Another Year and Another Batch of T-shirt Companies

It's hard to choose the players this year from the new crop of contenders, but the overwhelming drive in the market is going to be based on having an inventory of blank t-shirts in the proximity of the customer to reduce shipping cost. The other variables that are starting to create alternatives are cheaper Made in the USA t-shirts that are fitted, as well as, basic t-shirts for your every day low cost t-shirt job. T-shirt contractors are also finding new ways to market their services, so the end result of that type of competition should drive down the price for contract screen printing jobs.

Being the cheapest printer on the block has never been a goal of mine, but if I can put together the right suppliers for the wide range of techniques that are required to compete in the t-shirt industry these days, then I can offer a wider array of services from different parts of the country. Turnaround times are also based on the supply chain of t-shirts to the printer who can do the job the best, but doubling the shipping time and potential cost of getting the shirts to the printer and from the printer to the customer just cost more than the services themselves.

My other option is to station myself, as a t-shirt printer, right next to my favorite suppliers in different parts of the country and price my goods based on transit cost versus cost of the t-shirts themselves.

Basically my business structure makes me a T-shirt Pimp. As a pimp my job is to get to you the T-shirt styles that you need to fill your order and make your customers happy. I'm not biased in a business sense to one t-shirt brand or another except for the fact that there has to be a certain profit margin and demand for any particular brand of shirts to make it worthwhile to sell them. Choosing amongst the legion of brands that are now readily available will help my potential customers reach a decision about what they are going to buy and when all is said and done, we all want our jobs to be easy.

Now comes the tricky part; making a convenient structure upon which to compare apples to apples with and oranges to oranges. 90% of shirt sales are of Mens styles, also known as Unisex, so any brand we are going to list my be based off the Mens style and preferably have a Womens matching style to go with the Mens line, but the Mens style numbers are the first line of comparison. Secondly, the styles within the brands are a bit confusing, but "Standard-Cut" and "Fitted-Cut" seem to be applicable phrases that best describe the style differences within brands. The Standard Cut t-shirts are the "Full-Sized" larger, boxy, thicker types of t-shirts that were commonly on the market in the 80's and 90's, but slowly became old school in the early 2000's as more and more fitted styles came into the market.

Price, Weight and the type of cotton are additional variables, but these can be compared more easily in that they have numerical variables that allow us to make some sense of them, versus the description of a "thicker collar" and "longer look" types of qualities.

The weight of fabric is usually measured in ounces per square inch with 4.0 oz per sq inch being on the low side and 6.0 oz per sq inch being on the high side.

Ring-spun cotton or open-ended cotton. If a description does not say "Ring-spun" which is more refined cotton and of a higher grade of cotton. The alternative to ringspun cotton is generally open-ended cotton which is less refined and therefore not as soft, nor as expensive. Lighter t-shirts are often made with ring-spun cotton because they can knit tighter fabric configurations that allow for a lighter final product. If you are looking for soft you have to get ringspun cotton, which cost more, or work with the lighter fitted t-shirts generally.

Price is always the final determining factor whether people want to admit it or not and basically you get what you pay for these days. The cheapest scenario I can offer is a white t-shirt in the $1.50 range that is open-ended cotton, standard cut, at about 5.4 oz per sq inch, which are the stats for a basic cheap t-shirt. The other end of the scale is a 4.0 oz per square inch fitted ring spun cotton t-shirt in the $6-8 price range. That's the high and the low of it, so if you mix and match these basic descriptive terms you should be able to have an idea of what you are dealing with when comparing one t-shirt to another.

Other variables that can effect the final price is country of origin, which means is it Made in the USA (more expensive even for United States deliveries) or made somewhere else in the world, like Pakistan, Haiti, Central America or even China or Turkey.

Availability is the most important variable that nobody mentions, because most distributors would like to think they have everything all the time, but they don't and often when it comes time to fill an order, the item that was the cheapest has sold out and won't be in for a couple of months.

Tear away tags, sewn in tags or labels that have been heat transfered or printed into the collar of the t-shirt. Hanes for example promotes their tagless t-shirts, but the tag has been transfered or printed inside the collar and they act like it's a good thing, it's not. After we have purchased a shirt we don't really want to be reminded of the brand unless it is a status symbol, which Hanes is not a status symbol. Tear Away tags have grown in popularity because they can be removed and the company name can be printed onto the shirts for the final company using the shirts, like a private label. People often call me and ask for t-shirt that are completely blank, no label, but then I ask, "how would you know what size it is?"

Still as a consumer of t-shirts you will need to purchase actual t-shirts and put them through the wash and wear cycle to get the feelling on what is the right t-shirt for you. I can have two customers tell me exactly opposite things about the same t-shirt when it comes to the final fit, amount of shrinkage, colors fading, printability and the myriad of other characteristics that make every consumer a critic these days. So break out your wallet and buy some samples before placing a large order to make sure that you are ordering the right t-shirt for your customer or job.

Coming up Next: A survey of the available t-shirt brands.