marketing Best way to store/ship/organize T-shirts for market?

Lucky Dog Hot Sauce

Lucky Dog Hot Sauce

Could use suggestions - hoping some of the vendors here who've done shows can help.

I have t-shirts for the farmers markets I'm doing. I can hang up 1 of each color/style I have, but I have 5 sizes men's, 3 sizes women's, 3 sizes "babydoll". So storage/organization is tough,

Any ideas for a travel container/case where I could sort the shirts by size/color without wrinkling them? I may look into some of the bigger Tupperware style containers but thought some here might have better ideas.

Thanks in advance,

Scott
LDHS

Hmmm...may have solved it myself

Bought 500 t-shirt clear plastic bags. I can fold 'em & bag 'em, then box 'em.

I'll just have to find the little round "S, M, L" stickers in pink & blue.
:cheers:
 
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Agree. While it's nice to sell an unwrinkled shirt, no one really expects it. Displays need to be as wrinkle-free as possible, but don't sweat the ones you're going to sell, within reason. Trust me, I've never bought a t-shirt at a booth that was wrinkle-free.
 
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The Hot Pepper said:
http://www.urbanoutf...jsp?id=23555295

Display as framed art, they can't wrinkle. Display looks cool and helps sell. Sell the wrinkled ones. Really doesn't matter how you store them. Just arrange by size and style then pull the color you need.
Click to expand...

That's awesome, but $16 ea, that'd make my shirts ridiculously expensive. $17 for the shirt, + $16 for the frame + $5 shipping. Yeesh. (pretty sure you're kidding, but still - had to say - yeesh!)

I was thinking more how to get 50-ish shirts to and from the farmer's market - storage, easy of sorting/finding sizes. I start a BIG farmer's market in the next week or 2 on Sundays (~10-12K people/day) so I need to be able to quickly find the right size/gender/stye. That has been my biggest challenge - not so worried about wrinkles as ease of finding the right size/color when I have a line of people.

I think the t-shirt "sleeves" will work great. I ordered some S/M/L/XL/XXL stickers, so I'll have 2 boxes - Men's & Woman's, and will fold so I can see the label color on top, with the size sticker. :cheers:
 
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The frame is for displaying you fool! You said you wanted to display wrinkle-free shirts. I've seen frames before. They look cool. You can throw a couple up on hangers but it doesn't look as cool. You can leave out the glass too. Just buy 4 or however many styles you have, stack 'em, ship 'em to your show with ease. No wrinkle, cool display. Hang up the frames, leaves more room on the table for hot sauce. Someone orders a shirt, grab it from a box under the table.

The rest of your concern is just organization. Don't sweat wrinkles.
 
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Frames for DISPLAYed t-shirts....not for those sold...

I have some shirts rolled up with a rubber band. I don't know how rubber bands will work sittingout in the sun at FM for extended weekends.... but ... as a side note that might help...

I used to mark the tops of my salsa tubs with dots and slashes so when I went to FM and opened the cooler I could tell from the top what the heat was. I'm wondering if different colored rubber bands would work??? for the different sizes////?

other than that, just have separate bins for the different sizes.


T-shirts are tough in that you have to have SOOOooooo many different sizes....... :rolleyes:
 
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yea, but we :heart: him anyways~~~~





I now think I had it easy selling salsa with Mild-Medium-Hot-Scorcher.....
If you didn't like one of those salsa heat levels.....take a hike~~~
 
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Hahaha - you guys can both kiss my rosy behind. :rofl:

As a matter of fact I have a crap-pile of different shirts. Agh

Men's - 3 label colors, 5 sizes = 15 different shirts
Women's - 3 label colors, 3 sizes = 9 shirts
Babydoll = 3 sizes

27 different shirts!! (why do I feel like the Count on Sesame Street right now?)



Anyway, thanks for the suggestions - I got the bags/size stickers. It's gonna be a pain to bag 'em but should make life easier for inventorying them & finding them "at speed" for the FM.

:cheers:
 
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"ordered" S/M/L/XL stickers??? You do know you can buy Avery and other brands of labels in every size imaginable on 8.5x11" sheets and run them through your printer..... They even have free downloadable templates......


And I don't know how much your t-shirt sleeves were, but food service stores have all sizes of plastic bags. I was thinking a long, thin food bag, like what would fit a baguette but not quite that long, and you could roll up the shirt and stuff it in there. (think rolled up newspaper) Still need the size sticker though, but they would fit into totes nicely.
 
