Pick up the t-shirt closest to you, and look at it carefully. What material was used, what is the shape of the t-shirt, and what does the printing look like?
Tshirt creation consists of those 3 areas:
1. Cotton from the mill
2. Cutting the cotton into the shape of the T-shirt
3. Printing an image onto the T-shirt.
This is how we make a t-shirt, but keep in mind that there are hundreds of different options in each area.
1. The cotton from the Mill
We worked with the laboratory at the mill to come up with the 12 colors we print on. All the 100% cotton we use, is kept in large rolls of gray material, and when we require a specific color, it is dyed to the colors we need. However, our mill keeps stock of black and white cotton for us on hand, as these are the colors we use most often.
2. Cutting the cotton into the T-shirts
When we need to increase our stock of t-shirts, the cotton color of our choice is moved from the mill to the CMT. A CMT stands for Cut Make Trim and is responsible for taking the tshirt pattern we give them, and cutting the cotton into the T-shirts.
3. Printing the image onto the T-shirt
The blank t-shirts are now moved to the printing company, where the images are screen printed onto the T-shirts. Before the screen printing can take place, the correct colors for the images have to be worked out using a method know as pantones. Screen printing is expensive if you are only doing a few T-shirts, but the quality of the screen printed t-shirts is currently better than the other methods such as Vinyl printing and Direct to Garmet Printing.
The T-shirts are then bought to our warehouse, where they are sorted, checked, and then checked again so that we ensure that any damaged or rejected t-shirts are removed, as we would not want our customers to be receiving a t -shirt that is not 100%. Once the double checking is finished, the t-shirts are packed onto the shelves, matched with the orders, and sent to the customers as quickly as possible.