All t-shirt suppliers use this code when describing their different garment options, and you might have been wondering, what is GSM? We thought we might go through that for you to help clarify this term.

GSM stands for Grams per Square Metre – so it’s referring to the weight of the fabric. However, a lot of people often form the opinion that lightweight fabric equals poor quality and heavyweight fabric equals good quality…..this is not always the case!

In fact, a lot of t-shirt suppliers who have lightweight t-shirts available actually charge more for this option.

So what does equal quality?

There are a few different types of fabric finishes available, and these are usually the things that determine the quality of a fabric. Here’s a brief description of a few different terms you might come across when you’re looking for your next run of tees:

• 40s or 40 singles / 30s or 30 singles / 20s or 20 singles etc – This refers to the fineness of each strand of cotton thread used to weave your t-shirts. A higher number means a finer thread, so in turn a softer, finer fabric is created with better drape/hang – it basically flows better and sits nicer on your body.




• Brushed Cotton means exactly that! The cotton is brushed to remove any excess lint and fibers from the fabric, resulting in a soft, smooth feel.




• Combed Cotton uses a combing method to remove short fibers and to straighten or arrange longer fibers into parallel order to create a smooth, fine yarn. Combed cotton is usually used to produce finer (lightweight) t-shirts and is softer than Brushed Cotton. – American Apparel, AS Colour, Gildan (64000 style only)




• Ring Spun Cotton is made by twisting and spinning a rope of cotton fibers. This results in a really soft feel yet very strong fabric. – All American Apparel, AS Colour, Gildan (64000 style only)




• Enzyme Washed Cotton has gone through a special process using enzymes to produce a really soft finish and smooth look to the fabric. – American Apparel Power Wash tee

So next time you’re looking at your t-shirt options, take the GSM into account but be aware that there are other factors for consideration!

Besides providing highly amusing free entertainment, people-watching can be a great source of inspiration for all creatives and business people.  For example, let’s take a look at some tactics T-shirt designers might use to get creative inspiration from people-watching.

• Notice the T-shirts people are already wearing.  Figure out what works and what doesn’t.  Maybe the design that old guy is sporting would look much cooler if it was larger, stylized, done in discharge ink, and centred on a purple tee, rather than plastered in orange on a pocket of a white polo shirt.
• Watch people’s gestures and habits, the way they walk, the facial expressions they use while talking.  Can you capture an expression or an interaction between people in a simple caricature?
• Try dreaming up some what-if scenarios, based on the scene around you.  What’s that stressed-out looking guy over there talking to himself about?
• Listen for snatches of conversation.  Kids in particular, with their innocent view of the world, can come up with some truly hilarious questions and one-liners which can be used to good effect in a T-shirt design.
• See if you can figure out what’s hot and what’s not.  Perhaps you can guess what future trends are going to be, and create your next release of designs accordingly.  What colours are popular?   What sort of clothes are the people in your target market wearing?  Perhaps someone has put colours together in a way that you haven’t seen before … and it works …

You can people-watch anywhere – outside one of the stores you sell your T-shirts to, in cafes, on park benches, in a local shopping mall, or at the arrivals terminal at the airport.  Take advantage of times when you have to wait.  The important thing to remember is that inspiration comes from observing and thinking, from finding a fresh perspective.  By standing back to observe humans you don’t know, from an objective distance, rather than during the course of your everyday interactions, you might just find it easier to let your imagination fly.

Image courtesy of Milori Blue

Imagine the number of T-shirt designs a screen printer sees in the course of a year – hundreds, if not thousands.  And with all that experience of the t-shirt design industry, just imagine the wealth of knowledge and advice we would be able to offer a new designer!

In ‘Designers’ Guide to the Apparel Printing Industry’, Adam Wagner of GoMediaZine shares some wonderful insights and tips from his interviews with representatives from five major US apparel printers, covering topics such as design trends, file preparation, printing techniques and complex designs.

