T-Shirts
 

Where are you purchasing T-shirts and buttons?

Re: T-Shirts
 

Buttons are mostly bought from Badge-A-Minit. You can go to their website here.

Our t-shirts are coming from Xtreme Graphics. They're an awesome t-shirt place that have helped us out countless times over the years. Come through when we've needed 'em most.

Re: T-Shirts
 

For the t-shirts try a local printer or shop that does sports jerseys, MOE's shirts are soccer jerseys. or even an air brush shop could make some nice custom shirts

Re: T-Shirts
 

This question is totally dependent on the resources of your team. While many teams can afford a few competition shirts, others can't, and it is up to you as a mentor to decide on reasonable costs. Here are a few considerations:

Regular Tshirts
These are the most common and least expensive team items. They can cost anywhere between $6-$12 per person, but are easy to get done and reliable. You can try shirt shops in your area, or you can simply go online and search for "custom t-shirt". You probably want custom because you'd be adding a logo. Search for a good deal based on number purchased, the color you need, and the sizes you need. Out of respect for the smaller people on your team, definitly have smalls available (I'm short...I love smalls...).

Polos and/or Jerseys
If you want a bit more style and variety, you can go for polos or jerseys. These are usually bought online as well, or at a local sports or custom store. You may want to shop around for your options a bit, and look for the best deal. We bought the jerseys at a local store (I think), but the polos came online. The store we purchase from is giving us discount for using the same polo design this year, which is a great value to the team budget. Finding deals like that is great.

Buttons
There are two ways to get buttons: you make them, or you custom order them. The custom ones are easy enough: Dori had a really really good link, and you simply send a file with your design (there are size limitations) and they send the buttons back to you within a certain period of time. I'd recommend a good quantity per competition, especially at Nationals. If someone on CD knows a good number per comp, I'd ask that they post in response, because I'm not sure what that would be.

You can also make buttons. Getting buttons can be expensive, and some of us students like to improve our tennis serve by punching buttons. :) Get a button punching machine and materials (kits of these are simple to order online), design a button in adobe or something similar, and have at it! You may need a cutter as well, to make them even-looking and pretty. This is also a plus to have at competitions if you run out of buttons too soon. This is a low-budget option rather than getting buttons custom made.

You may also want to consider a small number of unique handouts that will serve as prizes and will get attention for your team.

Good luck!

- Genia

Re: T-Shirts
 

100% student made... woot!!! We get 400 white shirts, many boxes of powder dye, and soda ash... A few months later we have 400 tie-dyed shirts!!! WOOT!!!

Re: T-Shirts
 

Heh. Make sure you offer tall sizes to those who are the opposite of Genia. The bare midriff look should be a choice -- not forced on you by short shirts.

Re: T-Shirts
 

Only if your school allows you to show midriff. We get ours from Goldscreen Printing, a local business, at an amazing discount. So if you convince a local shirt business to be your sponsor, you can potentially knock off a few dollars off of the price per shirt.

Re: T-Shirts
 

I'm a mentor and a father. Trust me, even if the school allowed it you wouldn't want me to expose -- well -- practically anything.

Re: T-Shirts
 

Until this year we got ours made at the t shirt shop in town. This was relatively cheap as we only had one colour, but this year we are getting discounted union jack shirts from Union Jack Wear, and adding transfers.

Re: T-Shirts
 

Denman! Is the T-Shirt on a Jack-Mast then?

Union FLAG! (If I don't say it, Mr. Massey probably will...)

(I'm nitpicking again...)

Re: T-Shirts
 

We get our shirts from a supplier in Richmond, same for the hats. Our famous beads and pins come from an outside firm (I'll get you the names) and some of our *NEW* giveaways (yes! new!) come from the same place.

For shirts, I recommend looking at cafepress.com. You can set up a team 'shop' and sell branded team things, like mugs and lunch boxes, and you can add t-shirts and sweatshirts with logos on the front and back. You can buy them in bulk from them, and I think you get a small kick-back too.

Re: T-Shirts
 

We got all our button parts from Badge-A-Minit, and then used Photoshop and a high end printer at my mom's work to print them all. I can't remember off the top of my head where we got our shirts, but I know it's from the same place Clover Hill HS gets theirs.

Re: T-Shirts
 

After ship and fix-it window, we have students with time on their hands, so they go to work on buttons. MOE always has a wide variety of buttons, with slogans (the famous Free the Sticks buttons were popular last year), pictures of the robot, and personalized buttons with the team members nicknames on it. We were fortunate to have the money to buy a button maker early so we can make unlimited numbers - and we pass out a lot! I can try and find out how many we do go through at an average regional.

The buttonmaker is from http://www.buttonsonline.com/ (NOTE - Week 4 of our MOEmentum column discusses shirts and giveaways, but there is a typo in the button web site - the above is correct - see http://www.moe365.org/moementum5.php). Buttonmakers can run $200-$300 easily, with each blank button back (metal ones) costing 15-40 cents each.

One year we tried the type where you glue a pin on the back of a cardboard/plastic button, but that was a mess - the pins kept falling off and getting stuck everywhere.

If you can afford it, some people like to buy two shirts so they can trade one.

Re: T-Shirts
 

Last year we made our t-shirts (the wonder of meeting at a voc school.) This year I'm pretty sure we got them printed at a local business. We made our buttons. A parent made the design in Word :ahh: but it looks really awesome. We got the cheap badge-a-minit button maker and it takes a long time to make 1000 buttons. In a speed trial we were doing them in 18 seconds a piece but when you're actually making them it takes about a minute a badge. That means it takes about 14 hours of button pressing to make all of them. :yikes:

Re: T-Shirts
 

Which badge-a-minit do you have? We have the badge-a-matic thing (the one they call "semi-automatic") and it is actually quite fast at making them.