The DTF Printing CompanyA Magic Touch Promotions brand
The DTF Printing CompanyA Magic Touch Promotions brand
Print your own clothing designs on demand, with no minimums and no dead stock. One flat-price gang sheet holds 30 to 40 designs from about 17p each, so you can launch a range, test what sells, and keep the margin that print-on-demand dropshippers would take.
Selling clothing on Etsy is a numbers game of small batches and lots of designs, and DTF fits that exactly. There is no minimum order and no setup fee, so a brand-new shop can print a single design as cheaply, per unit, as an established one printing forty. Transfers work on cotton, polyester, blends, canvas and more, in any colour of garment, so you are not locked into one blank. And because you can store printed transfers for months and press them only when an order comes in, you never tie up cash in stock that might not sell.
DTF is priced by print area, not by design. A gang sheet is one large sheet of film (ours is 540 x 1000mm) that you fill with as many designs as you can fit, for one flat price of £6.95 including VAT. A typical sheet holds around 30 to 40 left-chest logos, which is roughly 17p per transfer. You cut out each design and press it as you need it.
For an Etsy seller that means you can gang up your bestsellers, print a fresh sheet when you are running low, and only ever pay for print you use. There are no per-colour charges, so a photographic 8-colour design costs the same to print as a one-colour logo. See how to build a gang sheet for the layout details.
The workflow is simple once you have a heat press:
Because you hold the printed transfers and the blanks, you can turn an Etsy order around the same day, which is a genuine advantage over dropshipped print-on-demand.
Print-on-demand dropshippers are the easy route, but they are not the profitable one. Here is the honest comparison:
| Printing your own DTF | Printify / Printful dropship | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per t-shirt | Blank + ~17p transfer (a few £) | £8 to £14 all-in |
| Margin on a £20 sale | High, you keep most of it | Thin, they take the bulk |
| Quality control | You check every item | None, it ships blind |
| Turnaround | Same day if you have stock | Days, plus their dispatch |
| Branding | Your packaging and inserts | Generic |
| Effort | You press and ship | Hands-off |
If you are testing an idea with a handful of sales a week, dropshipping is fine. The moment you are getting regular orders, printing your own DTF and pressing in-house is usually worth it: the margin difference on even 20 sales a month adds up fast.
Anything with a flat pressable surface. The Etsy bestsellers our gang sheets end up on are t-shirts and oversized tees, hoodies and sweatshirts, tote bags, baby and children's clothing, aprons, and sweatshirts for occasions (birthdays, hen parties, matching family sets). Personalised names and numbers work well because you can gang a whole batch of different names onto one sheet.
New to the technology entirely? Start with what DTF printing is, or order a sample pack and press a few onto your own blanks before you commit.
Say you sell a printed t-shirt on Etsy for £18. A blank tee costs you around £3 wholesale, and one left-chest print is about 17p of a £6.95 gang sheet. Your cost per shirt is roughly £3.20 plus a minute of your time and a mailer. After Etsy's fees you are still keeping the large majority of that £18, several times the margin a dropshipper would leave you. Print a sheet of your five bestsellers, and each restock costs £6.95.
This is the single most important thing for a clothing seller to get right. Printing designs you do not own the rights to, Disney and other characters, football clubs, band logos, brand names, is copyright and trademark infringement. Etsy removes the listings and closes repeat offenders, and we will not print protected artwork. Stick to your own original designs, artwork you have properly licensed, or genuinely generic print-on-demand-safe ideas (slogans, occasions, hobbies), and you will never have a problem. It is also simply better business: your own designs are the ones you can build a brand on.
An illustrative example, not a specific customer. A seller launching a small t-shirt shop designs six slogan prints, gangs all six onto one £6.95 sheet, and buys a dozen mixed blanks. They list all six designs on Etsy with no stock committed beyond that. As orders come in they press to order and ship the same day. When a design starts selling, they gang a full sheet of just that one and scale it. Total upfront print cost to launch six products: under £10.
No. We print the DTF transfers and send them to you; you press and ship. That is what keeps the cost at pennies per design and lets you control quality and branding. If you want fully hands-off dropshipping, a print-on-demand service is a different model.
Completely. You press our transfers onto your chosen blanks and add your own neck labels, swing tags and packaging. The customer sees your brand, not ours.
Around 30 to 40 typical left-chest logos on a 540 x 1000mm sheet, or fewer larger full-front prints. You choose the mix.
Our reprint-or-refund guarantee covers print faults: photo within 14 days and we reprint or refund. Application faults (wrong press temperature) are on the presser, which is why the pressing guide matters.
Written by the production team at our Swindon DTF factory. The DTF Printing Company is not affiliated with or endorsed by Etsy, Inc.; Etsy is a trademark of Etsy, Inc., used here only to describe the platform our customers sell on.