Heat Transfer Dye Sublimation: The Next Profit Opportunity for Commercial and Display Graphics Printers

I’ll be honest, I started the research for this article looking at the following question: How does a sign or commercial printer get into textiles, from a strategy perspective?

I thought I would interview two or three smart people, get their insight and be able to communicate some valuable information to you, dear reader. But those smart people quickly set me straight.

The question isn’t how to get into textiles, which is a growth business, especially if you are looking at digitally printed textiles. Rather, the question is broader: How can your business benefit from offering heat transfer dye sublimation services, including textile-based products?

What is Dye Sublimation?

Let’s start with a definition of dye sublimation, a technology that has been around for decades. It sounds complicated and technical, like something reminiscent of chemistry class, but it’s really a very simple process, especially with the inks (dyes), heat presses and other materials that have come to market in recent years.

Let’s start first with the word “sublimation.” According to Wikipedia, “Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase, without passing through the intermediate liquid phase.” An example of this would be dry ice – the solid carbon dioxide “sublimates” and becomes a gas at room temperature. A dye sublimation printer uses heat to transfer dye onto materials.

But more pertinently to the following discussion is the heat transfer dye sublimation process, whereby an image is printed into special transfer paper and subsequently transferred onto an object through the application of heat and pressure. See, that’s not so complicated, after all!

Why Should I Care?

One word. Profit. In a commercial printing industry (and even a sign industry) that is becoming increasingly commoditized, adding heat transfer sublimation services to the mix can boost your bottom line. And it can be a surprisingly small investment.

David Gross, president of Condé Systems, has been involved with sublimation printing for 27 years.

“From a commercial printer’s perspective, the investment to get into heat transfer dye sublimation can be as little as $3,500 – or even less," he said. "And you can get started with drinkware, producing fabulous looking, modern and exciting drinkware with very little effort and great margins.”

Vik Patel, director of marketing at Sawgrass, did the math for us. You can affordably get started with heat transfer sublimation. For $550, you can acquire a printer and an initial supply of ink, add a small flat heat press for $1,000, a small convection oven from Walmart for $80, purchase heat transfer paper and some SubliShrink shrink wrap film sleeves, blanks to sublimate on, and you are ready to go. 

Sawgrass Virtuoso SG400 HD Product Decorating System with Heat Press: An Affordable Entry to Dye Sublimation

Patel wanted to determine how much he could do with that initial investment.

“I was able to produce almost 600 coffee mugs with that initial ink supply,” he said. “Let’s say you purchase blank mugs for $2 each, use about 35 cents worth of ink on each for a base cost of $2.30, and you sell those mugs for $10 to $15 each. It’s a very nice margin. For that initial investment, you can walk away with over $4,000 in profit even considering the cost of labor.”

Not a bad investment … but, of course, you have to have the right mindset when it comes to sales.

Patrick Clark formerly owned and operated Atlanta-based on-demand manufacturer Nextwave, an 18-month experimental microfactory, but is now heading the newly established Klieverik USA organization.

“Don’t be afraid to look outside the traditional markets of printing and signage, including décor," he said. "Much of this is currently being produced offshore, but there are many logistical, cost and design advantages in domestic on-demand production of a variety of home décor and other items using heat transfer sublimation. The key is to focus on an investment that offers you a combination of the best cost per square foot and scalability.” 

Gross points out that even companies already in the promotional items market will walk away from smaller deals, since traditional manufacturing processes – for example, mugs adorned with customized content – require a minimum order quantity of 100 or 144. With the configuration suggested by Patel, creating even one custom mug can be profitable – and fast turn – using heat transfer dye sublimation. 

“So many small and medium-sized printers – and even large printers – are already in the promotional space,"  AccuLink’s Tom O’Brien said. "Heat transfer dye sublimation is just another way to deliver promotional items, but imagine instead of ordering 144 mugs from someone in China that take three weeks to get to you, you can go to the local insurance office, ask them if they would like to be able to provide a personalized mug to customers when they acquire a new policy, and be able to deliver your first order the next day. For them, this offers a way for their name to stay in front of customers and helps build loyalty. For you, the producer, instead of giving them a $2 mug that won’t go through the dishwasher, can’t be easily personalized and only gives you pennies in profit, you can sell them a $15 personalized mug that is durable and that you can produce in your own shop with high margins.”

“When you give a customer a quote for a car wrap," Patel said, "don’t forget about the opportunity to tag on coasters or coffee mugs that you would typically walk away from because of minimum order quantities. Our users take your turn-aways and turn them into dollars. It costs you nothing to say, ‘I can also make 10 coffee mugs for you,’ and you still make a 50% to 70% margin without adding any significant costs to your current workflow.”

