Getting Customized Affiliate Apparel

[Brian Smith brianisrighthere]

My name is Brian and I just launched Level One Apparel. An efficient way to get customized marketing apparel for your affiliate. My wife Jessica and I are CrossFit athletes who want to be able to represent our affiliate with good looking apparel. We are part of the CrossFit Loomis community and enjoy being challenged to improve ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually on a regular basis. I'm also a full-time graphic designer and Jessica is a registered nurse.

Check out our designs.

The idea for Level One Apparel was conceived in the Fall of 2012. Our coach asked me to design a graphic to be printed on apparel for our gym. Though the final product turned out amazing, the process involved quite a bit of back and forth with different design ideas, numerous proposals, and rounds of revisions.

There had to be a better way.

I started searching the internet for custom CrossFit apparel. Basically there were two options:

1. Start from scratch with a design company or freelance designer. This usually involves much of what I listed above, idea sessions, proposals, revisions, time, time, and more time. Not to mention a pretty hefty design fee.
2. Try your hardest on a drag and drop apparel site. Results with this method tend to be less than ideal. Clip art and standard fonts can only get you so far.
So what do we do differently?

I start from scratch so you don't have to, using ideas pulled from the CrossFit community and my design intuition. Every design is sketched out, revised several times, then carefully perfected in a graphics program with customization in mind. I try to keep the designs flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of textual changes, while still having a consistent style. The best of these designs are then made into several different styles to appeal to different tastes.

The result is a wide variety of designs (with more added regularly) catered to CrossFit affiliate owners and athletes, which can be delivered to your door in less than 19 days time, including, customization, payment, printing and shipping. Actual time until delivery varies based on demand, shipping, and response times.

[Mark E. Wallace]

Did you have a moderator's approval to post this advertisement?

- Mark

[Brian Smith brianisrighthere]

Sorry, if this is seen as a full on ad I need to remove it. I'm a CrossFit athlete who has spent the last year growing in our local CrossFit community and I wanted to share what I have done as a result of a need I saw for affiliates as a result of work I had done for the affiliate I train with.

[Brad Allen Jones]

Brian-

Good luck with your company, but the moderators probably aren't going to like this. They are pretty strict on advertising. Hopefully you can stick around and add to the conversations around here though!

[Tricia Magrini]

I think this is a good concept but constructive feedback, I would use 50/50 or tri blend tees and drop your pricing. I'd have to charge $30 for a tee or tank to make any money.

[Jeff Railsback]

How are you printing the shirts? Screen print, transfers, DTG? Your prices seem really high. The AA tank's for example cost $4.67 wholesale. Add printing and the markup ends up being 400%. It will be hard for affiliates to make money at that price point. Most boxes I've seen sell shirts for $20 and and are using more expensive blanks. They are probably paying 12-13 and that allows a good purchase price for the customer and allows the owner to make a little money too.

[Brian Smith brianisrighthere]

Thank you guys for the feedback. We do water-based screen printing. You get a high quality crisp image with the ink in the fabric. So you get a very soft breathable result. Any guidance on where I could get blanks for a better price would be great. It seems like unless you are ordering 500 blanks at a time you're going to be paying more.
The concept also has the artwork and setup cost built into the per apparel price. Generally apparel designs will run about $150+ for anything more than the name in simple text. This way a gym can do a small run without a large up front cost and the uncertainty of the finished design.
Much appreciated.

[Brian Smith brianisrighthere]

Ok, great news. We decided to lower prices! Hopefully this is a win for everyone and is able to make the apparel more accessible, especially for smaller affiliates. Thanks for the feedback. Have a look.

[Jeff Railsback]

If you are operating as a business you can set up an account with sanmar and tsc apparel. I know that with tsc you don't need to order in large quantities. If you don't have a business license you can order from jiffyshirt but they are a little more limited on their higher quality shirts.