T-shirt advice

[Lorraine Buchan]

Gildan are usually a good brand, but like everything you are going to get some bad ones in there. Nice price and huge range of colours.

Kustom Kit again good quality but expensive.

Hanes good quality but limited colours and quite pricey too.

As for getting the price down, you’ll have to blag a bit. At my last two companies we never sold huge numbers of t-shirts but we did get good prices. Mostly carton rate no matter what we brought and on a couple of lines a 5% discount on top. You just have to be bold and ask for it. Tell them your not 100% happy with your current supplier and looking to change – getting free delivery is a good thing if you can get it.

[Kevin.Beck]

Theres nothing wrong with any of the makes Lorraine suggested, don`t forget to add fruit of the loom(screen stars)to your list.

Get a copy of printwear and promotion,
email: printwearandpromotion@batiste.co.uk for a free subscription. All major stockest advertise there.

I use Ralawise or UK leisurwear mostly. As they have a good range of makes. You should have a couple of suppliers on your list, as its sods law, one supplier will have run out of a certain stock.

As for prices, most stockest charge the same. Like Lorraine said, after a while you will be able to get carton rate or extra discount. 5% extra discount on a £1.50 tee is only another 7.5p. So even if you are paying top prices, you sould be able to compete with everyone else.

it`s only when you are printing 1000`s when the extra discount comes in very handy.

Are you, printing(heatpressing) when you recieve an order, or creating designs, printing them and then waiting for the customer to order?

You might find, you do not need to keep any stock, you just order when required. If it`s only a few you are printing at a time, it might be better to hold a little stock, as postage from the supplier will cost around £5.

[john6512]

Hi Amy

We have a real problem with Charterhouse Holdings (both Xpres and Kuston Kit) manily with attitude and lack of sales support. We found when we were spening cash last year they were very helpful, but once they installed – they wernt interested ! I take it that you buy all your textile cut materials from them ? We found on most garments you can press at 140 degress (how to you get a small o for oc?) but it wasnt always reliable, also there are many other makes that provide a better quality material. (We use Doratape which is also sticky which is great for placement).

Depending on your market place for t-shirts, we normally use Hanes & Jerzees. We did a run of 40,000 gilden for a national company for a promotion a couple of months ago and I think our whole failure rate was about 20 garments so I think you had a bad batch – which supplier did you buy them from. As long as you allow for 5-8% shrinkage in sizing you’re okay!

The only other company we had massive problems were was with Screen Stars / Fruit of the Loom, as they had an attitue problem when we went to them with a 40,000 garment order!

Hope my 2 pennies worth helps!

all the best

John
http://www.b2-uk.com

[Kevin.Beck]

John.

That 40,000 tee shirts, where they printed or heatprested?? 😮

[john6512]

becky – without trying to “nick” this thread – they were screen-printed – we try not to runs jobs over 500 with heatpressed – unless the application requires reflective or other effects

[Martin C]

I’d go along with most of what has been said above but will add a few pointers from past experiences good and bad.

Jerzees, good stuff across the range but have an irritating habit of changing the spec, particularly during peak season. I was buying Burgundy T’s one week which then changed to another similar but not the same colour. It wasn’t a case of a different batch, these were so obviously made at a different factory!

I would keep your options open rather than stick with one particular brand. If you are ordering Navy or Black shirts they’ll always have a better feel to them because of the extra dye. Buy the same shirt in white and it’ll feel cheap! e.g. I use Hanes heavy T’s in Black but upgrade to the Beefy T in white.

There also some excellent ‘newcomers’ available from most suppliers. I bought a job lot of RTY T’s from Ralawise……….end of range stuff and they were fantastic quality, pity I didn’t buy them when they were a listed item. Slazenger are another new trade supplier and the ones I’ve had are well priced and great quality.

I have to echo your feelings about Charterhouse John, although they are still my chosen supplier at the moment mainly because I know which products best suit my needs. As for printing at 140, I print most of my stuff a good 10c above the reccomendations!

[Richard]

John6512, you can use the Windows Charcter Map to insert the degree symbol º and lots of other useful characters.

