Year 2 of a triathlon that I help organize! Last year we had about $20 wrapped up into each shirt for the participants. They were a nice dri fit and the logo/design looked great but I think this is an area that we can improve upon our cost. We give all race proceeds to charity so we strive to put on a great event but also are also dialing in our expenses.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Hi, good god, $20??? Shirt pricing is really hard to do without more details in terms of qty, design, timelines, etc but you can PM me or email me at hybriddesignhi@gmail.com
My company does shirts for 5-10 events a month ranging from smaller 50-100 person events to 3,000 person events and I’ve got to say, we’ve never topped $10 a shirt even for smaller events.
If you’re small we do a white dri-fit type shirt with full color front and back printing for $10 out the door with a 50 piece min and if you need more later, 5 more, 15 more, whatever, you can add them on ala carte even after your event. If you’re a big event $10 is pricey but some smaller events love this program. You can do kids, women’s, men’s, upgrade to LS for $2bucks, etc.
Anyways, shirts are confoundingly confusing sometimes so don’t feel bad asking questions.
Tai
We are in Canada so my contacts are primarily up here. The $20 price is extremely high. If you would like to contact me I can send you some suggestions. Assuming you are in the U.S. Canada might be a good option with the $ exchange these days as long as shipping and duty doesn’t offset any $ conversion savings.
Anyways, shirts are confoundingly confusing sometimes so don’t feel bad asking questions.
Tai,
Indeed. So confusing and such a default in the events business that last year I started to ask . . why?
http://stevefleck.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-race-shirt.html
Over 15 million “free” T-Shirts are given out at running and triathlon races in North America each year!
I can tell you that amongst RD’s this get’s discussed routinely, because it is a big cost, it can be a huge headache, and for the new RD, very confusing.
My rough guess is about 1/3 of participants, who tend to be experienced vets, don’t care about a race-shirt. They are typically saying, “give me a savings on my entry or give me something else that’s cool”, then the other 2/3, a lot of newbies and first timers, are really into the T-shirts - for them it’s absolutly key. So given that rough split, an RD needs to be VERY careful what they do. Right now there is no easy one way or the other way answer to this.
Steve, here is some data to support your theory.
We included shirts (both cotton and tech) as part of the race entry for our first 11 years. Last year we moved away from shirts because of our athlete feedback in our post-race surveys and went to Headsweats hats. We also asked (in the post-race survey) what athletes would like in 2014. Based on that feedback we have a selection. When you enter one of our races you can choose a tech shirt, a Headsweats hat or a discount in the race fee. Registration for the series opened about a month ago and here is the breakdown so far. Shirts – 62%, Hats – 15%, Discount – 23% Looks like your 2/3 guess might be accurate. We will see as the season gets closer and more entries come in.
As said, that’s really high. Our little race gives Sport Tek shirts seen here: http://www.companycasuals.com/...amp;swatch=Iron+Grey. Our design, front and back, was only one color and I think we spent less than $6.50/shirt. They aren’t top of the line, but people seem to like them. PM me if you would like our vendor information.
John,
Thanks.
Good to know that in the field that 1/3-2/3 split is about right.
As I said, with a split like that it does make it tricky for RD’s to figure out what to do.
Clearly, many T-shirts that are just given out, never get used as they were originally intended - they end up in the garbage, given to Goodwill,
or popular here, end up as bike rags with the 1/3 who really don’t care about the shirt! However, appeal to this crowd, and you run the risk of alienating the other 2/3 of people for whom the race-shirt is a big deal!
I think that pretty much every race organizer that has put on more than a few races has the same questions event after event, should they provide race shirts and if so, how much time and money should they put into them being that as noted, a lot of people don’t care about the shirts yet to some they are a treasured memento or badge of honor after a race that is, for whatever reason, special to them.
For a smaller event, shirts can be a huge part of the race budget and for new comers to race production I’ve got to say that shirts can be one of the more confusing aspects to figure out as it’s often hard to get a concrete quote for shirt printing, especially you don’t know your exact qty (as you probably won’t until a week or so out), don’t really know what you want it to look like (as you’re a race organizer and probably not a graphic designer) and don’t know exactly what type of shirt you want as there are a billion choices out there.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this but here are a few quick pointers from a printers perspective:
Cotton vs dri-fit:
-Pricing is coming down on dri-fit/tech shirts, way down. You shouldn’t be paying more than a $2-3 dollar (or less sometimes) to upgrade to a tech shirt.
-Not all printers are familiar or have good sources for tech shirts though and this doesn’t mean that they are a bad printer it just means that they are likely plenty busy with cotton shirts and just haven’t gone digging to establish good vendors for blank tech shirts. If your printer is not familiar with tech shirts either make sure that they are committed to figuring out what they need to to source them and print on them properly or move to another printer.
-If you are a real bargain hunter be VERY CAREFUL if someone offers you a dirt cheap product. Check samples of the shirts as there are bargain basement cotton and tech shirts out there and just because the label says 100% polyester microfiber doesn’t mean that you are going to like the shirt. If someone really really realllllly wanted tech shirts at a no holds barred cost most printers can dip below $5 or even less for a complete shirt (larger race, 500+ I’d guess) but your participant likely won’t like what they get once they put it on.
