How can custom clothing help you?
Custom printed T-shirts and embroidered polo’s are an excellent way for businesses to build a corporate culture and identity. Professionally printed or embroidered uniforms convey a look of professionalism and also provide an effective medium for promotion. Most established corporations and blue chip companies use printed T-shirts to either enhance or improve their market value by capitalising on their promotional and advertising effectiveness. Using printed T-shirts as a promotional tool, however, is not only exclusive to their use as uniforms and corporate wear.
The true promotional value in T-shirts and printed clothing comes with their relatively low cost in production and general ease in distributing to mass audiences. The evolution of printing technologies and textile production has made T-shirt printing unfathomably cost effective for any company to implement into their marketing plan, whether they are a large blue chip corporation or a startup. Distributing free promotional T-shirts to loyal or prospective customers at industry related events is probably the simplest channel for getting your brand to the public. While measuring return on investment for this style of quasi-guerrilla marketing can be difficult, it certainly creates ambassadors for your brand and cheap publicity in a world where the digital space is making this increasingly difficult each and every day
Another great advantage that comes with custom printed T-shirts are their versatility to communicate with different target markets. If you think of a T-shirt or any other type of garment as a blank canvas, the possibilities are virtually infinite in what you can create to attract attention to your brand. A professionally designed logo printed onto a premium quality garment using a state-of-the-art printing technique will render a finished product that will be highly desirable either for sale or as a promotional giveaway. It is important to consider the message you want your custom printed T-shirt to convey. If you are an innovative, hip and tech-savvy startup, you may want to create a high-tech and trendy design on an American Apparel T-shirt using Direct To Garment (DTG) digital printing, as an example. For corporations aiming to express professionalism as their core value, a professionally embroidered logo on a premium polo shirt could suit their use better, perhaps.
The cost of T-shirt printing ranges and will always vary depending on the printing technique you choose. The most common types of t-shirt printing are screen-printing, DTG, transfer and CAD CUT printing, in order of quality from best to worst. Screen-printing will always produce the highest quality and durable print. However, the reservations with screen-printing are that set-up charges will always be incurred per colour in the design. This is because a separate screen must be created in order to transfer ink onto the desired garment. This will prove to be uneconomical if your design is very detailed in colour and you have a short-run order, approximately 25 items or less. The benefit is that you can achieve economies of scale with the more units you order, proving to be the most economical printing technique on large-run orders.
Printing technology has vastly improved the printing quality produced by DTG digital printing to the point where the difference between that of screen-printing is almost negligible. The benefits with DTG digital printing are that you can print brilliant multicoloured designs without any set-up costs, a perfect option for short-run orders. DTG uses digital inkjet technology to directly inject ink into fabrics, making the finish seamless to the touch. Improvements in transfer and CAD CUT vinyl printing have come far as well and can be a good option for cheap promotional t shirts, but their durability is nowhere near that of screen-printing and digital printing. Decide first whether you want to give away your garments for promotional purposes or sell them directly to consumers, which may help you decide between printing techniques.
