Why Spending On Premium Screen Printing Is Worth It

Apparel has definitely become more expensive, and even for simple basic t-shirt the price and expectations of quality have gone up. When delivering quality, as a brand, your focus should be on 100% customer satisfactions. Opting for a cheaper material or cheaper print can cost you credibility and brand loyalty.

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What Is Premium Screen Printing?

Premium screen printing refers to specialty printing shop instead of the print-on-demand companies such as Printful or Zazzle. Premium screen printing includes experts screen printers that will navigate the process for you and deliver top quality prints.

A premium screen printing shop will always have designers on their team to assist with technical design inquiries and be able to help you prepare your artwork for screen printing.

Additionally, premium also refers to the type of garment. A good screen printing shop will offer you a variety of fabric types - of course, this may also vary according to the design and ink needs to achieve the perfect print.

Screen printing creates unique visual outputs when compared to digital printing. The ink for screen printing is absorbed deeper, providing clearer edges to the image. Screen printing ink can also be applied thicker, resulting in long-lasting, brighter and more vibrant colours even on darker shades.

What Are T-Shirt Premium Options?

When it comes to custom t-shirt printing you have a choice of three fabrics — polyester, cotton or blended materials.

1. Comfort Colors 1717 Heavyweight T-Shirt

Comfort Colors 1717 is 100% ring-spun cotton, making this fabric very durable and heavy. This material is comfortable and the style is a relaxed fit and a bit oversize. This style has been very popular in recent years for it’s fit.

Features:

• Relaxed fit and unisex

• 6.1 oz./yd², 100% ring spun cotton, garment-dyed

• Double-needle armhole, sleeve and bottom hems

• Twill taped neck and shoulders for extra durability

• Heavyweight

• 7/8" double-needle topstitched collar

• Pre-shrunk

2. Bella+Canvas 3001 Classic Unisex T-Shirt

This Bella+Canvas 3001 custom print t-shirt is a modern tee with a crew neck and side-seam construction for durability. Designed with superior airlume-combed and ring-spun cotton, it has a very soft feel and smooth surface which makes it great for direct to garment printing.

Features:

• 100% combed and ring-spun cotton

• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping

• Side seamed

• Retail fit and unisex sizing

• Soft and lightweight

• Crew neck

3. AS Colour 5001 Staple Tee

The AS Colour 5001 staple t-shirt has a soft and relaxed fit, made from a blend of cottons with a fit that can be worn for any occasion. You can dress it down or dress it up. A true staple for every closet.

Features:

• 100% combed cotton (heathers 15% viscose)

• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping

• Side seamed

• Regular fit and unisex sizing

• Mid-weight

• Crew neck

What if you’re just getting started?

As a small business, we understand that quality investments matter but funding for those investments can sometimes be tight. If you are at a point where you have to be highly focused on budget, consider simplifying your logo to be a 1 to 2 color print, and keep the design limited to the front of the garment. Not only does this reduce cost, but simple screen printed designs are considered to be more fashionable, which will have your customers reaching for it more often.

Why Not Use On-Demand Apparel Printing?

Print-on-demand can oftentimes be the easiest and cheapest option, however, if you’re looking to build a brand that people trust, this may not be the best option for you.

Control of your merchandise cam often times be lost, you have to trust the printer to do their job properly, but quality control can quickly become overwhelming.

Additionally, order fulfillment can take longer or can be affected by other events such as holiday rush, this is why we always recommend to make orders ahead of launch time to avoid any delays. With a premium print shop, they often times can set you up on a scheduled re-order system.

The main downside of on-demand apparel printing is the loss of control over the quality of the print and the quality of the fabric.

Check Out What Is Print-On-Demand? Pros And Cons Of This Business Model?

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In Conclusion

When launching an apparel brand, the fabric itself should be priority. We believe that choosing premium garments coupled with premium printing will cement the high-quality integrity of your brand and in turn also cement brand loyalty with customers.

If you want your custom t-shirts to market your business effectively, they need to be worn and seen. The only way to ensure that happens is to make a great t-shirt people will want to wear.

Print shops such as Family Industries, are a greatexampleshigh-qualityhigh-qualite of a premium print shop offering high quality printing and high quality service for all clients.

Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

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Cured in 60 Seconds: An inside look at live screen printing

Ten years ago we ventured into the unknown world of Live Screen Printing. At the time, no one was really doing it so our gauge on whether or not it would work was… well, there was no gauge. We were attempting to build an entire business around something that had zero proof it would actually be successful. All we knew was that we had a solid idea, the skills to pull it off, and the drive to make it work.

Today, a decade later, we are doing over four hundred events a year. To say we’ve been extremely fortunate is an understatement. We owe a giant debt of gratitude to all the incredible people who have supported us along the way, and all the brands we’ve been lucky enough to work with throughout the years.

As incredibly exciting as these past ten years have been, we couldn’t have gotten to this point without lots and LOTS of practice. As cliché as it is, practice really does make perfect. We’ve had to fall and pick ourselves back up more times than not, but those falls have taught us something each time. That’s why, in the spirit of learning, we wanted to show you how we make the magic happen. From prep work to the event itself, there’s a lot that goes into live screen printing.

Here’s a little inside look into how we do what we do…

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PREPARATION IS KEY

Stagecoach 2019 Prep — Before we headed to the desert for 2019’s Stagecoach Country Music Festival, we had to prepare hundreds of pre-printed posters for the event.

