Wednesday, August 22, 2012

T-shirts in the news

Here is an almost worst case scenario for a t-shirt printing company: Giants cancel order for Melky Cabrera T-shirts for fan giveaway "The San Francisco Giants canceled an order for 20,000 Melky Cabrera T-shirts just in time. Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter said Tuesday that the order was stopped just before printing after Cabrera received a 50-game suspension from Major League Baseball last Wednesday following his positive test of testosterone. " It doesn't get much worse than that. Just the restocking fee would kill me, plus the cost of transporting the shirts to the print shop. Bummer Dude. I am mostly worried about the poor, poor Milk Maids, girls who go the Giant's Games dressed as Dairy Chicks. What are they going to do with their outfits?

What has changed in the t-shirt world?

Every day I get up and do the same thing, look at artwork, place t-shirt orders, check inventory and so on. Sometimes I think it is going to be different today, something is going to happen to make t-shirts come alive and print themselves. Or my designs are going to get inducted into the Museum of Modern Art in some large international city. Maybe I will get a huge order from a mainstream company that I can work on for the rest of my life, maybe, maybe not. Nothing changes that fast and nothing has been significantly different for a few years. I have expanded my collection of fitted t-shirts on yque.com and blanktshirt.com, no biggie. The prices have come down a bit to the $4-5 range for a decent Next Level 3600 fitted t-shirt. V-necks have come into fashion in a strong way, but not for huge custom orders. I've been playing with spray paint stencil designs, but nobody is really a fan of that except me. Prices have gone up a bit due to some droughts, but have come back down this year. I would be surprised to see a rise in prices next year if the drought in the United States hits the cotton crop.