Multiple links, quotes, and some thoughtful commentary from readers make this already interesting and informative article even more entertaining and useful.  Check it out here – http://www.gomediazine.com/design-articles/interviews/designers-guide-apparel-production/

Let me know your thoughts below.

Make a statement, bond a team, and raise money for a good cause – it’s not surprising that charitable activities and screen printed T-shirts so often go hand-in-hand.  Grandma’s cupcakes might taste magnificent and sell … well … like hotcakes … but T-shirts are bigger and they stay fresh longer.

Inedible or not, there are still quite a few ways you can put T-shirts to work for fundraising:

• Team-themed shirts can foster team identity, unity and spirit both during and after a fundraising event
• Participant tees can advertise and generate enthusiasm for an event while it runs and become wearable memorabilia (to wildly varying degrees of raggedy-ness)
• Profits from the sales of beautifully designed T-shirts – branded or not – can provide much-needed funds for charity
• Themed T-shirt design competitions can promote community awareness of a charitable cause (recent examples: http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/8448256.Rosie_s_T_shirt_boosts_charity/ and http://www.wickedlocal.com/plymouth/news/schools/x710522855/Sheriff-sponsors-South-High-T-shirt-design-contest-to-increase-awareness-of-domestic-violence)
• Charity fundraisers can wear branded T-shirts while seeking donations, to draw donors to them and publicise the charity’s identity and purpose
• T-shirts specially designed or signed by celebrity sports stars, musicians or artists can become coveted raffle prizes (check these out! http://www.yellowbirdproject.com/)

Bold messages on clothing can be a marvellous way of making a statement – people really notice them, and a favourite T-shirt might well be worn time and time again, until the poor thing is falling apart and haunting the dreams of half the wearer’s local community.  I do declare … and declare … and declare …

Of course, designing one of these threadbare treasured tees isn’t always easy.  While many of us love to wear a funny slogan and make others laugh, or help wake others up to a social problem which annoys us, or simply proclaim our support for a cause we believe in, we might not all be quite so keen to wear a colour that makes us look anaemic, or to feel like we’re walking billboards for corporate sponsors of an event. (This last possibility obviously needs to be carefully weighed against the advantages of offering advertising on T-shirts in return for corporate sponsorship, which may well be worth more than profits from sales and continued publicity after the event.  It all depends on what you want to achieve!)

There’s no hard and fast rule to achieving ongoing broadcast-by-tee once the shirt has been sold and/or the fundraising event is over and done with, but there IS a simple question which should help steer you in the right direction during design: Will this tee be worn with pride, for its own sake? If the answer is a resounding yes, spare a moment to pity the rag piles.  They’ll probably be lonely.

Happy fundraising!

We sent out a survey to all of of our customers that are t-shirt labels to learn a little bit more about their challenges in running  their business.

We invited them to send us any questions they had about their business for us to attempt to answer.

Here is one I wanted to share with everyone from Brendan. Hopefully there is something useful in there for you.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or further questions just add a comment at the bottom. Its great to be able to learn from each other.

Brendans email…

Hey Joel,

Got a question about selling to stores.

Well first of all, once my label is up and running, I
would prob be selling tees on website i make for say
45AUD.

So my cost price for tee is $16. thats $29 profit.

So if my cost price per tee is $16 and I sell to a
store for $30 then they would sell it for $60
correct? Or how ever much they want to sell it for.

How would I go about contacting say someone like…
www.thegrandsocial.com.au
www.squeakytee.com.au

Thanks
Brendan
______________________________________________________________

Hey Brendan,

Thanks for sending this through.

Its great to see you are serious about getting your t-shirt label cranking. Here are some answers to your questions.

Firstly these are answers from my experience an in no way am I suggesting that this is definitely what you should do but from my experience this is about the norm (just our disclaimer

Ok…so when attempting to work out what to charge stores for your t-shirts it is always good to reverse engineer the prices. Start at your retail price and move backwards. So first you want to set your RRP (Recommended Retail Price). This allows you to price position your brand.

So choose what price you want your t-shirts to retail for. Lets say for ease it is…$50 in this case. Generally the stores will want a 100% mark-up if possible. So that means you would want to wholesale your t-shirts for $25.

