Fast, Cheap Shirt Vendor Recommendations?

FIRST General Forum
1

We’re desperately seeking recommendations for a cheap, fast, t-shirt vendor, As per usual, one of my rookie teams needs a team’s worth of custom shirts fast, and the local vendors are charging an arm and a leg.

There are a number of Shirt threads here, but I’m specifically looking for a list of on-line vendors you have worked with, and would gladly work with again. Where are the BEST places (price, quality, speed, experiences) that YOU have found? We’re especially interested in on-line vendors you have worked with that are reliable, can take emailed artwork, and have cheap or free shipping.

Please post your specific vendor recommendations here (URLs, etc). If possible, please include when you bought from them, what you bought (eg xx shirts of varying sizes, double sided, with single color artwork on each side), how much they charged you, and how fast they delivered.

IF possible, PLEASE be SPECIFIC about the pricing etc you have experienced, to simplify comparisons. (Please don’t just post a URL with no comparison data, nor your experience data, of vendors who require you to go through a “formal quotation cycle” to find out more. ***I’m *trying to tap your experience with them here, to allow people reading to quickly zero in on “The Good Vendors” out there in cyberspace! The more details you can provide about your transaction with them, the better!)

Also, feel free to give us your Horror Stories, so we know who to AVOID…

Hopefully this thread can become a good, search-able resource for future years…

Thanks!

  • Keith
2

We get our shirts from Atypical Clothing. Their website is http://shop.atypicalclothing.com/. E-mail Logan Traynor at [email protected] to ask about custom designs for your team.

3

Libby Kamen clued me into RushOrderTees.com. Their uploader is Flash-based, but worked well for us (we started with .eps files).

Order went in Monday night of last week. Artwork was approved last Thursday night. Shirts arrived Wednesday. Two colors on a Hanes tagless tee was a smidge over $10 per (in an order of 50) with the slight rush charge (their prices increase a smidge each day as the deadline approaches). We could’ve gotten the order in Friday and still received shirts by the Wednesday deadline. Phone support is solid–pretty much always a human on the other end. The shirts themselves came out really nice. While a local shop would’ve been a touch cheaper if we had more lead time, I’d definitely do business with the guys again in a pinch.

4

I’ve been very happy with custom products from www.CafePress.com. You can put any image you want, even full color (e.g. a FIRST Logo). They were fast, but I was only ordering one item in each order. I’ve never ordered from them in bulk. 18-23 t-shirts are $12.75 each for dark colors and $9.75 for light colors. It goes down in price if you order more.

5

We order our T-Shirts from Custom Ink. Their standard shipping gets them to you in two weeks. The shirts usually come to around $8-$10 a shirt but that depends on the quantity you order.

6

We ordered our shirts from here. They are a local company and we didn’t pay for shipping, so I’m unsure of shipping price and speed.

The cost was about $7.20 per shirt for a single color, front and back, screen print for more than 48 shirts. Add tax, shipping, and screen print charge, and it will cost around $480 for 50 shirts. They accept high resolution Freehand, Illustrator, Photoshop, EPS, PDF, TIFF or JPEG images. Here is the proof of our shirt. Our shirts were ready in 3 days, but I’m sure they could be expedited by request. (Be aware XXLs and larger cost more. Personalization is also available.)

All U is also responsible for screen printing our bumpers, which look really nice. I’d highly recommend All U to anyone. This is our third year of using them, and the shirts are great.

Edit: Yes, we know the logo isn’t the correct usage according to FIRST but it was a mistake that will be fixed for next year.

7

While not for FIRST, I have ordered from Custom Ink for other projects and highly recommend them. The largest was 50+ shirts (one color, double sided), and 20+ sweatshirts. I do not recall the sweatshirt price (it was definitely reasonable), but the t-shirts were in the $8 range (I think. Definitely below 10). The within-14 day delivery was awesome, they even post-dated it a day so we could get them before a critical deadline. We got the cheap default shirts, but the quality was great as I’ve worn it many times and its holding up great. We thought we had a difficult design (it was a pretty intricate pen and ink drawing), but we sent them a high resolution scan and the t-shirt came out as a spitting image.

8

I called, and found they were in CANADA… Logan said it would cost too much to get it in time, due to customs.

We’re in SE Michigan, so I’m looking for fast turnaround U.S. companies. (Sorry, I thought my team#, and all the junk in my .sig made that obvious…) :smiley:

We’re going to need them in about one week, too :ahh:, so I’m especially interested in hearing about your favorite web&email-submit, fast-turnaround vendors.

Thanks!

  • Keith
9

With a timeline like that I suggest small local shops or print out iron on graphics! I do not know how much “an arm and a leg” are, but if you need them now… that is usually the price of things.

10

Local Math: 1arm+1leg > $20 per shirt, plus setup charges… Including sponsor and parent shirts, that’s over a grand just for shirts. This rookie started-at-Kickoff team can’t afford that! We already went with school shirts for Event #1 “away game” because the first shirt order we were depending on fell through.

Event #2 next Friday is our “home” game. Some of the sponsors will be attending. IMO, if we to see them again it would be smart if we could dress 'em in shirts with their name on them. We really have little budget for shirts because originally they were to be donated. But that fell through, so we now have to bite the bullet and buy something. Artwork took longer than expected (we have it now), so here we are.

So… Given more good leads from you guys for net vendors, even with Rush Shipping I hope to do a lot better than the above price!

So far, here and other net searches imply that $5-10 each is a more reasonable ballpark price. We’ll live with that. But I haven’t heard back yet from a US vendor that can do the job, so please keep the suggestions coming!

(…and beyond OUR needs, I’d like to hear more links from people, so this thread can act as a reference for OTHERS, too…)

Thanks!
-Keith

11

So, around 50 shirts? For one color two sided white shirt, black text custom ink quotes $8.44 for regular delivery. That makes it $11.05 per shirt for the one week rush. (Those include shipping) I don’t think you’re going to do much better especially with rush delivery. Whatever you do… I’d order them today!

12

We use CustomInk.com as well for T-shirts and sweatshirts, but we also use a local embroidery shop for other items such as bumper numbers and our flag.

13

I’ll also put my vote in for customink.com. We’ve had great luck with them and their customer service is fantastic. I’m not sure that I’ve ever done a rush order with them (which is anything less than 2 weeks), but it’s easy to design in their online tool and quality has always been great. We’ve used them multiple time for event staff t-shirts, etc, and I’d absolutely use them again.

14

My company has used a company called 4imprint.com for promo materials for trade shows for almost 10 years. Prices are extremely competitive and guaranteed lowest. THey are as fast as any I have found. Would recommend them to anyone for anything. THey have a wide variety of stuff all shown online with pricing. Shirts are supposed to ship within 6 business days, but I have found that if you call and talk to them thay may be able to do better.
We upload a pdf file to them and they send back a proof for approval.

Good Luck.

15

I work as a graphic designer at Lacrossewear and we specialize in making custom shirts, shorts, reversible… you name it. Shoot me a pm and I can see what we can do for you.

16