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A free, plain-English overview of where the industry is headed — method mix, pricing ranges, and the benchmarks shops actually track.
No gated whitepaper. No email wall. Just numbers you can use.
Market size
Decorated apparel — screen print, DTF, DTG, embroidery, sublimation, heat transfer — is a global industry of tens of thousands of independent shops. Most still run on spreadsheets, whiteboards, and software that hasn't meaningfully shipped a new feature since 2018.
$70B+
Global decorated apparel market
$30B+
North America alone
6-8%
CAGR through 2030
40k+
US print shops & decorators
Figures reflect widely reported trade and analyst estimates for decorated apparel globally and in North America. Your mileage will vary by region, channel mix, and method specialization.
Method mix
Still dominant for mid-to-large runs. Margins protected by setup and equipment investment.
Fastest-growing method. Low setup cost, no minimums, stretchy on blends. Reshaping small-run economics.
Sticky category for corporate, headwear, and polo. High ticket, long lead times.
DTG strong in short-run direct-to-consumer. Sublimation tied to polyester performance and promo.
Shares are rough industry estimates — mix varies heavily by shop size and region. Individual shops: the real numbers for your market show up inside Kompass™.
Pricing ranges
Published rate cards vary wildly. Below is a typical public-facing range for a 72-piece run on a standard cotton tee. Your own numbers depend on garment cost, complexity, lead time, and market.
Screen print — 1 color
$4.50 – $7.50
per piece, 72 pc run
Screen print — 4 color
$7.50 – $12.00
per piece, 72 pc run
DTF transfer + press
$5.00 – $9.00
per piece, small run
Embroidery — 8,000 stitch
$7.00 – $14.00
per piece, left chest
DTG — full-front print
$12.00 – $22.00
per piece, 12 pc run
Sublimation — poly tee
$9.00 – $16.00
per piece, 36 pc run
Heat press — vinyl
$5.00 – $10.00
per piece, name + number
Gang sheet — DTF
$9.00 – $14.00
per 22×24 sheet
These are public-facing reference ranges, not recommendations. If you're pricing below the bottom of this range, you're probably underbilling. The quote calculator handles the math.
Shop benchmarks
3–6 min
4-color job typically 18–25 min on a manual or lower-end auto.
250–450
Varies with garment weight, ink, and press type.
55–75%
Active print time ÷ shift hours. Below 50% usually means setup, art, or scheduling drag.
25–35%
Includes production + art. Above 40% signals a pricing or throughput problem.
45–60%
After blanks, ink, film, and direct labor. Contract work trends lower; retail trends higher.
92%+
Shops that fall below 90% start losing repeat customers quietly.
Want your shop's numbers compared directly against an anonymized industry dataset? That's what KORA Kompass™ does — for free, inside your Kontrol™ dashboard, with strict privacy guarantees.
What's changing
Small-run economics are being rewritten. Shops that don't offer gang-sheet DTF are losing $200–$500 orders to ones that do.
Demand is growing for soft-hand prints. Shops certified to run discharge and water-based charge 20–40% more per piece.
Customer expectations are collapsing. 3-week turnaround is no longer competitive in most retail categories. Production scheduling matters more than ever.
Shops running campaign stores and fundraisers keep a second revenue stream on top of contract work. Retail margins are materially higher.
Decade-old incumbents are losing share to modern cloud-native platforms. The gap isn't features — it's that the old tools actively slow shops down.
Methodology & sources
Market size and CAGR figures reflect widely reported trade-press and analyst estimates for the decorated apparel category. Method-mix percentages and pricing ranges draw on a combination of shop-reported data, public rate cards, and supplier channel data.
Shop benchmark ranges (setup time, utilization, labor %, margin, on-time rate) are drawn from aggregated production data captured by shops using KORA Kalibrate™. Contribution is opt-in, fully anonymized, and no individual shop is ever identified — see Kompass™ for the full privacy model.
This page is updated periodically. If you're a shop owner who wants your real numbers benchmarked against the dataset, join the closed-alpha list for Kontrol™.
Market averages are a starting line. The numbers that matter are the ones from your own floor — captured automatically, compared against the industry, and never shared with anyone but you.
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