While it’s never been easier to find a company that’s ready, willing and able to print as many t-shirts as you could ever wish for, this in itself represents a blessing and a curse. A simple web search is enough to see dozens, maybe even hundreds of printing services pop up, of whom the vast majority will of course be making all manner of claims to fame. Not a bad thing on the surface, but at the same time this makes it all the more difficult to isolate those you should be doing business with.
Why such caution? For two very good reasons – the first of which being that anyone with a home printer and a laptop can pretend to be a ‘pro’ service only to rip folk off with rubbish results. Other than these dodgy types, there are also those that are in the business of taking orders, passing them on to third parties and taking a chunk for their own pockets for basically doing nothing at all. Again, there’s really nothing to gain from going this way.
The bad news is that these undesirable operators make up a pretty high proportion of those in business today, but the good news is they’re also perfectly simple to avoid. It just takes a little proactivity and few common sense tips to stay well and truly on the positive side of the t-shirt printing fence – keep the following in mind and it’s hard to go wrong:
1 – Professionalism
First and foremost, it’s pretty easy these days to pick up on a website that’s clearly not run by a group of leading professionals. The reason being that it’s no longer difficult to build, launch and operate a website that’s functional, well-presented, free from errors and generally a wealth of useful information. If any of these boxes aren’t ticked, it’s largely certain that it’s an amateur effort you’re looking at and one to be approached with caution.
2 – Equipment
More often than not, a pro printing company will make it very clear as to what kind of equipment they use and the various types of printing technology on offer. DTGPrintz.com for example highlights the various options and the benefits associated with each, while others make absolutely no mention of the equipment or technology used at all. Why? Well, it could either be that they’re hardly proud of the equipment they use or that they have no idea what’s used because somebody else does the printing for them – again this is a lose-lose situation.
3 – Address
No business address means one thing – no real business. Not that it’s impossible to run various types of business from a standard residential address, but when you’re talking full-scale industrial printing of the highest quality, a company name with its own dedicated address is something of an essential ‘stamp’ of authenticity. And for that matter, so are dedicated landline telephone numbers and email addresses.
4 – Capacity
If the printing house is able to handle bulk orders with no problem, it’s probably safe to say it’s a large-scale operation and a real printing business. If on the other hand you get the idea a dozen t-shirts a day would stretch resources to a breaking point, chances are it’s nothing of the sort…simple as that.
5 – Openness
It never hurts to ask a few questions prior to going ahead with a larger t-shirt printing order, just for peace of mind. Why should I choose you? What makes you the better choice? What equipment do you use? Where are you based? Do you provide samples? All very fair questions and worth asking, though should any be either avoided or responded to with offense or unkindness, you have your real answer.
6 – Guarantees
In the case of a pro printing house that’s capable of producing results to be proud of, it isn’t too much to expect and to ask for certain guarantees. From the price you pay to the results you receive and generally everything else across the board, if it’s all backed by a guarantee or two,then there’s really very little that can go wrong.
7 – Feedback
Last but not least, take the time to look into the feedback the printing service has chalked up by way of previous clients’ comments and reviews before going ahead with any order, large or small. This matters because it’s really the only way of gaining an insight into the way they perform in the real world – much more accurate and reliable that the rest of the information you’ll find online combined.
