Printer Fundraiser for Flex Comics
Help us keep our prices fixed
For those of you who aren't familiar with our brand: We are a geeky fit-focused webcomic and parody apparel brand. Our goal for the last 8 years has been to make you smile. We work from our home in Arizona, USA. We design, create, and print everything ourselves.
You know we work hard to continually bring you high quality graphics printed on apparel that has proven to be sourced and produced ethically over the last eight years. This week we have received several 30 day price increase notices from our manufactures: Next Level, Bella/Canvas, Gildan. Costs continue to increase on many levels as the global supply chain and labor market adjusts to keep things moving. In addition to the price increases we have been dealing with supply chain issues all year and our manufacturer partners do not anticipate any meaningful improvement until at least mid-2022.
I'm a firm believer in reducing expenses BEFORE ever increasing prices. I have used this model to grow Flex Comics into the geeky well known brand it is today.
Right now we are outsourcing about 45% of our printing, which is costing a significant amount. We are also unhappy with their quality of output for graphics.
We have two printers in-house right now from OmniPrint International, however it takes us an average of about 10 minutes to produce 1 shirt. The printers haven't been very reliable, in fact they are down right now which is causing order delays. (we are working as diligently as possible to get them back up)
In order to maintain our current pricing we need to get ourselves a better printer. Brother is known for it's outstanding support and quality and we would like to buy one of their new printers. This would speed up our production process and allow us to not have to outsource anymore. This printer, from start to finish, can produce a shirt in about 2 minutes. Meaning we can produce 5 times the amount we are now with the same staffing (just the two of us).
The not so super news is the printer is going to cost $38,800.
So today I reach out to our community to invest in us so that we can continue forward in this storm.
Lift Long and Prosperous,
-The Flex Team
