by evangraphics

Hey everybody,

I told Shawn I would help him out with some site and add some good content about Technology and New Media and the roles they can play in the development of your team and the game of rugby as a whole.

Since I recently worked to get t-shirts printed with my club, the Indianapolis Impalas, I decided to share with you some of the experience and knowledge I have about working with t-shirts and merchandise.

There are several options in getting merchandise and t-shirts made for your team. Today, I am going to focus on 3 ways to get t-shirts printed. Ofcourse there are ups and downs to each, and hidden costs, etc.

Option 1: Scrumbot.com

First off I want to talk about Scrumbot.com. If you have seen Rugby Magazine lately, they are advertising in there like crazy. They are essentially a rugby specific printing company that uses a form of digital printing for most of their products. For those of you who aren’t familiar with printing techniques, digital printing essentially uses a giant printer to print an image on some sort of physical surface. This makes small orders or even single orders of shirts relatively cheap and effective. Normally when working with these kinds of t-shirts, you will notice that the ink will fade over time. Most t-shirts run $15-20 on Scrumbot.com and they promise 20% of all sales of your team’s products. Basically, you send them your logos and tell them what products you would want the logo on, and they make an online shop for you. You can sell all of your products online and not have to worry about keeping track of a bunch of t-shirts. You also do not have to buy anything, or keep an inventory yourself, so it is an effective thing for less experienced or less organized teams. The downside to this is that you are probably more likely to sell t-shirts in person that over the internet. (i.e. People are more prone to buy something from you at a game than to go online, order it, pay $5 in shipping and then wait a week to get it). Personally I would not go with them, I ordered a warm up shirt and hat from them in December. I got the warm up shirt 2 weeks after ordering and it was pretty thin (not something a prop would want to wear on a night out on the town) and it was too short for my chest. I ordered a large and I am 6’2″, so it really shouldn’t have been too far of a stretch for it to fit. My hat is still MIA. It has almost been 3 months and no word yet.

Pros:
- Easy
- Don’t have to worry about inventory or selling them at games
- Good for small orders
- Print unlimited number of colors

Cons:
- T-shirts fade and aren’t of highest quality
- Rigid price structure
- Not as many product options as other companies
-Slow turn around
- Have to pay for shipping shirts

Option 2: CafePress.com

Next we will talk about Cafe Press. Cafe press does a similar type of digital printing as Scrum Bot, but they have a wider array of options. Since the use the same digital printing as Scrum Bot, their shirts do fade, but they offer other good products like banners, mugs, etc. Heck you can even sport a team thong if you so desire. It is set up similar to Scrum Bot, but you have to set up your own shop. It isn’t as hard as you expect, as they allow you to upload your images and adjust them visually on different products. You can also adjust prices everyday if you would want (I wouldn’t recommend this). I normally don’t buy t-shirts from them, but I have ordered some nice banners and mugs from them. They do have a pretty good turn around, I can usually order a banner and get it 3-4 days later (with economy shipping – don’t waste money on their faster shipping options, stuff usually gets to you quickly).
Pros:
- Easy
- Don’t have to worry about inventory or selling them at games
- Good for small orders
- Larger selection of items
- Print unlimited number of colors

Cons:
- T-shirts fade and aren’t of highest quality
- More web work
- Have to pay for shipping shirts

Option 3: Local Print Shops

The last place I would like to talk about is local print companies. Every town usually has one or two good t-shirt printing shops, where you can get high quality t-shirts and for a good price, if you buy in bulk. Recently I worked on getting 200 shirts printed by a local company in Indianapolis, TL Emblem. We were able to the 200 shirts with everything including for around $7 a shirt. Now there are something that you need to take into account when getting something done by a local company. Usually local companies will use screen printing. Screen Printing (Silk Screening) is what is used on most t-shirts you probably have, and produces nice looking shirts. The only thing is that you usually have to pay for each color you put on you shirt and have to pay for set up fees for the screens. Screen printing is more versatile than traditional printing techniques. Screen printing inks can be used to work with a variety of materials, such as textiles, ceramics, wood, paper, glass, metal, and plastic. While this may be cheaper and a higher quality, it can be more difficult to figure out and you will have to deal with selling the shirts yourself and paying money up front. I believe this is easier for more organized clubs who have spouses, family members, friends involved in the club in a non-rugby fashion. Normally these people can sell shirts during games or events. In the first weekend we had the shirts, we invited 3 high school teams to play before us and sold over 100 shirts in a day and made our money back. (I would recommend this, because you make a visible connection with youth programs and you can raise money. I recommend finding sponsors for your shirts, as it can pay for most of it all of the shirts. Normally a good print company can take the shirts from design to print in 10 days and sometimes they can work with you to design a shirt.

Pros:
- High Quality Products
- Make more money
- Visible merchandise at games
- Good for team building and getting other people involved in the club

Cons:
- Keeping Track of Inventory
- Takes some work
- More difficult to figure out
- You have to invest money into it