The short answer
- A second location is another setup and another pass, not a percentage
- In screen printing it means screens, makeready and a second run through the press
- In digital it is a second press cycle and, for DTF, more film area
- In embroidery it is a second hooping — the most labour-heavy of the three
- Price it as its own line so a customer can see what dropping it saves
Customers ask for a front and a back, or a chest and a sleeve, as though it were a small addition. On a quote it frequently looks like one — many shops add a modest percentage and move on.
It is not a small addition. A second location repeats most of the work of the first, and pricing it as an uplift is one of the more reliable ways a shop loses margin without noticing.
What a location actually costs
| Repeated per location | Not repeated |
|---|---|
| Screens, per colour | Winning the order |
| Press setup and registration | The garment |
| A full pass of every garment | Artwork preparation, mostly |
| Ink and spoilage on that print | Order administration |
| Handling — loading and unloading again | Delivery |
| A pallet change, sometimes | — |
The left column is most of what a print job costs. The garment is not repeated and neither is the paperwork, but essentially all of the production work is — which is why a two-location job takes closer to twice as long as a one-location job than a fraction more.
The garment does not double. Almost everything you do to it does.
What it costs by method
Screen. The heaviest. Each location needs its own screens per colour, its own registration, and a second pass of every garment through the press. On a manual press that is genuinely a second job — often on a different pallet, since a back print and a sleeve print do not share one.
DTG. A second press cycle and a second pretreat if the location needs it. Ink cost rises with coverage, so a full back costs meaningfully more than a left chest — and on dark garments the underbase drives that.
DTF. More film area, priced per square inch, plus a second press cycle. Predictable and easy to cost, because the area is measurable.
Embroidery. The most labour-heavy. A second location means re-hooping every garment, which is per piece rather than per job — so unlike screen printing, the cost does not spread across quantity at all.
| Method | Second location adds | Scales with quantity? |
|---|---|---|
| Screen | Screens, setup, second pass | Setup does not; the pass does |
| DTG | Press cycle, ink, maybe pretreat | Fully per piece |
| DTF | Film area, press cycle | Fully per piece |
| Embroidery | Re-hooping per garment | Fully per piece, and heavy |
| Vinyl | Cut, weed and press again | Fully per piece |
The common mistake
Charging a flat percentage. "Add 40% for a second location" is wrong at both ends of the quantity range and only approximately right in the middle.
On a small screen order, the second location's setup is a large fixed cost spread across few pieces, so a percentage undercharges badly. On a large order the setup has spread thin and the percentage overcharges, which loses you work you should win.
| Quantity | Percentage uplift | Reality |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | Undercharges heavily | Second setup barely covered |
| 48 | Roughly right | Coincidence |
| 240 | Overcharges | Setup already spread thin |
The fix is the same as everywhere else in job costing: separate the per-job costs from the per-piece ones and let the arithmetic handle the quantity.
Building the line
Treat a location as a small job in its own right and add it to the total.
Per additional location
- Per job: screens per colour, press setup, any pallet change
- Per piece: ink or film, run time, handling, spoilage
- Then the same margin as the rest of the job
That produces a figure that behaves correctly across quantities without any special rules — expensive per piece on twelve, cheap per piece on two hundred, which is exactly what is true.
For embroidery, put the re-hooping in the per-piece column and nothing in the per-job one. That single change stops second-location embroidery being systematically underpriced, which it usually is when shops apply print logic to it.
Presenting it
As its own line on the quote, always. A customer who can see the second location costed separately can make an informed decision about whether they want it.
What that looks like
- "Front print, 48 pieces — $X"
- "Back print, 48 pieces — $Y"
- "Total — $Z"
- And a line: "Front only would be $X."
That last line does real work. A customer whose budget is tight will frequently drop the second location happily once they can see what it saves — and you have kept the order rather than losing it to a total they could not adjust.
It also removes the negotiation about your price generally. An itemised quote invites a conversation about scope, which is a conversation you can win, rather than about whether you are expensive, which is one nobody wins. That is the same reasoning behind itemising every quote.
Where it changes the method
Sometimes the second location changes which process makes sense.
A one-colour front and a one-colour back in screen printing is two setups. The same job in DTF is two transfers and two press cycles, with no setup at all — so the crossover quantity moves up considerably once a second location is involved.
Similarly, a chest logo plus individual names is a mixed job: embroidery for the logo, vinyl or transfers for the names. Pricing that as one line hides the fact that it is two production jobs sharing a delivery date, and it usually undercharges the smaller half.
Work the second location through both methods when the quantity is near your crossover. It takes a few minutes and it changes the answer more often than expected — which is why knowing where your own methods cross over matters. The rest of the pricing archive assumes each location is costed rather than uplifted.