So now you have to make sure that your costs come in well below this so that you are making a profit on your sale. How much profit is enough?

Well obviously the more the better But there will have to be a minimum of course to cover all the other expenses you incur as a business and not just how much the t-shirt cost to produce. Even if there aren’t many costs now starting out…there will be in the future and you have to at least consider that now.

So ideally as the wholesaler you should aim for around 50% profit (as a minimum). Why so much less than the retailer you ask? Well when you think about it they are taking all the risk. They are purchasing in bulk and those goods are sitting on the floor in the hope that they will sell. But as the wholesaler you have it good because you get paid for the goods…you have sold them already. Even if the retailer has 30, 60 or 90 day account they have commited to purchasing your t-shirts.

So here is the formula for you to find you ideal cost price

Cost Price = Sell Price/(1+Profit Margin)…So in this case CP = $25/(1+.5) = $16.67 (You can use the same formula to go from RRP to wholesale price as well)

So Brendan…you are estimating your costs at $16 per t-shirt and you have chosen an RRP of $45 lets see how that works out for you…

So to figure out your wholesale price to the retailers – CP = SP/(1+M) = $45/(1+1) = $22.50

So you should be selling to the retailers at $22.50. Now what cost should you be aiming for to get a min 50% margin on your sale?

CP = SP/(1+M) = $22.50/(1+.5) = $15

So at the moment you are just a little over your target cost price of $15. At this stage of your business I don’t think this a big issue because as you increase volume of orders then this price will come down. But there are a bunch of things you can do to decrease your production costs.

The other thing I noticed was that you gave different RRP prices for your website and for the retailer. I’m not sure this would be a wise move unless your web one was the more expensive. In effect you can become your retail clients competition and they won’t be happy that you are undercutting them on price. Thats another reason to have a fixed RRP price. On the other hand you may want to revisit your business structure and re-evaluate if you want to retail online as well as wholesale to retailers. If you decide to sell online as well as wholesale this can be a deterrant for retailers as you become their competition.

Those websites you mentioned…the first actually seems like something that would be a great start for you. It looks as if you can start your own online store with them. Might be worth checking it out a little – http://www.thegrandsocial.com.au/help_pages/store_owners/opening_a_store

The second is a retail outlet that looks like they only sell big name stuff. But theres no harm in approaching them and seeing if you can show them your stuff. The big thing with that sort of experience is learning. If you get knocked back be sure you ask them what you would need to make them say yes.

Anyway Brendan…I hope this has been helpful for you.

Thanks mate
______________________________________________________________

Brendan got back to me with some further questions and I will share them with you soon.

We just did up this short video outlining the differences between vector based artwork and bitmap (pixel) based artwork as it relates to t-shirt printing. In the video we look at the differences between each format and which one works better in which situation. I hope you find it helpful for you when preparing your artwork for screen printing on to t-shirts.

Video Summary

The video discusses two different types of artwork that are used for T-shirt printing—vector and bitmap artwork. The first thing you need to know about these types of art is the software that makes them possible. The standard tool for creating vector artwork is Adobe Illustrator. It may also be used with bitmap images but the editing features are not as good as for vector artwork.

Adobe Photoshop is the tool of choice for bitmap or pixel based images, and most of us know the finished products by their familiar filename extensions (.jpeg and .psd). Photoshop can also be used with vector artwork, although there are again certain limits to the freedom of editing. For maximum effects and freedom of editing, you have to work with each type of image specifically in the correct program.

So which type of artwork is best for your design? The best way to go about this is to check how image quality is affected when it is resized and fine-tuned. For Adobe Illustrator, you can zoom in as near as you want to the image and still see crisp black straight lines that form part of the photo or image you’re working on. This is the type of image you want to work on when you go for T-shirt printing.

With Photoshop, the clarity isn’t as great, because at a certain resolution the image turns into small pixellated boxes that gradually fade into the background color. You don’t get crisp, razor-sharp images with this software, and consequently the design on your T-shirt might not be as clean as you want it to be.

