Our small business gives away imprinted promotional t-shirts as a
marketing tool. Currently we are paying $5.00 per shirt for 100%
cotton adult sizes with full front printing for seven different shirt
colors/one color printing per shirt (eg. black on red, black on gray,
blue on gold, blue on white, etc.).

As the business has grown so have our production needs, and in
preparing our tax returns last month, we were surprised to note a
$10,000 expense in '02 for
imprinted t-shirts.

With 2,000+ pieces expected in '03, we are interested in finding a
company that could provide these imprinted shirts in the $1.50-$2.00
range. We would like to find the best pricing offered by U.S.
printers vs. offshore companies and for first quality shirts vs. irregulars.
Any other cost-cutting suggestions would be appreciated.

That is our research challenge, and we thank you in advance for your
assistance!

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 05 May 2003 17:32 PDT

About the cheapest I've come up with for one-color printing is:

$1.99 per white t-shirt for orders over 1,000 shirts

$2.71 per light-colored shirt for orders over 1,000 shirts

$3.13 per dark-colored shirt for orders over 1,000 

No setup charges.

I'll keep looking, but if nothing cheaper turns up, would this meet your needs?

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Clarification of Question by wsg-ga on 08 May 2003 12:52 PDT

Thanks for your help. Actually, $3.00 is too high. Since posting this
question, I placed a bid at printindustry.com and received a few
quotes in the $2.50 range for dark shirts/$2.00 range for white.

So now I am definitely looking for something between $1.50-$2.00.
Please let me know if you find anything, can recommend other resources
or have suggestions for bringing these prices down further.

May be you can get it done at thirupur in Tamil nadu chennai India. I
expect the printing should be less than US$ 1 plus cost of T shirt.
The town exports few bilion dollars of T shirts world wide.

Thanks! That's an excellent suggestion. Can you provide any contact
information for that company, preferrably a website/e-mail address?

I am originally from Tamil Nadu (India), Tirupur is one of worlds
major texile export cities. They export millions and millions of
textiles per year. The labor cost is very low, but very competive in
quality.

check out these links, it has a few addresses & phone numbers...
http://www.tirupuronline.com/prod03.htm
http://www.tiruppur.com/yp/yp.htm
http://www.tirupur.net/

http://www.indianyellowpages.com/india/manufacturer_exporters/f/fabrics_3.htm

Thank you for these links. I was only able to submit a request to one
of these companies as the other sites were not functional. As a former
resident, would you be willing to assist with this project or do you
have any family/friends in India who could?