5 Ways to Make Custom Field Day Shirts More Profitable

custom field day school shirts

 

Custom apparel decorators love doing Field Day shirts for schools.

Field Day is an order to go after if you aren’t already doing these.

If you aren’t familiar with Field Day, most elementary schools will participate in an end-of-the-school-year day full of fun and games for the kids.

It usually takes place outside and the kids compete in all sorts of sporting events and games, such as races and other outdoor games.

The kids split up onto teams, usually by their individual class or their grade.

Each team wears their own color of shirt to distinguish between the teams. Some schools get custom t-shirts each year for this event.

In the case that the school gets shirts, it can be a very large order. The whole school participates in this day of fun, so there are hundreds of students and teachers who need a shirt.

Even though large quantities typically lower the final selling price of the shirt, quantity can make up for the lower margin and a large order like this can come with a nice profit.

The key is to squeeze as much as you can out of your printing costs to increase your margin for each shirt.

Here are five ways to lower your costs and increase your profit.

 

Custom Screen Printed Transfers

With large quantity orders like Field Day, custom screen printed transfers are a great option for printing the shirts.

This will help lower your production time.

You know the saying – time is money.

With a large quantity, your labor time will naturally be increased with the sheer amount of shirts needed to be printed. You want to try to keep your labor time to a minimum, because it will add up quickly when multiplying the time to do each shirt by a few hundred shirts.

Screen printed transfers are fast and easy. Each shirt will only take 4 seconds to apply.

 

Each transfer comes ready to apply.

This keeps your production time to a minimum.

How much can you produce in an hour?

 

Use Gang Sheets

Screen printed transfers are also a good way to save on your actual printing costs as well.

Screen printed transfers are printed onto a release paper that is 11.25” x 14” in size. This sheet is yours to use as you wish.

That includes filling it up with as much as you can fit. The cost is the same no matter how much you add to your sheet!

 

screen printed transfer gang sheet

 

When you add multiple images to the sheet, it is called a gang sheet.

If you choose your design and the size wisely, you can fit two full size prints onto each sheet. This directly reduces the print cost of your transfers.

Let’s look at an example.

You need 300 shirts for Field Day. It is a one-color print.

If you only have 1 image per sheet, you need 300 sheets. At 300 sheets, the cost per sheet is $1.06 for a total of $318.00.

However, if you fit 2 images per sheet, you now need 150 sheets to reach your 300 total images. At 150 sheets, the cost per sheet is $1.44 for a total of $216.00.

In this scenario, by fitting 2 on a sheet, each image then only cost you $0.72 instead of $1.06. This saved you $0.34 each image, for a total of $102! That $102 is now added profit in your pocket.

 

2 image gang sheet

 

Gang sheets are a great way for you to save on your materials cost.

 

Take Advantage of a Color Change

Since each Field Day team needs a different color shirt, the chances of only being able to order 1 ink color that fits them all is slim.

Depending on the shirt colors, you may be able to get away with using all white or all black ink.

If this isn’t the case, though, you can always use a “color change” to save on ink costs.

A color change allows you to use the same design image in different ink colors and get the larger quantity price break of using the total quantity of the entire order instead of breaking it up into smaller, less quantity orders.

 

Field Day shirts

 

To do this, you just pay for each color change, which is $15. When you total it up, it is much cheaper than ordering many smaller orders.

Let’s look at another example.

Say you need your 150 sheets in 1-color. However, you need some in red, some in green, and some in blue.

 

color change

 

If you were to break this order up into 3 different orders, it would look like this:

  • 50 red = $2.03 each, for a total of $101.50
  • 50 green = $2.03 each, for a total of $101.50
  • 50 blue = $2.03 each, for a total of $101.50

Doing it this way, your final cost for the 150 transfers would be $304.50.

However, if you utilize the color change method, it would look like this:

  • 150 sheets = $1.44 each, for a total of $216.00
  • 2 color change fees at $15 each, for a total of $30.

Your final cost for the 150 transfers would be $246.00.

With the color changes, you saved $58.50!

You guessed it – that’s $58.50 in your pocket.

 

 

One Size Fits All

Another way to save on printing costs is using the “one size fits all” method.

We aren’t talking about the shirt sizes. Of course that wouldn’t work.

Instead, we are talking about the design size.

Whenever you are printing for shirts, there is always the possibility for a wide range of shirt sizes.

[Related Content: How to Handle Multiple Shirt Sizes]

Field Day shirts is definitely one of these times.

You will have small kids from the kindergarten classes, larger kids in the 5th grade classes, and don’t forget about the adult teachers.

For example, now you have shirt sizes possibly ranging in youth small all the way up to adult 2xl.

Some people are tempted here to get two different orders of transfers in this scenario. One order for the youth sizes and one order for the adult sizes.

We recommend still getting one order of transfers.

Here’s why and how.

There is a size that will look good on all of the shirts, so you don’t need to get multiple orders.

Take your smallest size shirt, and make the design as big as you can fit it on the shirt. The design will be a little large on the smallest shirts, and be a little small on the largest shirts, and look great on a majority of the shirts. It’s a simple bell curve.

 

field day shirt sizes

 

However, on the smallest and largest shirts, it will still look good.

Not only is this good for Field Day shirts, but it is a good tip for t-shirt orders for family reunions.

 

how to handle multiple shirt sizes

 

Easy Prints® Artwork

Our final tip on how to save on Field Day shirts for added profits in your pocket is to use Easy Prints artwork (our layouts and clip art).

Easy Prints includes layouts to start your design and all the clip art and fonts to truly customize it to make your own.

 

field day t-shirt artwork

 

You can customize and create your design using our free online designer, Easy View®. Easy View makes creating any shirt design so easy using the Easy Prints artwork.

Not only is it faster and easier, it can save you money.

  1. You don’t need to spend extra time creating artwork (remember – time is money)
  2. You don’t need to pay a designer to create artwork (extra costs to produce your order)
  3. Transfers using Easy Prints are actually cheaper than providing your own artwork (direct savings in your pocket)

Screen printed transfers using Easy Prints artwork has a lower price, so getting your transfers is even cheaper, saving you additional costs.

There are so many artwork choices to use to create custom Field Day shirts.

There are tons of layouts to use as is, or to start with. Then you can customize the layouts even more with the thousands of clip art choices.

[Related Content: Have a Field Day with These New Layouts and Clip Art]

new field day t-shirt layout

 

Conclusion

Field Day shirts can be extremely profitable.

The large quantity will most likely lower your selling price and consequently diminish your margin for each shirt.

However, by using our 5 tips to save costs and help increase that margin as much as possible, you can still make a large profit through volume.

Make Field Day shirts more profitable by using:

  1. Custom screen printed transfers
  2. Gang sheets
  3. Color changes
  4. One size designs
  5. Easy Prints artwork

By following these 5 tips, you can make a field day for both you and the kids.

Start designing your Field Day shirts now in Easy View.

 

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 3 comments
Jakesia Jones

I have a question can I design wedding shirts with this program and how much will it cost per sheet for a shirt.

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Dealer Services

Hi Jakesia,
Yes, you can do wedding shirts! You just need a heat press to apply the transfers. The transfer price is dependent on transfer type, artwork source (yours or ours), number of sheets, and number of colors. If you have a design, you can upload it at https://transferexpress.com/upload for a quote, or you can use our pricing pdf’s (https://transferexpress.com/education/product-pricing) if you know how many you need, etc. Thanks!

Reply
Dealer Services

Thanks CBJ Imprints! Glad you liked it! Have you tried Easy View yet? It makes designing super fast and easy.
It’s quick to sign up to try it:
https://transferexpress.com/designer

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