In terms of resizing particular portions of the artwork, vector artwork is the best. Even if you take out a tiny portion of the vector artwork and blow it up to more than the size of the original image, you’ll still get crisp clear lines that show no compromise of quality. When you do the same thing with bitmap images on Photoshop, you’re likely to end up with a slightly blurry image with soft edges and rather poor color. Such an image will not look good on a T-shirt because the program has to ‘guess’ which pixels go where, so the result is a picture whose edges end in gradients.

Finally, we will look at how the different artwork affects colour separations. In Illustrator, you just have to pull out each color in a few clicks and view them on your screen side-by-side for comparison. Contrast this with Photoshop where you have to cut and paste the different-colored parts of the image in a separate document that doesn’t allow easy for comparisons with the original image and the other colored portions. Filling in the separated image with a new color is also clean and quick in Illustrator, whereas in Photoshop you don’t get the same image and color quality as the original when you zoom in.

Vector based artworks are better for any kind of screen printing, but that doesn’t mean that bitmap images and Photoshop are already obsolete. They may have great scalability, no quality loss, easy color changes, but bitmap images are still quite useful. Photo-based artworks and grayscale images still have to be worked with in Photoshop.

If you want to try vector-based images on your next T-shirt project, you may want to use free software to create and edit them because licensed tools like the Adobe Creative Suite are very expensive. Inkscape is a good alternative to Illustrator, while for bitmap images you can try Gimp. These free programs can help you work on your images and enhance them further before printing.

The guys at Threadless are pretty much the guru’s when it comes to t-shirt business on the internet. They started selling t-shirts online in 2000 and have built an empire by getting people to submit designs, then printing those designs onto t-shirts and then selling those t-shirts to you and I.

I found this video of a seminar they did called “The Skinny Corp Method For Creating Online Awesomeness” talking about their different project and how they do business. I thought it might be cool to share with everyone. So here it is…

Click here to view the embedded video.

We regularly have people asking us how they get their hand drawn designs into a format that can be used for t-shirt printing. Here is a quick video showing you the basics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Like they did in the video start with a pencil sketch of what the t-shirt design will look like. Then trace over with a black marker. The key is to use solid black lines so that the scanned the image has a lot of contrast which aids in the vectorising process within Adobe Illustrator. Once vectorised you can add your colour fills.

So get stuck in and get some custom designs done and we’ll get your t-shirts printed for you.

By now you should know your market and have developed a suitable image and label for your T shirt printing business. Now it’s time to move on to sourcing your t-shirts and choosing a printing method which does your designs justice.

Material Sourcing:

Whatever quality of t-shirt you are looking for, you’ll find them being manufactured in china. Bear in mind that these manufacturers will charge base rates for shipping and manufacture, so the larger quantities you can buy, the better deal you will get. If you’ve got a particular cut or fabric you’d like use then send them out a sample and they will probably be able to match it quite closely.

Inks and tools for screen printing are best purchased from local suppliers who can offer after sales support and equipment. If you are providing a custom t shirt printing service then the same applies but you can get ink cartridges more cheaply from budget suppliers on the internet.

Printing:

When it comes to printing you’ve got one final choice to make: Screen printing, or digital direct to garment printing? If you are looking to design your own t shirt range then the choice will primarily depend upon the bulk and quality of the printed T shirts you require. If you want to produce t shirts from other people’s designs on demand, then the screen printing cost will be prohibitive, but Direct to Garment Digital Printing will suit your business model very nicely.

If you are screen printing, then it will be important to ensure your designs translate well to the medium; screen printing is not easy, particularly for newcomers so be prepared to experiment and have some failed prints before you get the hang of the process. If you are short of time and capital, consider getting shirts printed by an expert screen printing company to ensure your products look and feel as good as they can.

By following this guide, and researching in more detail the action points it raises, you’ll ensure a successful launch and a relatively trouble free t-shirt label. Best of luck!

Found on – Teebiz.com

See – Barking Irons

Let us know what you think in the comments section!!