fast selling Christmas designs as early as October and we print Valentine’s Day right after the Christmas rush is over….after a day or two of recovery of course.
After Valentine’s Day we begin printing Easter designs, Mother’s Day best sellers and our Regular Garden Flag Hot Sellers…in that order.
Having these regular sellers ready to press allows us much more time for custom orders.
What other Sublimation Transfers do We Pre-Print?
We always have a stash of ready to go patterns that are perfect for double sided blanks. For instance we always have rainbow, plaids, glitter and paw print patterns ready to make a blank even better.
Finally, we have our logo pre-printed. We don’t sublimate our logo onto every single product, but we do apply it whenever possible.
We find that the last two weeks of February are a great time to do a lot of printing. It’s one of the slowest times of year and a great time to get ahead.
Now let’s get into the best way to store sublimation print transfers so they will perform just as if they were printed day 1.
How to Store Sublimation Prints – 5 Golden Rules
Saving your prints to use later can be done and we do it all the time. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive. A file organizer or covered box can be good enough.
We have our bigger prints rolled up in mailing tubes and we have smaller prints in an accordion file organizer. These are all very inexpensive.
Here are the 5 Golden Rules:
- Use Quality Paper – We mostly use A-Sub, but as long as it’s sublimation paper you should be good. Simply put: Do NOT expect prints to last if you print them onto regular copy paper.
- Make it Dark – Our 13×19 prints stay inside mailing tubes and we have an accordion file box for smaller prints. Then, we keep these two print holders inside of a closet.
- Keep it Dry – We keep everything off the floor and away from accidents.
- Keep it Covered – Lint is the enemy of sublimation and we do not want lint and dust falling onto our prints. The accordion box has a flap closure and we make sure it is always closed. As for our tube mailers, we keep the end caps securely fastened. No Dust Penetration is KEY!
- Keep the Temperature Normal – Keep these in a normal living space. Attics, basements, garages etc., can be too hot, too damp or too cold.
Can you use sublimation transfers more than once?
Reusing Sublimation Transfers is tempting but should not be done unless you are prepared to both: waste your blank and have inferior, blurry results.
If you’re worried about too much ink left on the paper, consider adjusting your printer settings from high quality to standard quality and see if that helps. If your prints are coming out faded, it may not be the print, but the material itself. We go over materials in this article here: link to article about fading.
Conclusion
Sublimation print transfers can be printed in advance and it’s a good practice to get into once you start selling and building a line of “regulars” that always sell.
We’ve used transfers that were over a year old and the results were exactly as if we had just printed the transfer. Take the time to store them properly as explained above an you should have no problems.
Once your business picks up steam, you’ll notice that your busy times of the year coincide with all of the major holidays with Christmas being the busiest.
Printing early can save you time and earn you more money in the long run.
Happy Sublimating Everyone!