Starting Your Home Business: Making Vinyl Stickers

Vinyl stickers and decals are the perfect way to showcase your personality and style. From decorating cars and gadgets to lunchboxes and home appliances, the options of using vinyl stickers are limited only by your imagination.

Methods of Making Vinyl Stickers: Cut Vinyl and Printed Vinyl

Cut vinyl requires a computerized vinyl cutter called a plotter. The computer directs the creation of the shapes or letters of the design on vinyl sheets using a sharp blade after the graphics are loaded onto its system.

The blade can only cut one piece of vinyl at a time, so separate pieces of vinyl sheets have to be installed one by one for multiple colors. This is followed by weeding, i.e. the manual removal of vinyl scraps from the negative spaces of the design after it’s cut. This can be heavily time-consuming depending on how detailed the design is.

Printed vinyl stickers are created using a full-color process by digitally printing a shape onto a sheet of adhesive vinyl coating using laser or inkjet printers. Printed vinyl stickers allow you to recreate complex graphics and colorful images, or new unique designs from scratch with color matching from Pantone, RGB or CMYK references.

Digital printing of vinyl stickers is easily scalable and relatively cheaper due to low resource requirements.

Getting into the Business of Making Vinyl Stickers

If you’re planning to take your fascination with vinyl stickers a step further and actually earn some money by starting your own small business, then it’s sensible to start designing with printable vinyl.

It offers greater varieties of making decals, from replicating pet photos to creating logos, with almost unlimited effects and details, including shades, intricate lining, and watercolor. They can even be waterproofed by adding a vinyl layer on top, unlike regular stickers which normally don’t last very long on wet surfaces.

To achieve the maximum amount of variation in your designs, you can use a vinyl cutter – there are various brands available on the market.

You can also advertise your brand or business by creating car or wall stickers and other crafts. So, to kickstart your other business with a bang, it’s important to know how to choose the right equipment.

Equipment for Making Vinyl Stickers 

The important tools you’ll need to design and produce vinyl stickers include:

• Design software
• A cutting machine
• A color inkjet printer
• Printable vinyl sheets
• A cutting mat
• Clear vinyl laminate

Several brands offer the equipment you need, and thanks to the digital era, you can order them online to be delivered to your doorstep.

Silhouette, Cricut, Brother, Expressions, and Oraguard are some of the popular names to consider when buying your vinyl cutter machine. You must be especially careful when buying a vinyl cutter which will determine the overall quality of your vinyl stickers t.

The Best Vinyl Cutter for Small Businesses

The vinyl cutter is like a digitally controlled pair of scissors that allows you to craft anything from a logo to a full-scale banner.

Besides cutting vinyl sheets, a vinyl cutter can also carve many other materials including foils, cardboard, etc. The knife depth, cutting pressure, speed, and other settings can be adjusted in many vinyl cutter models.

There are several things to consider when choosing the best vinyl cutter for small businesses. These include the precision, output quality, size, connectivity features, and the different materials the cutter can handle.

Various cutters also offer unique functionalities like Bluetooth, portability, etc. So make sure that you’re very thorough so that the vinyl cutter you choose is able to handle the types of projects you’re planning. 

Steps for Setting up Your Own Vinyl Sticker Home Business

If you love crafts and think that making vinyl stickers will be a dream come true for you, then all you need to do is to acquire the necessary equipment and jump right into business.

Here’s what you need to do to set up your own home business:

1.   Use Visible Branding

There are millions of vinyl sticker sellers all over the world, but this shouldn’t make you feel threatened. As the vinyl stickers aren’t very durable, customers usually have to buy them again regularly and they don’t always go to the same seller.

But in order to attract customers, you’ll need to let them know about your brand. Give yourself a brand identity starting with a nice name, open social media profiles, and if possible, starting a blog or responding to publications or queries in forums like Medium, Quora, etc. where you subtly promote your brand and provide valuable information.

2.   Engage Prospects

Ask your nearest and dearest to try your products, distribute your stickers in the forms of gifts and giveaways, and build up a social media following.

Ask them for their feedback on your products with an open mind and make any necessary adjustments. Soon, you’ll be able to gather some decent traction.

3.   Sell Locally and Expand at the Right Time

If you hear of a local school’s football tournament, offer to make the labels, logos, etc. for various merchandise under your brand identity at a discounted price – or even for free if it’s feasible.

Actively seek opportunities to increase your portfolio and client base. Participate in craft shows, local fairs, and other opportunities to flaunt what you’ve got. How successful these ventures are will indicate when it’s time to reach out to a bigger audience. When you’re actually making a decent profit, you can open an online shop and become a fully-fledged business manufacturing your own vinyl stickers.  

Final Thoughts

To conclude, make sure you have the right resources, in particular, the correct vinyl cutter, based on the projects you plan to take on before you establish your identity and credibility.

The best thing about making vinyl decals or stickers is that it’s the perfect way to indulge your love for crafts and creativity and make money while you’re doing it. So, if you feel this is the right thing for you, then just go ahead and do it!