I asked about this once before so i do apologize they've come back to me and asked me again to help them out! I have a couple of friends who are art students and have some really wicked ideas for alternative t-shirts they want to get printed and sell online They have about 6 designs, im ready with website design and a general business and marketing vision, but we have no idea where to get them printed I looked at a few places but they put them on those cheaply made "fruit of the loom" shirts, it looks more like the kind of stuff you buy from a small marketshop (where they iron on glittery letters) "Lads on tour" and "Im with stupid" stuff We want to do it right from the get go and have something that has some decent quality to it, but have no idea where to start with it Is anybody in that sort of business that could give us some pointers??
Slightly out of left field and perhaps not exactly what you're after, but tell them to have a look at QWERTEE.com. The company asks for designs for t-shirts then prints and sells the popular ones in limited runs, I believe the designers get a proportion of the profits. I've only recently come across the site but have bought one t-shirt from them and it's a good quality shirt. Might be a way for your friends to dip their toes into the market at least.
What Fruit of the loom have never been poor quality. But yes qwertee are pretty good bought a couple designs. Only issue is the designs are unique spins on popular video game, movie, tv etc slogans and characters.
Where in the UK are you located? Can you art student friends use university facilities? My girlfriend did a Printmaking Degree at NUA and they have a full screen printing workshop. Although you would be looking at printing on textiles not paper the processes are very similar. Always good to learn the processes so you know how to spot poor quality prints for when you buy commercially.
We had about 5-6 places that screen printed locally in my city. You should be able to find plenty of local businesses that will print for you. When I printed it was around $50 a color to make the screens, with each shirt being around $4 plus a charge for art labor. For us to do a minimum order of 24 shirts was around $900 While it is definitely going to cost less for you since things are more expensive around where I live, it's good to remember that the more you have them print the more economical it is for you per shirt. As some places give price breaks per shirt depending on how many you order. So if you are going that route for your first order it might be worth figuring out how many shirts minimum makes you the most money per shirt. An advantage with going with a local place is that they keep the screens for your design so if you need to print another run it wont cost you for the screens again. Also you can likely work out a deal with the business if you expect you are going to be buying in bulk. Another option is an online screen printer, there are many places that you can use. Over here an example is http://www.cafepress.co.uk/ I think they still print in the US so they might not be the best option, but you guys should have a place similar to this that is more local to you. What you can do in this case is come up with the design and if you find the right place use them to sell your shirts online. They will likely take more money for each shirt lowering your returns. But at least it wont require to make you to make a large initial investment in getting your stock. So it really depends on how many you expect you are going to sell as to what route you should use.
