So whenever I am about to launch a site, I like to get fully embedded into the site launch. I want everyone, everywhere to know about the site even if it only will receive a hundred visitors per day. Beyond the standard press release and search engine submission, I like to create t-shirts with the site’s logo. This way, when I am out in the street, standing in line or doing whatever, someone can ask me about my shirt, giving me the opportunity to talk about my business. Yeah, I know, this is probably not an effective marketing effort from a marketing cost perspective, but again, it is just a ritual I have been doing for years. Note to self – maybe my true calling is creating a clothing line.
There are a number of online printing companies that do a good job of automating the printing process. Sites like iPrint and VistaPrint are good for print jobs on paper (i.e. business cards, letterhead). They allow you to choose templates or create your own where you can change colors, fonts and upload your own graphics. But when it comes to quality printing on a t-shirt, I find screen printing is the way to go. While iPrint and VistaPrint do offer t-shirt printing, their specialty is using a heat transfer process that allows for full photo printing on not just t-shirts, but grandma’s mug for Christmas. While the process works fairly well, the end product doesn’t stand the test of time. On the shirts I ordered, the area where the imprinting occurred turns slightly yellow after many washes – similar to those old “iron on” graphics you could buy as a kid to make your own shirts at home.
Somehow I stumbled upon a screen printing company called Broken Arrow. If you have access to or know someone with a vector based graphics package like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, you can upload your graphic to their servers and get your screen-printed t-shirts in about 2-3 weeks. The quality is amazing. They have a large selection of all types of t-shirts – popular styles come in as many as 70+ different colors. The logo I put on my shirt had deep colors and no bleed-through where you could see the underlying shirt color. I have even tried their embroidery service for a couple of hats (order minimum of 6) which was also top notch.
When you call their customer service you get a real live person in seconds, who can usually help you. So why did I need to call customer service? Well, the only real complaint I have with these guys is the payment process. They use PayPal to receive their payments and that system has crapped out on me several times when trying to pay for a previously placed order. So, I called my credit card number in. If their quality wasn’t so good, I would go elsewhere, simply because getting a cheap, reliable online credit card payment site integrated into your own web site is easy these days. E-commerce sites with a disjointed buying process will usually lose my business, but Broken Arrow’s customer service offline made up for it. Even Google with their checkout product is offering an almost free service to merchants who want to accept credit cards. While PayPal is highly respected and reliable, I still have not figured out why it doesn’t work consistently on BrokenArrowWear’s site. Nonetheless, because of their easy to find toll free number on many of their pages, I got over my laziness and picked up the phone.
Lesson learned here: If you don't have a rock-solid payment process, make sure you have an easy to find customer service number that is available with extended hours. Email is the second best thing, but when it comes to money and the screen goes blank after submitting your credit card, you want a toll free number NOW!!