

Ask HN: where did you order your startup T-shirts? - olapic

We are looking where to print our startup t-shirts. We want good quality t-shirts and good quality printing.<p>We are not thinking cafepress.<p>Any ideas? where did you print yours?
======
failquicker
Ok, so there are actually quite a few variables when you are considering.
Mainly, the type of T-shirt you want to print on and the type of graphic you
want printed.

The three main types of shirt printing are...

Screenprinting - The Old standby. Looks good, washes fairly well. But can get
expensive when you get into multiple colors. Also, only higher end houses are
going to be able to handle larger resolutions on your graphics.

Direct 2 Garment - This is the new kid on the block. It's essentially an Ink
Jet printer that has been hacked to take garment dye. Upside is it prints
RIDICULOUSLY high resolution graphics. And you can generally get a small run
done for not a ton of cash. Down side is, the house doing the work has to know
what they are doing. Poorly cured DTG work will fade almost immediately.

TRANSFER PRINTING - This is like a hybrid of one of the two above methods with
the Iron ons you get at office max. Don't hate though, Transfer printing can
be awesome. Pretty much every sports team ever uses transfer printing. It
makes the graphic stand out (physically) from the shirt.

Find someone local to you. I guarantee there is a hungry local print house
that is close to you that would trip over itself for your business right now.
The economy has hit printers pretty hard.

I will be happy to discuss your order specifics with you in more detail and
point you in the right direction. Full disclosure, I'm from a Garment Industry
family and I currently own a T-Shirt company myself. Not sleazy though, as we
just print our own stuff for resale and I won't be trying to get you to buy
from us :-)

My contact email is in my profile, or we can discuss it right here in the HN
Comments section.

------
olapic
Thanks Failquicker! I will check it out with my local provider! thanks for the
info, it was really helpful.

Fragmede: because they charged a ridicously high price for a really bad
quality t-shirt. My sister is in the industry for a major group in Spain, and
when she saw my t-shirt she just laughed at me (both printing and fabric
quality wise)

Thanks chris, I will check these too!

------
chrisclark1729
I used these guys: <http://www.vgkids.com/>

They were really nice people, on-time, quality printing and did some extra
design work to get our design ready for t-shirts.

------
fragmede
Why not cafepress?

(Knowing why not would guide suggestions.)

