People ask me on a daily basis which shirts do I prefer? It’s a tough question with so many styles out there. I think that some people emphasize the design dramatically and then cheap out when it comes to the shirt. I am personally more of a fan of going with a nicer shirt or something a little different and keeping the design simple. But really the type of shirt to get is dependent on what the shirt will be used for. Gyms and fitness types like to go with Blends like the Next Level Triblend or Next Level CVC. On that same note blends are very popular with the younger generation since they can print more “Vintage” looking designs on them which is HOT right now…but we tend to use American Apparel Track Shirt and Canvas Triblend more for those. If it’s a 100% Cotton shirt you are looking for you can’t beat Canvas 3001, it’s soft and cut well, but you can save a little money and use Anvil which makes a really great “Fashion Fit” shirt in the Anvil 980. If you want a 100% Cotton shirt that is more affordable and has a ton of color options you can’t turn down the Gildan 5000.

Ladies shirts are a whole other breed! Bella has tons of really cool styles as does Alternative Apparel and Next. All of which carry the ever so trendy burnout. Don’t shy away from some of the cool Tunic styles or interesting cuts. Those always sell better than just your standard boring shirt!

I realize this blog was more technical and consists of me basically rambling of a bunch of shirt options. We have a FAVORITES page with some of our current favorite styles, but as always you are more than welcome to contact us in regards to any ideas you might have or if you want some assistance picking out the best shirt for your needs!

This morning was quite fun!  We had planned a practical joke to play on one of our customers… A few weeks ago our customer Eleiko Sport placed an order for a good amount of shirts.  We decided it’d be fun to just slightly modify their logo and give them a good scare when they came to pick everything up.

So we thought we would just slightly tweak it and put the I before the E.  This required messing with the file to get the proper arc, but it seemed just slight enough to be a perfectly honest mistake!

We loaded up the car today to bring them 10 boxes of shirts.  We told our customer that since they were all taped up we had pulled one for him to check out and then handed him the fake one.  It was really awesome watching him double take at it!  He obviously outsmarted us ‘cos he immediately said, “They look great! But, isn’t the text a little bigger than we discussed?”  We were totally taken back and actually wondered if he noticed.  Then came, “Well, as long as they’re all spelled like this we’re good!”

We felt very played, but luckily got to continue the joke and freak out the lady in charge of actually ordering.  We suggested that no one would know the difference and if anything they could just sell them a bit cheaper!  It was quite fun.  He got us back again just now by saying he just went through all the boxes and they were all wrong, “Did you use the wrong screen?”  Luckily we only did 1 print of the wrong one and destroyed the film and broke down the screen IMMEDIATELY.  I love playing jokes on customers and think this will become a more standard part of doing business with us!  Thankfully we were confident enough to know that all of the prints looked really really good!

Last week Cooper got sick so Erin stayed home with him for a couple of days.  Since we’ve been super busy I had to actually do some printing myself.  The last 6 months or so I’ve focused mainly on customer relations, billing, and design for Embroidery and Promo Products.  Meanwhile Erin runs our production department and she is a hawk for quality control.  I didn’t want us to fall behind so I came in and worked a couple 14 hour days behind the press.  I now apologize for all the times I’ve accepted super rush orders and just took for granted that my employees had the designs done early, folded nicely and looking great without even complaining!

I must’ve stopped every 50 shirts  to re lo0k at the piles of shirts left.  It’s like a never ending buffet of work and I learned how hard all of these Barrel Maker’s work.  I have a great appreciation for all of the generous and awesome people who help us out now and who’ve helped us these past few years!

BTW-We will be offering a beginners T-Shirt Printing class several times a month.  Look out for our “Classes” page under “Services” as well as our sweet Groupon offer coming soon!

Here’s some recent pics,

J