I discussed this with Toaster way back... it would be great to get some designs together for an official WarGear t-shirt.

I'm aware there's various options for printing like screen print, embroidered, printed and various advantages and drawbacks of each. I think what I need is someone to cut through all that and come up with:

1. A US based company who can ship globally
2. Reasonably priced shirts - less than $20 ideally
3. No requirement to print and pay for batches in advance, i.e. print on demand
4. And last but not least, a great design!

To encourage the latter I am happy to offer up a prize, say 1 year's free membership to the winner + the kudos of having thousands (ok well maybe hundreds) of your shirt designs worn all round the world :)

The site logo can be found here for anyone who wants to get cracking: AI - PSD

Good luck :)

AWESOME! I had thought about this again recently too!

I do think you might need to know if there are any restrictions to the design before everyone gets cracking. I don't know about big t-shirt making places, but recently I have been attempting to design a shirt for my church and in order to get them cheap (ie $5-$6, to sell them to raise money), I was restricted to 2 colors, which means no blending and even logos would look different...and that was really hard to do (so I'm still trying to design one :p). So that would be a good thing to know prior to going and creating willy-nilly, although it may also be completely different for another company.

Yertle's right. For any quality printing, color blending is basically out, and the fewer colors the better the price.

#3 will also be very tough. In my experience you may end up being limited to Cafe Press for the print+ship on demand, which sorta sucks since their quality is pretty poor.

http://www.zazzle.com/custom/tshirts
Sometimes the competition provides the best leads :P

$18.95:

Looking at that site more...it may look bad to have a similar "shop" as CC, but that site looks pretty cool and from what I assume/can tell is that they handle it all.

About: http://www.zazzle.com/mk/welcome/first/aboutus

I envision a simple WG logo on the front (left breast), and on the back some witty phrase with a 2-4 pictures of our best / most representative boards. A standard one and 1-3 non-standard ones. Underneath the pictures would say "Wargear.net"

Possible corny phrases include "Risk is something we do every day", "This isn't your typical Risk", or "Feeling Risky today?"

WarGear-ers engage in high-Risk behaviors

Haha, I approve

new WF profile pic...

asm wrote: WarGear-ers engage in high-Risk behaviors

Vataro said witty.

Pretty sure he said 'corny'

Cramchakle wrote: new WF profile pic...

I adopted it as well. I suggest that we all do.

Done!

I like the idea of having your player name in large text on the back - american football style. I know this means custom which means expensive... but it would be damn cool.

That appears to be one of the perks of zazzle.com you can set up a store and have many unique designs and the ability to customize.

Have to say though the full color print shirts I've had in the past fade really fast in the wash. Screen prints last a lot longer.

tom wrote: Screen prints last a lot longer.

Yes. But more than likely prohibitively expensive for what you're looking for.

Really it's the "shipping to anywhere" from the shirt company that's going to get in your way. I know a couple pretty great sites for ordering customized HIGH-quality screen-printed shirts at very competitive prices. But you order in quantity and then they just send them to you. Got my kickball and soccer teams' jerseys this way.

I really dunno of zazzle's quality, but found this:

How are images applied to Apparel Products?

In manufacturing our products, we use a new digital technology that chemically bonds ink to cotton molecules, resulting in brilliant colors and photographic quality. The image is soft, breathable, vibrant and durable, without that "decal" feel typically imparted by heat-transfer and screen print methods. There is no overprint around the image area, and images have a “wash fastness” equal to or better than other print methods on 100% cotton.

They say they also ship worldwide.

Well it's a possible approach... pre-order a batch of shirts in a single design with a variety of sizes, find someone in the US who doesn't mind handling the storage and shipping process. Doesn't allow customization and is a bit of a PITA to manage.

tom wrote: find someone in the US who doesn't mind handling the storage and shipping process.

This would be the major problem.

Also, unless you're talking quantities of shirts over 100, in order to cover the costs of re-shipping each shirt individually you'd have to charge at LEAST $20 per shirt and probably a lot more for international orders.

Not trying to be overly negative here. But I think that (at least for now, until traffic gets much higher) CafePress or zazzle is the best bet, even if they're not the highest quality available.