You can get quality t’s and other shirts without spending a fortune. That said, if you sell a junk shirt the word of your low quality would spread like wild fire.
I’m going to take a little side step pit stop here. Not knowing if you are a printer, printer wanna be, pre-print line seller or any one of the numerous other things one could be in the t-shirt biz, it makes it hard to reply with the correct aspect of an issue as it can very depending on what part of the biz you are it.
If all you are doing is selling pre-prints online, then really all you need to worry about is a good shirt with a good price and fast shipping. That’s about it.
However, if you are in the actual production of printed apparel or even pre-print sales to retail outlets, this starts to add more issues to be taken into consideration.
Take us. We are a custom printer for the most part. Someone calls, says they want this or that on some shirts and we create the magic to make it happen. We have a shop house brand of shirt that we provide unless a customer specifies another brand. Our house brand is Gildan 6.1oz Ultra Cotton and is one of the best shirts you can get for the price. The entire Gildan line is outstanding from basic t’s to pigment dyed to ringers. It is because we provide the higher quality of shirt that our customers know they will always get a quality produce from us.
Now the shirt is just one part of the puzzle. Add to the shirt durable high quality prints and customer service that cannot be matched and you have just put together a recipe for success.
The beauty is that we provide a quality shirt that can stand right along side of the beefy-T’s but at a fraction of the cost. To be honest there have been times we have paid as little as $0.77 for 6.1oz 100% cotton shirts in any color. I don’t get those deals often but they do come around from time to time.
I guess what I am saying is get several brands of shirts. Pick the top quality style from each of those manufactures and then compare the shirts yourself. Out of those, pick one brand/style to be your house brand and use the other as alternatives at the customer’s request. The trick here is to pick only from the high quality shirts. Never sell junk even if the customer wants to get out cheap. Remember it’s your name associated with that shirt when all goes bad. If a customer want’s cheaper than you will provide, send them walking to someone else.