Patel joked that sometimes he feels like the guy on the sponsored TV program who says, “Wait, there’s more!”

“But the truth is,” he said, “for minimal cost and effort, you get a very high return when you are able to offer these add-ons.”

How It Works

Typically, a producer would print the artwork onto heat transfer paper, tape that paper onto the object and use a heat press to sublimate the image onto the object. For example, you could have a flat heat press for T-shirts, or get fancier with more value-added substrates like ChromaLuxe and produce beautiful (and highly profitable) art pieces.

Heat Transfer Dye Sublimation onto ChromaLuxe Makes Gorgeous – and Profitable – Artwork (image compliments of ChromaLuxe.com).

Alternatively, you can affix the heat transfer paper to an object like a mug and place it in a SubliShrink sleeve. Depending on the size of your convection oven, you can sublimate four mugs or more at a time, remove them from the oven, take off the SubliShrink, cool them and they are ready to ship.

“Another advantage of SubliShrink, said Gross, "is the fact that you can decorate nearly all of the surface of the mug. Traditional heat transfer sublimation leaves an undecorated area around the handle. With SubliShrink, you can produce a much higher value mug that doesn’t have that blank space. Take it a step further, and sublimate all or part of the image on a nice blank mug box with a window in it, and now for an additional cost of about $1, you have added $5 to the selling price.”

Add value to custom mugs with custom packaging! (image compliments of Condé.com).

Speaking of blanks, visit Conde.com to get an idea of all of the various items you could produce with heat transfer sublimation, everything from shirts and mugs to socks and steins.

“I look at sublimation as an enabling technology like electricity," Gross said. "If you go back to the days of Edison and Tesla, they couldn’t possibly see all the uses electricity would be put to. We have filed for quite a few patents on futuristic uses of sublimation that are very different from how we do it today, trying to set the groundwork for years of innovation. It’s an extremely exciting future.”

Getting into Sublimation

There are many different ways to take advantage of heat transfer dye sublimation. In some cases, you will be able to sell new products to existing customers; in other cases, it will open new markets. In speaking with AccuLink’s O’Brien and AlphaGraphics Seattle’s Chuck Stempler, both of whom have been successful in this market, albeit in different ways, they suggested a path to entry based on the customer base you think you can address and the skill sets you have. 

O’Brien, originally a commercial printer to the trade, diversified into sublimation mostly on non-textile products. In a few short years, his dye sub business went from zero to more than 50% of his business. Stempler, who was already producing soft signage and who had long-time experience in a family-owned apparel business, chose to focus on producing samples and small runs for apparel, as well as higher end architectural or interior design applications, using heat transfer dye sublimation to decorate bolts of fabric that are later cut and sewn into final products.

“In the early days of our grand format printing,” he said, “one of the most exciting things we could do was to print on a door – for example, printing a dinosaur on a child’s bedroom door. But now we can literally do custom interior work with blinds, pillow cases and other décor items. We have chosen to focus on specialty and mid-sized opportunities where the margin is better.”

Stempler points out, though, that to be successful in this business requires building both a reputation and a vendor structure.

“We have laser cutting,” he said, “but the sewing required for many of these products is not a natural skill set that most commercial print companies would have. We’ve built out a collection of small boutiques that do custom sewing work for these types of products.”

Example of Soft Signage Installation by AlphaGraphics Seattle

Especially if you want to get into more complex textile-based products, including apparel and home décor, both O’Brien and Stempler recommend a phased approach. Both note that for higher end applications and increased throughput, investments are significantly higher.

“For a higher end dye sub printer, such as a 3-meter printer, larger heat press and cut-and-sew equipment, you could easily spend $1 million before you have produced anything," Stempler said. "For that type of investment, of course, you want to have a base of work or a super-firm commitment from a cornerstone customer. Migrating upstream from soft signage to dye sub is a big step, but it is not stepping from zero. If you start with soft signage, you have something to absorb some of the fixed costs while you build your way into the specialty category.”

As a commercial printer, you could begin the journey by adding soft signage or non-textile promotional products (like mugs or coasters), moving into other markets as you gain expertise, not only in the manufacturing process, but in the sales process. If you are already in signs and display graphics, a good route is to add soft signage if you haven’t already done so, and then move either into heat transfer dye sublimation with textile-based and/or non-textile products.

Either way, heat transfer sublimation offers an exciting and profitable business diversification. And you don’t have to have a degree in chemistry to benefit from it!