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Sports Shirt Printing

There are avid sports fans in every country, and every country has their favorite sports. They may speak different languages and appeal to different customs, but most countries share at least one thing in common. They love to share their team spirit by wearing sport shirts that bear the logos, mascots, and lettering of their favorite teams.

How many ways can you personalize clothing to reflect your affiliation with sports teams? There are many different methods and varieties, so let us take a quick look at some of the most popular kinds of sports shirt printing.

Two Different Methods

For the moment, we’ll concentrate on the two major forms of small-scale printing techniques for sport shirts and other apparel. Customers typically choose between silk-screening and embroidery to personalize their shirts with custom logos or designs.

In the case of embroidery, there are two routes to a finished garment. One is to choose an embroidered patch that is either sewn or ironed onto a plain shirt. This would be the cheapest option, if embroidery were your method of choice for sports shirt printing.

The other embroidery method is to have the design or artwork applied “direct to garment,” meaning directly into the material of the shirt itself. The finished product would be a more durable garment, since the design is sewn right into the fabric, but there may be additional costs to consider. Print shops sometimes charge extra fees for digitizing or transferring artwork on to a computer in order to provide a template for machines that will sew the design into the shirt.

The other option for customizing T-shirts and casual sports garments is to silkscreen the fabric with ink. Although there is usually a more elaborate set-up process, silk-screening is generally less expensive and quicker than embroidery. A stencil or “positive” image is created and then reacts chemically when ink is pressed through the “screen,” a fine piece of mesh stretched over a frame to fill in the colors of the final design.

Two Different Niches

Specialty printers often work exclusively with local sports teams, youth and community leagues, or charity events that need silkscreen, transfer, or embroidery services. Sometimes, these individuals will have specific logos in mind for sports shirt printing, which can be either adapted from stock photos or custom-made according to a customer’s specifications.

If professional sports teams are involved, one would typically turn to a major distributor like Nike, Adidas, or Reebok to do business with. The fact that sport shirts are so accessible and comfortable makes their popularity as activewear and casualwear easy to understand. These companies earn billions of dollars by mass-producing ready-made clothing that appeals to a wider audience.

These two different niches create models for companies who specialize in sports shirt printing to maximize their profits by either limiting or expanding a range of products that have the highest rates of return. As an example, Nike’s recent purchase of Umbro captured a key market for European national football kits worth an estimated £285 million.