Originally Posted by pandus13
[kind-of-off-topic]
I'm basing this on my experience on regular printing industry in 2007-2009.
Shops who have VDP personalization, some digital marketing and capabilities and regular projects coming, will survive.
I saw some big shops close doors/liquidate equipment for cents on the $.
Some survived by using the big brokers in the industry, which became bigger. (blah blah cost cutting/optimization, etc = more headache dealing with somebody who didn't understand the project)
also, good people could do work somewhere else for almost 2X the money (VBA, VB.net, ASP.net, javascript, graphic design, Python, Access, SQL) so they lost some to leaving the industry.
When it starts opening, there would be a lot of catch up to do so your (friends/ friend's business/employer) should secure better rates UPS/Fedex/DHL/Amazon/USPS.
Since they have the equipment: phone/tablet cases (not everyone wants 250 coffee mugs), stress balls, squishies for the kiddos, etc.
Also, advertise the t-shirt business to the local trendy community. Hint, some of them are still working and making money...
Good ideas.
I think the friend that owns the business does zero percent of actual printing, sounds like someone else does it. He has people in sales...believe he does a lot of sales, packaging, shipping, etc.
The other one I'm sure has the equipment to print and in-house their own stuff.