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Getting Boxes of T-shirts printed up?

3 points by e1ven ↗ HN
Getting boxes of T-shirts printed up?

We're going to be presenting at an industry trade show this August, and we're looking to have some apparel made up for giving away to attendees.

For the show, we're interested in finding the cheapest reliable vendor possible, so we can crank out the shirts, and give as many away as possible. Hopefully we can give away a few hundred one-color logo shirts as freebies.

After the show, we'd like to sell shirts from the website, but these will probably be through a vendor who can print up nice multi-color shirts, as well as handling the inventorying for us and POD.

If you have any experience with getting shirts printed up, either van loads of cheap ones or expensive nice ones for sale, I'd love to hear it.

17 comments

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michael_dorfman
Back in a previous life, I used to work at a silkscreen T-shirt factory. There was a decent one-time set-up charge, to cut the screens-- but once this was done, the per-shirt charge was pretty reasonable (pricing depended on the quality of the shirt and the number of colors), and the screens were kept on file in case there were repeat orders.

Any vendor should be able to send you samples, so you can check out the quality of the printing.

I'd suggest you try to find someone reasonably local, so you can pick up the shirts yourself and avoid the shipping costs, and can check out the quality in person. Plus, many shops have designers in-house, who can help you if you don't already have a finished shirt design.

e1ven
Thanks! Very good point. I hadn't been accounting for how bad the shipping might be.

We're boston-based, so QRST might be a decent option. Do you have any other direct experience?

michael_dorfman
Well, the place I worked for (about 25 years ago!) is still going-- Original Design Company (http://www.originaldesigncompany.com/) in North Woodstock, NH-- just a trip up 93 from Boston. I have no idea how their prices are these days, but they are good people, and do great work. (Or, at least they did a quarter century ago...)
fourlittlebees
Check out who Tangosol used to use. I'd bet they sourced locally.
dkokelley
My Uncle has a promotional products business (anything that could be printed on, really). The website is a little antiquated but the quality is great.

http://allamericanmarketing.com/

They also have a special inkjet printer to do images and other things that couldn't be done with traditional silk screens.

The great thing is that they'll also do pens, mouse pads (does anyone even use those anymore?), hats, etc, so you can do more than just shirts all from only one supplier.

They're located in Valencia, CA so I don't know if it's too far for what you want.

tandaraho
my co-founder also founded a t-shirt design/print company. He can do the sourcing, design, and printing for your apparel, and you'd be helping a fellow YCHN member:-). He is based out of Portland, ME, so pretty local to Boston. He recently did a couple of projects for Dana-Farber for the Boston Marathon. Send me an email if you'd like to talk to him about your project. Thanks!
mattmaroon
Stay away from anything that uses a printer, like Cafepress or Zazzle. The quality is horrendous.
SwellJoe
And the cost is very high.
asnyder
Do you know any alternatives to these services? I've used cafepress in the past, to print 6 color shirts and they came out pretty good. They were pricier than I would've liked, but I wasn't purchasing a quantity where I could find cheaper alternatives.
SwellJoe
As far as I know, the cost is determined by the process and the quantity. Screen-printed shirts start out expensive, because you have to make one screen for every color (at $60-$180 per screen, I seem to recall, though it's been a year or more since I last got shirts), but get cheaper as the quantities increase because the screen is good for hundreds or thousands of shirts and it's really fast to do. The lifetime of screen printed shirts is much longer than the inkjet style printed shirts, I believe, as well. But, realistically, I'm not sure how precise screens can get--really intricate designs are out of reach of that process, I guess (I dunno, all my shirts are two color).

I believe there is a new multi-color process (a few years old, which is bleeding edge in the print industry) that apparently does high color prints at high speed, but I don't know how many providers actually have such a machine, or if the costs are competitive with screen printing.

I'd be curious who prints the shirts for the Mozilla Foundation. I love my Firefox shirt. It looks great, has at least four or five colors, and has held up well.

mattmaroon
Yeah, you're actually better served by Cafepress (at least in terms of price) in small quantities. I think a lot of the reason ours were so bad was we used a lot of half tones and the ink didn't take well.

It did fade rapidly too. Luckily we only got a handful of them.

SwellJoe
I'm also getting new shirts printed up so I'm looking for a printer here in the bay area. Anybody have a favorite, preferably in the south bay (I'm in Mountain View)?

A good one in Austin is Vreeland Graphics...not super cheap, but reliable and great quality prints.

maximilian
Just remember to make your design at 300dpi or higher (in photoshop). I imagine vector art is better, but when I went we just had to make sure to be at 300dpi. I was making shirts for a bike race. We broke even on the shirts.
zandorg
For the record, Microsoft's T-shirts are printed on Fruit of the Loom shirts (very good quality).

Mine says "Microsoft Genius" and was a prize from the 2003 Imagine Cup.

Maybe this is a sweatshop problem? Still, it's a nice T-shirt and I like wearing it when I have an appointment with the bank manager.

silencio
On a sidenote, have you considered giving away some other items? I only mention this because I have about ten million tshirts and pens from conferences and trade shows that I don't really want that are taking up precious room in my closet.

What I love are bags, although they're probably more expensive and are also overdone. Lately I've seen a resurgence in reusable general purpose (not messenger/laptop type) bags. With Whole Foods not having their awesome plastic bags anymore (that I like reusing, mind you), I always use the bags to carry around random things and groceries. I only wish they'd be handed out more often.

e1ven
Normally we would, but the convention in question is GenCon, the largest gaming convention in the United States.

I know that a lot of people are tired of shirts (I know that I have several from companies that ceased to be), but at Gaming convention goers in particular people are more likely to than average to wear T-shirts rather than white dress shirts.

It also means they need to pack less clothing for the trip.

Also, note the success of sites such as StartupSchwag.. People are willing to Pay for random branded T's.