Printing Tees for your Nonprofit: 4 Must-Know Tips

Run of Exploding Colour

Festival of Good Things hosts The Run of Exploding Colour—a 5k allowing individual charities to enroll runners for fundraising efforts!

So, you’ve got a nonprofit and you’re in need of some printed merchandise. Printed t-shirts and hoodys are a great way to help build hype around your organization and raise dollars at the same time! Whether you’re looking to sell them at your next event, auction off for some big bucks or even just give away to participators, you’ll want to make sure that your design is original and low cost to produce. Follow these tips to make it happen!

First and foremost, pick the right shirts

With so many brands and styles to choose from, choosing which tee to print on can get a little overwhelming. The first factor you should consider is the price. Generally the price per tee will go down with volume (depending on where you decide to shop) so you’ll want to order in bulk at wholesale prices.

If you plan on giving these tees away, you’ll want to check out Tultex and Gildan tees. These are some of the leading brands in the industry and they offer the lowest prices. If you’re looking to sell but don’t necessarily want to splurge on the finest, go for a brand like Next Level or Anvil—which are still a great price but offer more contemporary styles. If you’re looking for a premium tee to be sold or auctioned off at a higher price, American Apparel, BELLA+CANVAS or Alternative Apparel is your best bet.

For printing purposes, you’ll want to consider the color of shirts you choose. With screen printing, it’s cheaper to print onto light colored garments, like white or heather grey. When you print onto light colors, most inks (dark colors and bright colors) will be easily visible on the garment. However if you try to print on say, a black, royal blue or a dark grey shirt, you’ll need to first lay down a white under base in order for the color of the ink to show up against the dark background. The additional layer will raise your printing costs as well as add more thickness to the feel of your design.

Numana

Numana fights to end world hunger by arranging large-scale meal packing events with hundreds of volunteers at a time!

Create a Simple Design

When it comes to designing your t-shirts, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not creating an image with too many colors because you’ll most likely be screen printing your shirts. In this method, the price is based on the amount of colors you need to print. A new screen is created for each color—so the price will start to sky rocket when you’ve got three or more colors compared to just one or two. More colors will also add to the weight of your print. Try incorporating the color of the t-shirt into the artwork to make use of negative space! Or come up with a dynamic, one color design that can be printed with color, or bleached out with discharge inks for a soft, unique look.

You’ll want to cut down on the amount of print locations. Since screen printing isn’t priced based on the size of the print, even small logos on the sleeve or hip can pump up the price. Keep things simple—if you need to list your sponsors on the back of the shirt, make sure to convert the logos to one color so it can be printed with one screen! Also make sure to create your design using Adobe Illustrator or a similar program because some printers will charge for vectoring your file and separating the colors.

Represent.com

Represent offers organizations and individuals a way to jumpstart their nonprofit fundraising by selling cause-related tees.

Explore your options

There are many online ways to promote and auction off merchandise for a good cause. Sites like Represent and Teespring now offer sellers an opportunity to create, sell and drop ship printed products—all on one platform without any of the risk or the headache. Represent takes it one step further—specifically catering to the nonprofit community. This site allows you to create your designs online along with a campaign outlining your organization and fundraising goal. Share the campaign with your friends and supporters and they can purchase directly from the site. Once enough tees are sold and your goal is reached, Represent will fulfill your orders and pass your profits right to your charity! It’s a very hands-off, seamless process–making crowdsourcing for your cause easy. Promoting your cause on social media using custom hashtags is another good way to build hype around your organization and merchandise.

Always find the best deals!

Always make sure that you’re getting the best prices, especially when shopping online. Retailmenot is a site that runs a search engine specifically for finding online coupon codes and sales! If you’re planning to sell or distribute your merchandise in person at an event, try to use a company that specializes in both screen printing and providing many options for blank t-shirts—that way you can keep your costs down. Here at Blankstyle.com we offer hundreds of blank apparel brands and can even do your printing for you!  This will ensure that you get the best prices, the fastest turnaround and the widest selection of brands.

 

Chelsey on Google+

Bella Canvas Review

Our Bella Canvas Review found that following in the tradition of some of the best and largest American companies (Apple, Amazon, Disney and Google to name just a few), Bella Canvas was started in a garage. In 1992, best friends Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge were just out of high school when they started their screen printing company. Their big break came when Sega launched Hedgehodge and the duo got a huge order from Sega. That order launched their scrappy little garage business into a screen printing giant named Color Image. And from that the pair spun into the world of retail and into apparel manufacturing.

Bella Canvas Unisex Poly Cotton Short Sleeve Tee 3650

3650

The screen printing beginning of Bella Canvas means the company understands the needs of the screen printer. And from the start, Danny and Marco looked for gaps in the apparel business. They soon realized that no one was producing a true fitted women’s T-shirt. Rather, most companies were simply selling a men’s small as a women’s shirt. So the company set its sights on rectifying that oversight. And today, they have some of the most fashion-forward fits and colors on the apparel market. While diversification was the goal they still produce the top selling mens fashion fit blank t shirt the Bella Canvas’ 4.2 oz Canvas 3001 is a unisex tee available in 35 colors (including 3 new heathered options) and 8 sizes (XS-4XL).

Bella Canvas 8803

The company’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California are set up like a campus with three buildings. They have sales, production, quality control in one building that is attached to a production factory where 300,000 units are produced in a single week. There is also a community kitchen and a gym with a yoga studio studio for employees. This sense of community is an important component of the brand. Another important characteristic of the Bella + Canvas brand is an eco-friendly sensibility. The company is completely paperless and everything gets recycled. Only recycling bins are under desks. So if you have to throw something in the trash, you have to hunt down a trash can.

