Ask HN: where did you order your startup T-shirts? | Hacker News Reader

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

4 pointsolapic4 comments

We are looking where to print our startup t-shirts. We want good quality t-shirts and good quality printing.

We are not thinking cafepress.

Any ideas? where did you print yours?

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.

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!

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.

Why not cafepress?

(Knowing why not would guide suggestions.)

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