It’s probably at Program Files>Accessories>System Tools, or search for charmap.exe

You can either copy and paste the characters you need, or insert them by pressing and holding Alt while typing the four digit Keystroke code (bottom left) on the number keypad with Num Lock on.

EDIT:

My image doesn’t seem to be working, so here’s the link

http://mysite.freeserve.com/swintex/charmap.htm

[Aitor Asencor]

Gildan is a good choice. You could get a refund of the bad tshirts if they are not printed yet.

Other brands: Fruit of the Loom, Jerzees, Hanes (better but more expensive), and B&C.

It depends on the prices you can get of those marks. There also some “generic” brands, sometimes with better quality and always cheaper but for heat pressing use a known brand, as they are limited works, lots of time only one tshirt, and people want to know the brand.

For example here all known Fruit of the Loom, so they ask for it. Even other brands got better tshirts.

Check which known brands could you get a good service and go for it.
In that cases price is secondary.

Also, check every year different brands/prices. For example Fruit stuff is not so good now…

Aitor

[amyd]

Thanks for all your good advice, I’ve taken it all on board. Will be doing some bargaining with suppliers now (thanks lorraine & Becky for this advice), prob a bit later on down the line when I’ve been using them for a while.

Becky, yes I will be printing & pressing to order but will be keeping some stock in – mainly because I don’t want to pay loads in delivery fees! And thanks for the printwear & promotion link!

I was interested to hear about the problems people had with xpress, as the main reason we bought from them was because they assured us they were the best place for help and support. This is a bit worrying! They’ve been really good so far, but we have only just spent a load of money with them! I’ll just have to wait and see, I can always go somewhere else for vinyls.

I think I must have been really unlucky with my 1st batch of Gildans, considering John only had 20 bad ones in 40,000!

Also, thanks to Martin & Aitor for your advice on tees!

Thanks agian!

Amy

[Martin C]

Don’t get the wrong idea about Xpres. They are a good company but my experiences have been iritating rather than life threatening!

My average order size is between 12-50 mixed pieces and I order transfer materials in as required. I was a little unhappy that my 3 metre order was no longer accepted. Yes, I could order 3 metres but it would be cut into 1 metre lengths. More wastage for me!

They changed there Subli Inks and didn’t tell me til I ordered next. Since the Ink change I’ve struggled to get good reproduction and only on my last call to technical services did someone run through the printer set up with me. This after 6 months and half a dozen calls.

They withheld an order, they hadn’t cleared my cheque, although they’d recived it some days before and didn’t phone me to advise the non delivery. This despite having been a customer for over 2 years.

If I felt there was a genuine inability to service the customer I’d have moved on long ago but they have the products, the experience and the know how. Perhaps being one of the best they feel you don’t have to worry too much about smaller customers??? 😕

[john6512]

Amy

I’m afraid that our experience (this is my own personal opinion only) was quite different. Once we had bought a large amount of capital equipment from them the support stopped – we had bits missing from kit which they would not return phone calls or emails – they were down-right rude on other occasions (all calls in our office are recorded and we offered them a tape of the conversation to prove it – ignored!). We ended up going to Roland for the support – and to be fair they were stop-on – no complaints. We have also had material problems with their glitter range – we had a small sample order from a national for the garments which didnt work – when we requested help from Xpres – they ignored 3 phone calls, 2 emails and 4 faxes requesting help on the subject. That cost us a very large national account. I have heard from other coleagus that they have had simialir problems – but I would stress that this is our own opinion from the way my company has been treated so will not touch them if they were the last company in the trade – I have heard other opinions that they are the best thing since sliced bread – so to be fair – I think you need to make you own mind up.

What equipment are you looking at buying.

All the best

[Liam Caulfield]

Im pretty fortunate with tshirts as a main distributor for fruit of the loom and others is only a 15 minute drive from me. So when I get orders for sizes I dont have (I carry a few of each size n colour in stock but thats it) I can just drive over and grab what I need.

As far as the tshirt vinyl goes I started with econofilm but its useless for small or intricate stuff (which they do say on the supplied info sheet to be fair). So I am now replacing stuff with HotMark as certain colours run out.

Mind you even though the econofilm is heavy and difficult to weed it can give a nice solid finish. Just dont try to overlay the colours or it feels like a lump of plastic.