Tired of tech shirts but want a nicer shirt?
-We’ve been moving a lot of our clients to higher quality cotton or cotton blend shirts which end up somewhere between a normal cotton (think Hanes Tagless or equivalent) and a decent tech shirt (Zorrel, etc). We’ll spec something like a Next Level 3600 or a Pima Apparel shirt. You get a major upgrade from your run of the mill cotton tee and it really stands out in a sea of so so tech shirts. That being said, sometimes sourcing 2,000 of this type of shirt, of the same color, on a tight timeline can be a major headache. We ordered from EIGHT warehouses for one event last year just to get their sizes.
Printing, Sublimation vs Screen:
Sublimation:
-Sublimation printing is how cycling jerseys are made.
-The ink is dyed right into the fabric and this ONLY works on polyester shirts so basically tech shirts although it will also work to varying degrees on blends. There are a LOT of people have purchased entry level sublimation systems that think that they can print on cotton. If they tell you they can move along to the next printer.
-Sublimation allows full color (photos, a billion full colored sponsor logos) on a white shirt and on a colored shirt you can get varied versions of full color as in the shirt color itself will tint the print color slightly. On a dark shirt it will not work well. On a black shirt it will not work at all so don’t ask.
-Sublimation is very cost effective for smaller events as there is zero set up cost and it’s very flexible in terms of printing small batches on separate occasions. If you ordered 75 shirts and need ten more later, chances are it won’t be a problem (although if the printer is only making $2bucks a shirt they may charge a bit extra if you want just 3 more…).
-Sublimation takes a lot more time per shirt (1:30-2min per shirt on a faster single station machine for a front and back shirt) and most shops doing sublimation only have one system. We have three sublimation shirt presses and it is still slow. This being said, that if you’re doing 500+ shirts, sublimation is probably not for you unless you really really like the look of sublimation.
-Setting up art for sublimation can be 100% easier than screen printing if you’re a newbie so again, for smaller events, this may be the way to go
-Average costs would be $9-12 per shirt and I’m basing this on an event size of 50-1000 shirts. You can get lower and higher pricing depending on your needs, qty, shirt type, printer set up etc. If your printer is running a sublimation set up out of his garage there is a good chance that even though they can turn out a beautiful print that their cost to print each shirt is a lot higher than a larger printer. For instance when we started doing sublimation we had a couple of Epson 4000 printers which are good printers, run a couple of grand each and are considered commercial quality by most sublimators. We now have two larger format (40" or wider printing widths) and that cut our consumable cost by at least 50%.
Screen:
-Screen is night and day more efficient for larger printing jobs both in terms of speed and material cost per shirt
-With screen printing there ARE set up costs and the whole question is does the printer wrap them into the final cost or bill them ala carte. No matter what, they are there.
-You’re paying per color so the more colors in your design the more you’re going to pay.
-I’m not even going to try to explain pricing as it’s pretty confusing so find a printer you trust and work with them.
-If your shirt designer isn’t used to designing for screen printing you may need to find someone else or make sure that you understand that this may cause a problem.
-For a race under 100 people, if shirt cost is an issue, go with a simple 1-2 color print front and back to keep costs down.
-For a race over 1,000 people do whatever you want, printing price per shirt won’t really vary all that much although… at 1,000 people a dollar difference in printing cost is $1,000…
-If you want to print on a dark shirt, you need to screen print
-Pricing, huuuuuge variation. If you want rough quotes PM me or email me with as many details as you have.
Printing placement on a shirt:
-get creative, do a sleeve print, a side seam print, a lower back print but also make sure that your printer works with you on this as it can positively or negatively affect pricing. If you print over a seam (side seam for instance) it may or may not be pretty, be prepared for this but also keep in mind that sometimes creative design may be more important than a perfect print
Getting your files ready so that your printer doesn’t kill you:
-You’re going to want to get everything to your printer as print ready as possible. This means no teeny tiny blurry logos, etc. Ideally you’ll hand them (ok email them…) a vector graphic calling out all of the ink colors, with everything sized 100% to scale etc.
-The #1 thing that holds up shirt jobs is not having sponsor logos either in on time or in a non-acceptable format (to small, blurry, wrong file type etc). For someone like us, we have thousands of logos on file or we’ll go digging for a sponsor logo if we really need to but for most printers, if can’t get them a good version of the logo it’s not going to be on the shirt or it’s going to look horrible on it.
-If you’re designing for screen printing you need to understand that the shirts are printed in discrete colors so you’re paying ala carte per color and you also need to design your shirt this way. There are exceptions, ie we’re currently running a 6 color process photo realistic print job for a cycling event but for 99% of the race designs, you’re designing in individual colors.
-If you’re sublimating, all you really need to do is zoom in to full size on your screen and if it looks good at that size, you’re ready to print!
Timelines:
-Most printers will want your final job details, art, shirts delivered, etc in at least a week in advance. Sometimes they’ll require more time and sometimes less but. This is a week ASSUMING that you scheduled printing time with them several weeks in advance.
-Depending on what type of shirt you are using the printer may or may not just be able to find 3,000 lime green tech shirts in 3 days. Figure out your shirts early and you may need to be flexible on color sometimes.
I’ll try to add more later but I’ve got to get back to work for a bit…