Group Shirts, A Better Way

What I learned from doing group shirts twice.

There is a do it yourself route that may keep the cost at an absolute minimum, or as I later learned, there are vendors who will take nearly all the burden from you for a little extra per item.

I took my first leap into organizing shirts by offering them to my group for a Panama Canal cruise. As a group identifier and souvenir of the trip, I wanted to create a unique shirt at a reasonable price for group members. In the end, while we were happy with the shirts for the Panama Canal cruise, I looked for a way to ease the almost overwhelming burden those shirts had placed on me and my family and to offer higher quality apparel to members of my Alaska cruise group the following year.

In both instances I created the graphic design that was used for the shirts. It’s a hobby of mine. As I went into the first experience with offering shirts I really had no idea the number of hours (days, weeks) that would be required in emailing invoices, collecting payment, sorting shirts, packaging them, printing shipping labels with the proper postage, and dropping off at the post office. After that experience I searched for a printer who would do more of the work for me.

Here’s a comparison of my two group shirt experiences.

Offering group apparel includes making many decisions about design, style, color, sizes, quantity, and more. The work of taking and fulfilling orders can add a lot more effort to the process, or it can be outsourced for an additional cost.

Note: I had a great experience with tinylittlemonster.com, but the purpose of sharing this information is not necessarily to promote them. I write this to help you avoid the unbelievable amount of work I subjected myself to the first time around. You may be able to find other vendors who will provide the same services.

Finally, I strongly suggest using the same design in other ways to brand your cruise group. I shared the image files with group members and invited them to use the design in some of the crafts they were creating as FE gifts, magnets, and other items. I was thrilled with the various ways that people incorporated the design into items for the cruise. Some cruisers who missed the ordering windows for shirts even made their own in the last week before the cruise using the design.