Custom T Shirt Printing

Not only is t shirt printing cost effective and long lasting advertising, it also helps create a professional business image. For many firms, the advertising printed on their t shirts generates a lot of business.

Printed polo shirts helps to build customer confidence, especially for tradesmen having to work in peoples homes. Most tradesmen interacting regularly with the public like to include some form of advertising in their workwear, whether it be in the form of polo shirts, sweatshirts or jackets.

When it comes to polo shirts, many customers ask me which is better, embroidery or printing. The answer is easy, embroidered garments are usually more expensive than printing. Also if customers want large logo's, as well as a large printed business name, website and telephone number on the back of a t shirt, the usual decorating method is print. The first reason is cost. The second reason is comfort. Large areas of print are far more comfortable when applied to t shirts and hoodies than large areas of embroidery. At www.custom-t-shirt.biz we print in-house. However in association with our trade-wholesalers, we also do supply embroidered polo shirts (minimum quantity applies).

Print Methods: Screen printing, Cad-Cut vinyl printing, sublimation printing and transfer printing. These printing techniques all have their own particular advantages and usually are better in some circumstances than others. For example. If a customer wants 100 t shirts printed with a complex range of colours and shades for say, a hen night, we would use digital transfers. If the t shirts are to have a single colour slogan and the customer wants to use them over and over again throughout a season, we would screen print them or perhaps use sublimation printing. The essential different is colours, gradients and shades.

Although there are screen printing techniques that produce shades and gradients (process colour screen printing), setting that up for a small run of 100 would not be cost effective in our business. Digital transfers on the other hand are fantastic for representing photographic print, shades and complex colour logo's. There are three main forms of transfers that we use. Ink and laser transfers we normally use for short life promotional t shirts for occasions like events, hen nights, stag nights, charity walks etc. Ink and Laser transfers that we use are extremely good looking, flexible and stretchy, in fact most people can't determine that they are transfers. When we say short life promotional t shirts, we mean the print should look good-to-excellent for around 15 or 20 machine washes.

Screen printed transfers carry more or less the same life expectancy of normal direct screen printed t shirts. The difference is convenience and cost. For example, if a customer wants a mixture of 500 garments, t shirts, sweatshirts, Hoodies, backpacks, in different colours and sizes, ideally shipped out in small quantities when required. The artwork might be very complex with lots of colours. We satisfy this kind of customer requirement with factory-made screen printed transfers. To satisfy our 500-piece example customer, we would pre-sell and pre-order all of the required screen printed transfers. Our customer would then call off as required the garments as convenient. The screen printed transfers themselves are designed to applied with a heat press and have a shelf life of a few years.

The last print method I would like to talk about today is Cad-Cut vinyl which accounts for most of our on demand t shirt printing work. Essentially, Cad-Cut vinyl includes a huge range of colours and textures of materials we generically call vinyl. The material is cut with a computer driven, high precision cutter-plotter. The resulting print is heat pressed onto t shirts or in the case of signage and vehicle graphics, applied often wet with special backing tapes. The biggest advantage of cad-cut vinyl is that customers can have any number of t shirts, all with individual names if they like. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, building firms, clubs, schools are perfect examples of customers for whom we print using cad-cut techniques daily. There are no minimum order concerns and unless a customer wants very large numbers, cad-cut remains very cost effective. This print method is hard wearing and typically should last the life of the garment. Another fantastic advantage of cad cut vinyl is the huge range of colours and finishes available. Shiny gold, glitters, pattern-effects, velvet-touch, puff, sublimation-on-flock, solvent printing on vinyl are all included in this very large and very versatile digital printing methodology.

If you would like to see examples of our work please visit the website. Or Phone Ronnie on 07702 276118 for a quote.