Hows it going anyway?

[Adrian Hewson]

Only an opinion

Bought a heatpress from express, didnt work, they didnt want to know had to go to adkins (who make the machines) they sent their demo one to us picked up the one we had bought from express repaired it and shipped it back to us and took back their demo one at no cost to us. Hurrah for Adkins.

Tried to buy from express several times never got a helpfull person, got many with attitude and apart from postioning tape have sent back all the products we have bought from them as they were crap. Wouldnt buy a coffin for my mum from them even if it was the last onein the world

We print about 50 T’s a week plus caps and polos, reflective jackets and vest etc. We buy all our leisure wear from UK Leisure wear, only buy fruit of the loom premium weight t’s for guys and the stretchy lycra version for the girls ( has abit of a problem this year with some batches of the guys shirts (loose threads) We print all our designs on a edge 2 using heat transfer paper or ac flex

[Future Freak]

quote Martin C:

I would keep your options open rather than stick with one particular brand.

I wouldn’t have agreed with that a while back, but I probably would now. I tried lots of brands (including Gildan) and finally settled on B&C European – excellent cut and shape of the t-shirts. However, I’m reliant on them and for the past month or more – they have been out of stock of Medium Denim colour tees (one of my most popular colour and sizes) – all UK suppliers are out of them and they’ve given me a delivery date of August 28th!!!!!! 😮 Very annoying.

[amyd]

I have been in the same position as this recently, I chose Gildan tees and they are out of stock of the small chesnut t-shirts everywhere until mid august. So I now realise the importance of having a back up brand, not just a back up supplier! I use B & C as they stock quite a few similar colours. Have you looked at using Gildan, or other brands as a replacement until the B & C’s are in stock? The colours are quite similar- I’ve just looked at the 2 colour charts and Gildans Indigo Blue is almost identical to B & C’s denim.

Amy

[Future Freak]

quote amyd:

I’ve just looked at the 2 colour charts and Gildans Indigo Blue is almost identical to B & C’s denim.

Amy

Cheers for this idea – I may have to do this as a stop gap. I used to use Gildan when I first started out – but after finding B&C, the material is much softer and the cut of the t-shirts are more consistent (lay a B&C down flat next to a Gildan and try to find the straight lines in a Gildan t-shirt 🙂 ) Or maybe it’s just me being particually picky 🙂

[amyd]

Hi,

I know what you mean. I have been thinking of switching to B & C too. Sorry this is a bit off topic, but I have just visited your website and its fantastic! We’re using OS Commerce too but we’re stuck on a few things so its not up and running fully.

I was wondering who did your site? We can’t even get sizes on – have been trying to add manually but takes forever!! 😮

[Future Freak]

quote amyd:

Hi,

I know what you mean. I have been thinking of switching to B & C too. Sorry this is a bit off topic, but I have just visited your website and its fantastic! We’re using OS Commerce too but we’re stuck on a few things so its not up and running fully.

I was wondering who did your site? We can’t even get sizes on – have been trying to add manually but takes forever!! 😮

I did my site – I used to be a website programmer for 7 years before I went self employed :). The sizes are just simply attributes to a product in oscommerce.

[Michael Stevenson]

Hi all,
where can I get best price Hanes beefy T’s at the moment been quoted £4.05+vat (x50) is this good or bad? also never seen Gildan or B & C
where can I get samples and prices for these.
I’ve just started doing T’s with hot flock from Victory and Hexis,only 1off’s though for mates.
Will this work ok on Hanes beefy? just asked for 1st quote for 50
any info gratefully appreciated
Mike

[amyd]

Hi Mike,

That seems very expensive for Hanes, normal prices are 2.89 +vat each (colour tees), you can buy from UK Leisurewear. They also do Gildan, but dont do B & C – Elms & Elms do B & C tho.

You shouldn’t have any problems using hot flock on hanes beefy but I would always test how they wash. When I have used vinyl with some tees they dont wash right, they come out all crinkly – not straight like how they should be. Don’t know if anyone else has had this problem? I only use Xpress’ vinyl so maybe its a problem with their vinyl.. 👿

You will be able to buy samples from the above places.

Hope this helps.

Amy

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