3000 BELLA+CANVAS Hawthorne Baseball T-shirt

Hawthorne Baseball T

Bella + Canvas are pushing the standards of quality in product and manufacturing by offering contemporary blank apparel for both the wholesale and retail markets. With their huge following and proven track record, they have become one of the most valued and trusted names in the ring-spun cotton industry for men’s, women’s and youth clothing.

Chelsey on Google+

These Best-Selling T-shirts will Fly off the Shelves!

Often times we’re asked what our top selling t-shirts are. Baseball Raglans top the list, season after season.

Here at Blankstyle, it’s an undeniable truth that our baseball raglans are the cat’s meow. From infant and toddler sizes to adult, heathered variations, full color blocked versions and even cropped styles, this tee sells and sells and sells! We sell thousands of these shirts year after year to our big and small business customers, and they all just can’t get enough.

A raglan sleeve does not specifically refer to the 3/4-sleeved two-toned baseball tee that we know and love. A raglan sleeve is actually one that begins at the neck, rather than at the edge of the shoulder. There are many variations of the raglan sleeve, but the two-toned ‘baseball-style’ version, often with 3/4 sleeves, might be the best recognized. The 3/4 sleeve length is an ideal choice for many, giving more coverage than a regular tee shirt, but long sleeves and even cap sleeves now all come in this style for those who plan to workout, lounge, go to work or even play baseball in style.

After a few seasons gaining momentum, the baseball raglan has now completely and utterly exploded in popularity–with many different brands now trying their hand at the style. The results are great, with more diversity and more options to choose from than ever. Whether you’re looking for something to spice up your clothing line, printing for a sports team, dressing up your employees, or just find a comfortable, good-looking shirt something to value, we’ve got a huge selection here.

What better place to start than with American Apparel—who has bb4533/4-sleeve raglans to fit the entire family. The BB453 is American Apparel’s Unisex Poly-Cotton 3/4 Sleeve Raglan Shirt. It boasts perhaps the broadest range of two-toned color combination shirts on the market. American Apparel even named the BB453 its February Staff Pick. Since American Apparel’s 50% polyester 50% cotton blend is prepared using combed cotton, you can expect these shirts to be very soft and very lightweight. The BB453 is also available in Youth Sizes (BB253) as featured in Emma Magazine’s summer issue, Kids Sizes (BB153), and even infant sizes (BB053)!

Bella/Canvas is also making waves in the baseball raglan pool. The 3200 Unisex 3/4-Sleeve Blended Baseball Tee is available as the standard poly-cotton blend; however, Bella/Canvas goes one step further with their baseball tees. The C3200 is available in the tri-blend variety, as well! Rather than adhering to a strictly color-block style (two solid colors-poly/cotton), Canvas offers several color combinations based on a tri-blend heather grey body with solid sleeves. Besides the standard 3/4-sleeve baseball raglan, Bella also offers the 2000—a 100% baby-ribbed cotton version for the ladies.109_fl

If you are looking for a more traditional baseball raglan, you may want to direct your attention to the Augusta Sportswear 420 Adult Baseball Jersey and the Augusta Sportswear 421 Youth Baseball Jersey. These styles are ideal for sports teams and are available in several standard color combinations. They feature a fishtail long bottom for a very relaxed fit. Similar to the Augusta Sportswear model is the Sport-Tek Colorblock Raglan Jersey (T200). Rather than a 50% polyester/50% cotton blend, the T200 is 100% ring-spun cotton. The Anvil 2184 Adult Cotton Baseball Tee is made with Anvil 100% heavyweight cotton and is the most durable of the ¾-sleeve raglan group.

The Alternative Apparel AA2089 Men’s Baseball T-shirt takes an ordinary baseball raglan 2089and shatters the mold. The AA2089 offers exciting color-ways, such as the patriotic ‘Stars’ (a tri-blend white body with a red collar, blue arms, and white stars from the shoulder to the sleeve cuffs), ‘Bandana’ (tri-blend heather grey with red paisley sleeves), and ‘Camo’ (tri-blend brown body with an orange collar and camo sleeves). Besides these unique color combinations, the AA2089 is also available in more traditional combinations of white body and colored sleeves. Alternative Apparel also offers the AA1989 ¾-Sleeve Raglan Henley. Complete with the standard Henley neck buttons, the AA1989 is another example of Alternative Apparel being…well…alternative.

Anvil’s 2184 ¾-Sleeve Raglan Tee revisits the traditional baseball raglan look with a price point ideal for the recreational softball team. The Anvil 2184 boasts a 100% cotton heavy weight make up. at 6.1oz this garment is tough enough to steal home in.

Some other ¾-sleeve baseball raglans include the pigment-dyed colors of the Chouinard 7066, the recognizable Champion T137, the 100% moisture-management-fabric Badger 4133 (Youth: 2133), and the LA T 6930 Vintage Baseball Tee (Youth 6130). Don’t forget to check out some of our other Champion apparel and clothing options.

As you can see, 3/4-Sleeve Baseball Raglans have grown up over the years. While traditional styles still exist, the genre has become one chock full of interesting options. When considering your new product line, perhaps you may want to give the baseball raglan a second glance. What was once one particular style has evolved into an entire category of styles. After all, if you can’t decide on short sleeves or long sleeves this summer, there’s always a compromise—the 3/4 sleeve baseball raglan.