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Yeah - i know. I use Avery all the time.

But they were hella cheap. Like $1.80/500 cheap

My printer ink costs a hell of a lot more than that.
:rofl:

The bags are 9x12

I like your idea, but when rolled I wouldn't know color.

Good idea though - next time I may do that & print more detailed labels, that include both size as well as gender & color.

Man t-shirts are a pain in the ass. Heh
 
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Silk screen is all about qty to keep the costs down.

Even than, you're dealing with 5 sizes (at least) and a 7-8 color screen process which increases costs.

You're going to have to pay for the screen set-up for the 1st run too.

But it's worth it because digital printing looks horrific and fades pretty fast when washed.
Remember - when you sell a t-shirt, someone's paying to advertise for you. So if you only make $3-5 on a shirt it's worth it. One of my customers was just in Hawaii & snapped a pic of a guy in line at the hotel in front of him in a LDHS shirt.

That's worth it's weight in gold.
;)
 
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FeistyParrot said:
Does anyone have any recommendations about where to get T shirts printed? The ones I have found online seem incredibly expensive!
Click to expand...
 
I've been looking into this myself.  I have found a couple (http://www.customink.com/ and http://www.vistaprint.com).  They both seem a little expensive unless you order at about 50+ tshirts, which doesn't seem like all that much considering you will have multiple sizes.  You can easily get your costs down to single digits.  Here are a couple links that discuss digital vs. silk screening: http://www.customink.com/help_center/screen-vs-digital-printingn and http://blog.riptapparel.com/blog/screen-printing-vs-digital-printing-which-is-a-better-printing-process/
 
Looks like screen is the way to go.
 
Ken
 
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Thanks Ken, I've also been looking into this, screen is definitely the way to go...I think for us though it's going to have to wait, we're trying to get the third sauce launched...who'd have thought scotch bonnets would be a pain (and so expensive) to source! Ggrrrrr.
 
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My screen printers pretty much made me get those bags, The 9"x12", 1.5 mil resealable plastic bags from ULINE are the ones they use. They cost like $18 and you can even get a t-shirt folding template for another $15. I keep a plastic box of bagged and stacked t-shirts in my truck now and have managed to sell a few randomly when I've been wearing my own t-shirt.
 
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I now have 1 men's shirt design and one woman's shirt. I keep the men's
In a giant rubbermade tub & the girls shirts in the other, sorted by size.

I might use the bags at some point but for now this is much easier.
;)
 
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FeistyParrot said:
Does anyone have any recommendations about where to get T shirts printed? The ones I have found online seem incredibly expensive!
Click to expand...
 
Find a local screenprinter. Have an artist get your design down to 2-3 colors only, each color = a screen, and $.
 
If you are really set on full color do DTG, direct-to-garment. But not the cheapos online (cafe press, zazzle, etc.) where you upload a graphic. Most of those places don't do quality work. But there ARE quality DTG printers, and the equipment is very expensive.
 
Here's two local to you. Not sure if they source it out or not, but that doesn't matter, stop by and look at samples. They do screenprinting too. :)
 
http://www.atlasembroidery.com/direct-to-garment/index.php
http://floridatshirts.biz/direct.html
 
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Agreed with THP on finding local and trying to get the cost down. I go with a Black Label shirt (like my avatar, minus the Movember mustache) because I do black shirts, so the black pinstripes are a free color. Everywhere there's color on a black (or other darker color) t-shirt is costly as they have to lay down white under the color so the color is represented accurately (without the t-shirt color bleeding through).  
 
The challenge there is that the cheaper screen print sources don't take as much time/care with registration - lining up the white backing images with the colors / design of your logo or whatever you're printing. 
 
So even with a 2-3-4 color print, it's worth spending the extra $0.50 or $1 per shirt to buy the heavier nicer t-shirts (because people will want to wear them if they're comfy) and it's worth the extra $1-2 per shirt to go with the higher quality print shop if you have a choice, because more often than not they'll be better at registration of the image and you'll get a much higher quality shirt. 
 
I have a lot of people buying shirts these days - I have folks come up and buy a shirt without buying sauce. It's totally worth doing, though it costs quite a bit for a minimum order, especially the 1st with set-up costs for the screens. And as THP said, the more colors, the more costly the shirts. 
 
That said, for a high quality shirt, $18-24 isn't unreasonable as a retail price, so you can do pretty well with them. Plus they never spoil, require very little for storage, and make great gifts to your friends & family. 
:cheers: 
 
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