Custom American Apparel FAQ

Our most commonly received questions

You say "Satisfaction Guaranteed." What do you mean? We guarantee you will be happy with your shirts, in that we make no mistakes in the printing or fail in following your guidelines to print the shirts or hoodies etc to your specifications. Note that having a couple items out of an order being slightly imperfect is normal and unavoidable, but we will keep spoilage under 5%. If we do make mistakes, we will fix it, either with a refund or replacement of goods. The screen printing on your items will not fade, crack or peel off, guaranteed. We want you to be happy because that makes us happy.

What do you like about American Apparel? Why use it? American Apparel is great on our end because they're nice to work with and print well. They're great on your end because they're popular, desirable and a brand name. Also, they are the only significant American made blank clothing company, which is great for everyone.

How do I get a quote? Use the quote request page to send us your information and we'll get back to you quickly with a price!

How do people pay? Once we come up with a price and you're ready to go, we will send you an invoice via email that you can pay securely online with a credit card. If you don't want to pay online, you can call in your credit card information (paying online is usually easiest for everyone.) We can also take PayPal, as well as check, although waiting for a check to come and clear will delay the order. Money order by mail would work too!

How do I submit artwork? Just email it to info@customamericanapparel.net and we'll check it out.

Is my artwork good enough? What do you need? It needs to be crisp and clean, at actual print size at 300dpi resolution, if you're submitting a photoshop or PNG or JPG file. In other words, real big and not blurry or messy. Also great is the vector format, like Illustrator or EPS or PDF files. That's ideal for screen printing, because it's crisp edges, and we need a sharp edge when we make the screen. We're happy to help you with your artwork and if it's not quite ready, we can clean it up and make it good to go.

Can you get more styles than you have on this site? Of course. We can get the most common styles from our local shirt distributors, and we can get everything on American Apparel Wholesale. Getting things from American Apparel just takes a couple extra days.

How much do t-shirts and hoodies cost? It varies so much. It depends on how many you're ordering and what the printing is like (just one color on the front only, versus two color front and three color back, etc) and what kind of shirt or hoodie it is. There is no standard price. Get in touch with us for a custom price!

What shirts are best to print on? For discharge ink, it's necessary to use 100% cotton shirts. For traditional ink, we can print on 50/50 blends and 80/20 blend hoodies and whatnot. On light color shirts, we can use waterbased (very soft) ink on all blends.

Where are you located? We're in Camden now, across the bridge from Philadelphia.

Can I call you? Sure. 1-888-787-4587, preferably between 9am and 6pm Monday through Friday.

Do you do prototype prints? Yes, if you're thinking about a big order, and you want to get just one made to see what it will be like, we can do that. Email for pricing.

How long have you been doing this? We started in a basement in 2006 and have grown from there! It's still fun.

What is discharge ink? Discharge is a type of waterbased ink that removes the shirt's color. It's sort of like bleaching, except it doesn't hurt the shirt. You can add pigments to it too, so that you can print colors with it. Discharge creates an awesome, super soft print with vibrant colors. Very cool stuff. And they tend to sell better than traditional ink, if you're interested in reselling the shirts we print for you.

The top image on the right is of two colors of discharge on a black shirt. Note how you can see the weave of the fabric in the print. This is because discharge printing basically removes the dye of the shirt and replaces it with another color, leaving a super soft, beautiful print.

Benefits: super soft, nice colors, more desirable.
Drawbacks: only works on cotton, not all shirt colors discharge well.

What is waterbased ink? Waterbased ink has pigments suspended in a water solution. It's the most eco-friendly way to print.

The bottom image on the right is a waterbased print. It's not an opaque or heavy print, so the print color is affected by the shirt color. Notice how you can still see the heather of the shirt showing through the green print.

Benefits: soft print, nice colors, eco-friendly, works on all fabric blends, black ink works on everything.
Drawbacks: Doesn't show well on dark colors, can be hard to color match on fabrics that aren't very light in color, not opaque.

What is traditional ink? Traditional ink would be plastisol ink, which is a plastic-based ink. It's what most printers use, and we still use it for some stuff, like athletic jerseys and hoodies. It can be printed very heavy, but you can also print it lighter and softer, which is what we do.

Benefits: Works on any fabric blend and color, great for hoodies and mixed fabrics.
Drawbacks: Heavier ink, especially in white, more of a feel on the shirt.

Which one should I use? We will help you figure that out. If it's a hoodie like the f497, we should use traditional ink. If it's a hoodie that is 100% cotton like the 5497 or 5495, then we could use discharge or waterbased ink. For printing on American Apparel, it makes sense to use the softer waterbased and discharge inks whenever possible, since the shirts are soft anyway. For styles like 2001 unisex tshirt, 2102 womens shirt, or 2456 vneck, anything 100% cotton really, discharge and waterbased inks are great. Shirts that are a 50/50 blend or tri-blend, like bb401 or tr401, and are darker in nature, we will need to use the traditional ink. We will use whatever is best for your specific order.

If you have any questions, we are happy to answer them! Email us!