Some say that “eighty percent of life is just showing up”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really apply to live screen printing. Depending on the type of item we’re printing on, as well as the designs themselves; prep work is usually inevitable. We never want to walk into an event blindly, so we typically spend the days leading up to it practicing the activation.

Reasons for prep work ranges from types of ink we’re using to pre-printing tags and brand logos onto the items. For example, before we went to Tik Tok’s “For Black History” event in Hollywood, we pre-printed hundreds of denim jackets with the Tik Tok logo.

You may be asking yourself: “Wait. if you’re ‘live screen printing’ why are you printing stuff BEFORE you’re actually live?” That’s a solid question. What it usually comes down to is twofold: time and branding. Typically when we’re hired to work an event, a company will want their logo/branding on the items we’ll be live printing. This is completely separate from the design(s) they want to be printed live.

Whenever we’re live, we want to make sure guests of the event are given their items in a timely manner, and not wasting their time waiting in line. No one wants to wait a long time for a t-shirt when there’s food and drinks to be had! So in order to save time, we tend to pre-print any branding that the company wants on their items. That way, the items are ready to go for guests once they get to our booth. They only thing they have to worry about is choosing which design they want live printed.

Pre-printing is far from the only reason we do prep work for our live events. Sometimes we’re asked to print on an item we’ve never printed on before, and like anything you want to get good at doing: practice makes perfect.

This past April we were asked by The Fields Restaurant to do live printing on clear, PVC tote bags. While it may sound simple, printing on plastic bags can be quite tough. ESPECIALLY live. That’s why our Production Manager Mike hit the floor and practiced until we knew we could pull this off. Lucky for us, Mike is a master problem solver and came up with a system that would make this activation possible. Check out photos of the bags below!

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pack it up, pack it in…

Once we’ve got everything prepped and ready to go, it’s time for everyone’s favorite activity: PACKING! Lugging our equipment around as often as we do can be quite taxing, but practice has certainly made for a smoother operation.

Most of the events we do call for a specific type of screen printing ink. Before everything gets packed up, we need to get all those inks ready to go. Our live team will either grab something off of the ink wall that’s already prepared, or mix something up.

After the inks are ready to go, we gather all our road-ready equipment and pack it up. Depending on where the event is taking place, we either transport the equipment ourselves or ship it to the event destination.

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live from [insert location]… it’s family industries!

Stagecoach Country Music Festival 2019 - Indio, CA

Over the last ten years, we’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the country. Life on the road is a rollercoaster, but it’s like a rollercoaster in Disneyland; it never gets old, it’s always a good time, and there is very little motion sickness.

Every event is different, but load in and set up always take place before the festivities get going. After everything’s good to go, that’s when the fun begins. It can get pretty nuts whenever we’re live printing, especially at large scale music festivals like Lollapalooza and Stagecoach, but that’s kind of why we love it. We feed off the energy of the crowd, and that’s what keeps the work interesting after all these years.

Depending on the activation and item being printed, our live team can turn an item out every thirty to ninety seconds. That’s why we’ve been able to take events on like the grand opening of Toyota’s headquarters in Plano, Texas where we printed five thousand shirts in four hours. Our heads were spinning and our arms were tired, but boy did we have a great time! That’s why we’re always down for a good challenge. The more, the merrier.

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THAt’s all folks!

Bugs Ball 2019 - Warner Bros. Studio

HOPE WE SEE YOU ON THE ROAD!

For more information on Live Screen Printing and all the other awesome activations we do, head over to our website:

CONSTRUCTION UPDATE: Camp Family

As you may or may not know, we have been in the process of building our brand new facility in Frogtown, LA. We’re calling it Camp Family. There’s still quite a lot to do, but we’re too excited to keep all the updates to ourselves.

A couple weeks ago we got to witness the cement being poured onto the ground floor, and while the ground breaking had happened months prior, the cement made it all feel much more real. Then, as if that wasn’t cool enough for us, 10 days ago we got to watch the first walls go up. We know that all of this sounds way less exciting than it actually was, but watching your dream come to life in physical form is a pretty crazy thing.

Anyway, enough of the emotional blabber. Here are some pictures of the progress we’re making at Camp Family. Stay tuned for more.

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Bella+Canvas x Family Industries

This past February we invited Bella+Canvas over to the shop to shoot a how-to video on screen printing and heat pressing vinyl designs on fitness leggings.

Our Production Manager, Mike hit the manual screen press while Phil, our in-house jack-of-all-trades, hopped on the heat press. Getting the opportunity to work on a video with Bella+Canvas was an incredible experience, and it’s always fun for us to help others learn a little more about our craft.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO & BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOS BELOW!

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Behind the Scenes photos

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Camp Family

As some of you may know, we’ve been hard at work on planning and building a brand new facility. Well, we’d like to formally introduce you to Camp Family; our brand new facility in Frogtown, Los Angeles, CA!

We know, we know… the place is a bit of a mess right now. We actually have a very good explanation for this beautiful mess. As of Monday, March 11 we’ve officially broken ground on Camp Family’s construction! We are giddy as hell to finally get started on building our new home, but there’s still a ways to go.

In our continued effort to bring you beyond our walls and inside the Family, we are going to periodically share photos of Camp Family’s progress.

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CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM DAY 2 OF CONSTRUCTION:

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