If you're a garment screen printer you have everything you need other than the special ink for to print on materials other than textile. Simply ask your ink supplier what to use. If you have DTG, there are pre-coatings you can buy and easily apply that allow inkjet ink to adhere to wood, metal, plastic, and more. You can even print golf balls with DTG. The truth is, EVERYONE knows the value of a T-Shirt. There's no accepted unit price for short-run specilty items.

Where are customers for non-textiles? They are not as obvious as t-shirt customers. They are often manufacturing companies who make products that need direction plates, control panels, decals, warnings stickers and more. You might be thinking 'why they don't do this digitally?' You're right, and some do. But screen printing is much more durable, and for simple one or two-color images, screen is much cheaper than digital. Finding these customers is your challenge: you need to get back to traditional selling, tracking down leads and making calls.

There's also a large market for printing non-t-shirt items. Most screen printers print on a wide variety of garments including baby bibs, uniforms, aprons, caps, etc, but, most direct-to-garment digital printers do not, perhaps because the machine manufacturers don't promote this. There's no difference between printing a bandana or underwear and printing a t-shirt, and remember – the value of a t-shirt is pretty well known; the value of other specialty cloth items is not.

Don't get stuck with a single process mentality either. Printers often get caught up in the craft rather than what's best for the business. But screen printers are finally realizing that there is a huge niche doing 1 to 10 t-shirts (or other items) that they can't easily do with screen printing.

Conversely, direct-to-garment printers are realizing that adding screen can help them to compete on larger orders as well as the short runs that are suited to digital. For a few thousand euros you can get a small manual printer, exposure unit and maybe a dryer and you're now a garment screen printer.

Open your mind, take charge of finding niche markets and offer everything from one to thousands of products – and not just t-shirts. It might actually get you excited about the business again.