Custom t-shirts serve as a walking billboard. When done well, a t-shirt is pretty universally cool across all age demographics. So, understandably, companies want a piece of the marketing action. Hopping on that bandwagon, it’s tempting for many companies to just go for “cheap is better” and buy the lowest-priced t-shirts they can get their hands on.
As the saying goes: you get what you pay for. Really cheap just isn’t worth it.
Here’s what it means to get retail-quality shirts your customers will love to wear. Bonus: they may be cheaper than you think.
Macklemore famously sang about a fifty dollar Gucci t-shirt. He rapped, disparagingly, “I call that getting swindled and pimped; I call that getting tricked by a business.”
Fortunately, great custom t-shirts can be had for a lower base price than $50/shirt. MUCH lower.
Whatever the price, companies want to see the return on investment. That ROI comes in the form of repeat purchases, brand recognition and representation. You want custom t-shirts that get worn, not stuck to the bottom of a dresser drawer.
“Cheap” doesn’t mean inexpensive, though. Cheap means:
Cheap is instantly recognizable to customers. They pick it up and it just feels cheap. So even if you get a customer with that initial low price, in the long run “cheap” is actually really expensive. Cheap costs you positive brand impressions, repeat customers and the longevity you want to see out of a custom t-shirt.
Cheap custom shirts can be made inexpensively but still with quality. More tips on that in a moment.
If you put yourself in the shoes (or shirts) of your ideal customers, it’s pretty easy to imagine what they would want: the opposite of everything listed above!
Favorite t-shirts get worn repeatedly. Sure, the design and the color contribute to what constitutes a “favorite t-shirt,” but other factors which rate highly include:
The kind of shirt described on a list like that gets worn again and again--that’s where you start to see the real ROI on custom t-shirts.
Fortunately, if you want custom shirts cheap, it can be done! In this case, we are talking about cheap custom shirts that fit the “inexpensive” definition, rather than being poor quality.
There are lots of ways to save some serious dough with custom t-shirts online!
Here are some of the pro tips:
Advertising and brand promotion with custom t-shirts makes great sense, if it’s done well. We can help you get the cheap custom shirts you want, without them being, you know, cheaply made.