You may or may not know, we don’t manufacture garments in house, we custom ‘decorate’ them with your designs. It’s a common misconception that UK screen printers hold wholesale t-shirts and other garments. I used to think the same. There are 3 main reasons why this doesn’t happen, let me explain.

 

Number 1: Garment Manufacturers and Suppliers

We use around 4 different suppliers based in the UK and a handful of brand suppliers across Europe. Most of the UK based companies are ‘one-stop shops’ holding literally millions of items in stock. Up to 4,500 different products and over 150+ brands. Many wholesalers out there specialise in buying stock directly from brand manufacturers. These types of companies warehouse and ship stock directly to us within a day or two! They have huge warehouses (1,000’s and 1000’s of square foot) to store them. Without them, we wouldn’t be able supply you with the wide range that we have on offer.

Number 2: Brands, Styles and Colours

Most brands have tons of different styles and colour variations to chose from. The Gildan Softstyle T-shirt alone has 50 odd colours available. The sizes range from XS youth right up to 5XL adult. If you multiply that across the whole range of styles, well it’s a lot of garments!

Number 3: Cost

We usually have a small amount of black and white t-shirts in stock (most popular) but we can’t guess what customers will order next. One day we might be printing heather grey sweatshirts for a running club, the next it might be pink t-shirts for a skate shop, then even pairs of thongs for an artist. By not stocking a large inventory it allows us to keep costs down and order on request.

Does ordering stock slow down the print process?

Not at all. Our standard turnaround times are up to 15 working days from receipt of payment. Most of our suppliers use a next day courier service, which means our customers are rarely affected by delivery times. Occasionally a certain style or colour will not be available. It’s rare, but if it does happen we will do our best to find a replacement style that is as good as or an upgrade to the original.