FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
Performance shirts are made from different types of materials than traditional dress shirts, and they have many more benefits as well. For example, they wick sweat away so that it evaporates quickly off the fabric instead of soaking into it or sticking around on your skin. They are super light weight and very breathable. They allow air to penetrate through the material to help keep your body cool. Our performance shirts are also made with UV Protection properties. They are rated UPF 50+. This means that the parts of your body covered by our shirts are protected from the sun. It is comparable to wearing UPF 50+ Sunscreen. Our performance shirts are also treated with a stain resistant coating which makes them 100% bleachable and easy to get stains out.
Sublimation is the process of transferring dye to a fabric using heat. The images and graphics are printed on special paper placed on the garment and heat is applied, allowing the ink to become part of the fabric. This will leave you with a more breathable, soft-hand feel to the fabric. The best part is that the numbers, letters, and graphics do not peel, wear off, or come out in the wash!
Sublimation is a great process that allows for vibrant, full color, all-over prints that are exceptionally durable. Naturally the magic of the process lies in the printing technology. With designs infused directly onto the fabric, they become a part of the fabric itself. All of the design elements become a part of the fabric in sublimation as opposed to other processes like embroidery, where they’re “sewn” onto the surface. So, there’s no scope for the designs to fade in sublimated apparel.
Besides the high temperature and pressures used in sublimation convert the prints into gas, which bonds firmly with the molecules of the fabric, fully integrating with them. Totally inseparable! The Designs will last longer then the shirt itself.
Since Sublimation Designs become part of the shirt and do not sit on top. The color of the shirt becomes the background color. The darker the shirt, the less you will be able to see the design. You can sublimate on a black shirt, but you will not see the design and will end up with just a black shirt. There are ways to accomplish sublimation onto a black or dark colored shirt, but the process is completely different then our process. It is known as cut and sew. They Press white material with the complete design and a black background, then cut out the shirt and sew it together. You can tell this when this technique is used due to the outside of the shirt being black and the inside of the shirt staying white.
You Can not sublimate onto cotton. Cotton shirts are printed in many different ways, but sublimation is not one of them.
There are many different Business Models for selling apparel. There are pros and cons for each model.
Drop shipping is what most small apparel businesses use. This is where they pay another company to make and ship their products to order.
Pros – All the company has to worry about is creating and selling their apparel.
Cons – You have zero control over your final products. Product costs are very High and profits are very small. Most companies have to charge way more then what the apparel is worth in order to make a profit.
Buying from china is another popular way for a small business to sell apparel.
Pros – You can have chinese made products that you can purchase cheap.
Cons – You have to order your apparel in bulk. You are limited on the number of designs you can have for sell since you have to have them made in china and then shipped to your warehouse. You take a risk on every new design you have made because you do not know if it will even sell. Your overhead is expensive in order to keep apparel in stock. Most popular sizes sell out first and your stuck with sizes and designs in your warehouse that you can not sell. You have zero control over your products. Sizes are never consistent.
Then there is the Salt Devils way.
Pros – We have 100% control over every shirt that is made. We can have an unlimited number of designs. We can custom make your shirt the way you want. We never run out of stock of an item.
Cons – Production times vary depending on how busy we are.
Why are Production times so long – Running an ecommerce business is un-predictable. Some days we sell 20 shirts, Some days we sell 500 shirts. There is no way to predict how many shirts we will sell in a single day. We come up with our production times because we take an average of shirts we sell a month vs how many shirts we can produce a day. We sell an average of 6k shirts a month. The most comment we get is to hire more people. The problem with hiring more employees is you have to be able to give them hours for them to stay. If we have a slow week and only sell 20 shirts a day for 7 days, That means several employees will have the week off. People have a job because they can count on having work and making a paycheck. We have 2 shops and 8 employees. We have 3 printers and 4 heat presses. Both shops work both a day and a night shift.
