Build Your Print Shop. Manage Everything Else.

Print Shop Manager is a business management simulation where you take control of a custom apparel and promotional products company.

Start with a small facility, limited equipment, a modest budget, and a handful of employees. Review customer requests, prepare profitable quotes, negotiate prices and payment terms, plan production, manage your team, and protect your company’s cash flow.

Every contract creates new opportunities—and new risks.

Designed by a Real Print Shop Owner
Print Shop Manager was created by a real print shop owner and built from firsthand industry experience. Every challenge in the game is based on the realities of running a print shop—from price negotiations, tight margins, and production bottlenecks to machine breakdowns, staffing issues, late payments, and the constant pressure of cash flow.

The decisions are yours, but the challenges are real.

Negotiate Every Contract

Customers contact your business with different products, quantities, deadlines, budgets, and expectations.

Set your selling price while balancing:

• Your chance of winning the contract

• Production and material costs

• Gross profit and profit margin

• Payment terms

• Available production capacity

• The risk of delays, errors, and customer complaints

Some customers may negotiate your price or request 30-day payment terms. You decide whether the contract is worth accepting.

Manage Multiple Production Departments

Organize production across several processes, including:

• Textile printing

• Embroidery

• Custom patches

• Direct-to-garment printing

• Outsourced promotional products

Assign employee hours to each department, prioritize urgent or valuable orders, and choose your weekly production strategy.

Produce faster to increase output, maintain a balanced workflow, or slow things down to deliver premium quality. Each approach attracts different customers and affects quality, speed, reputation, and employee stress.

Build and Manage Your Team

Recruit employees with different skills, experience levels, salaries, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Track performance indicators such as:

• Leads generated

• Closing rate

• Gross profit generated

• Production output

• Attendance

• Quality

• Salary satisfaction

• Training and career progression

Promote employees, develop specialists, respond to salary expectations, and build a management team capable of automating parts of your growing company.

Create a Productive Workplace

Your facility is more than a background—it is part of the simulation.

Purchase and position machines, desks, offices, storage areas, packing stations, and employee amenities. Poor layouts can create congestion, unnecessary travel, excessive noise, and lost production time.

As your company grows, move into larger facilities and design a workspace that supports your strategy.

Manage the Human Side of Growth

Employees react to the way you run the business.

Morale, stress, trust in management, collaboration, workload, and fairness all influence your team. Excessive overtime, rejected raise requests, poor management decisions, or consistently favouring one employee can create tension and increase turnover.

A profitable company also creates higher expectations. Your best employees may eventually request raises, bonuses, promotions, or improved working conditions.

Control Your Finances

Profit does not always mean cash in the bank.

Manage:

• Weekly payroll

• Rent and operating expenses

• Product and outsourcing costs

• Equipment purchases

• Marketing campaigns

• Loans and interest

• Accounts receivable

• Late or unpaid customer invoices

Review detailed income statements by week, month, and year. Compare annual performance and learn how seasonal demand affects your company.

Grow at Your Own Risk

Major investments are available from the beginning. If you can finance them and find enough space, you can expand immediately—but growing too quickly can put the entire company at risk.

Purchase equipment from reliable local suppliers or import less expensive machines with longer and less predictable delivery times. Launch new departments, invest in automation, move into larger facilities, and pursue recurring B2B contracts.

Face an Unpredictable Market

Unexpected events can disrupt even the best plan:

• Employee absences and resignations

• Machine breakdowns

• Supplier delays

• Production mistakes

• Late customer payments

• Negative reviews

• Sudden business opportunities

• Seasonal changes in demand

Adapt your strategy without losing control of your production schedule or cash flow.

Choose How You Want to Play

Begin in Sandbox mode with customizable starting cash and reputation, or take control of an existing company facing unique challenges.

Rescue an aging business, restructure an overextended company, preserve a family shop’s reputation, or rebuild after a disaster. Each scenario offers a different team, facility, financial situation, and operational problem to solve.

There is no single path to success. Build a high-volume operation, specialize in premium quality, develop a reliable B2B production partner, or create a balanced company built to last.