About a year ago, I was convinced by my wife to help her start a business making printed coffee mugs. This is a report about our experience as we started our little business: MugShotz.
First, we researched the methods involved in printing coffee mugs. We found the best quality photo transfer system utilizes dye sublimation printing. The best printers available for this process have “micro-piezo” printheads, which spray the ink precisely. Several Epson printers are commonly used for dye sub, the C120, 1400 and the 4880 are the most current models. The best dye sub ink is made by Sawgrass Systems (http://sawgrassink.com) and their website told us they had inks for a new printer called the Ricoh GX7000 and a smaller one, the GX505n. These models use four inks and do not require any special ink supply system, so we set out to find the best pricing.
Much clicking later and this is the result: Conde Systems – $780 for the GX5050n printer, ink and sublimation transfer paper plus a package of free stuff, including a case of funnel mugs and that cinched the deal. We have been going back to http://www.conde.com ever since. We do speak on the telephone with our account rep, Jessica Domagala, but most of our ordering is online and through emails. With Conde, tech support is a phone call away and their advice has been excellent. They have continuous specials on ink and our rep calls us to let us know when something looks relevant to our business focus.
Conde’s website is pretty extensive, plus they have a private client only area called PartnerNet. All you have to do is place one order and the account rep assigned will sign you up with a login and a password. By the way, Conde does financing through BillMeLater, a great way to get short term financing. Anyways, PartnerNet is a treasure trove of information about products, sales strategies, art templates and articles. They even offer a customizable catalog of all their products so you can put in your own logo and prices. We just use the pages that have mugs on them and use the art for our signs and flyers.
From conde.com, you click on “Sublimation” and that will take you to the product area. There are complete sublimation systems, inks for every printer available and heat transfer paper as well. There are over 5000 products, from aluminum sheets stock to Vapor tee shirts. In between are mugs, tiles, wood boxes, frames, pewter, porcelain and baby blankets.
We do our mugs with dye wraps, rubber covers that screw down tight. We print the transfer on our GX5050, cut it out, wrap it around the mug, then wrap the paper tight with the dye wrap, then stick it in an oven at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Then we dip the hot mug in warm water (cold might crack it) and when it cools, we unwrap and admire our newly decorated creation. We use funny artwork, pretty photos and add text where needed. (Be careful not to use anything copyrighted).
Conde offers several dye wraps and we have all of them, one for shotglasses, a big one for dog bowls, a curved one for funnel shaped mugs and one each for 11 ounce and 15 ounce mugs. Plus we have two for beer steins. They last quite awhile but do eventually get loose and need to be replaced. We try to treat them carefully and clean them and lay them flat, never draped or hanging on a nail.
We use several kinds of software while creating our mug pictures. I love PhotoShop Elements to tweak photos and I like to use Coreldraw to add text, but my wife works completely in Corel. Sizing the photos for transfers is the crucial element and Conde offers templates that are pretty easy to use with Corel. We also bought some tattoo art disks from Conde, and we pick up clipart from the web whenever we can find it.
We usually sell our mugs at a great flea market they have where we live in San Jose. We also have a little route we take samples around, going to souvenir shops, boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops. If we spot a promising venue, we take a photo of their storefront, sign or logo and make a sample mug. This is given as a free gift to our prospective client. Of course our phone number is discreetly inserted on the image as well, so even if they don’t order right away they very often call us later.
Schools and churches can also be counted on to order mugs for fundraisers and we keep flyers and signs up on bulletin boards everywhere in San Jose, so we get calls for reunions and special parties all the time. This is a great business and I recommend it for you. Good luck with all your endeavors.
