Custom American Apparel Information

American Apparel Printing Methods & Information

You will need to provide artwork but if it's rough or needs help, don't worry, we can take care of it, often at no additional charge at all.
We provide custom screen printing on American Apparel shirts and hoodies. Along with using traditional inks, we use discharge and waterbased inks. You can read about ink types here.
We have a minimum of 12 pieces per design.
Pricing is based on three factors: quantity ordered (how many shirts), print complexity (how many colors and locations), and type of garment used (a zip hoodie or a women's shirt, etc).
The more you order, the cheaper it becomes. We have price breaks at 12, 24, 48, 100, 200 and 500 pieces. If you order multiple designs at a time, we will work with you on better overall pricing.
We give free shipping straight to you and free set up.
We usually use discharge and waterbased inks on 100% cotton, but we'll use whatever will give the best results for your specific needs.
Orders usually ship within two weeks or less from when we get the blanks (some items come in one or two days but some items can take a week to get to us from American Apparel wholesale out in Los Angeles.) We can estimate when we'll ship when you request a quote.

For lighter color garments we can use waterbased inks, and for darker 100% cotton garments we usually use discharge inks. These result in a very soft print. These inks settle into the fabric so that they can't be felt. We will print with whatever ink is best suited for the specific needs of your order. Traditional inks are best for blended fabrics like the f497 flex fleece hoodies and tr401 tri blend shirts.

Discharge inks are a special kind of ink that removes the shirt's color. It only works on natural fibers, so 100% cotton shirts work best, and it doesn't work with all dyes. It is sometimes quirky but it's awesome. Some colors discharge better than others. Generally, dark colors do best. Email us if you have questions about printing on any certain color and we will let you know what we think. Think of discharge ink as a way to bleach the shirt, except that it doesn't harm the shirt, like bleach does. We can either use straight discharge ink to get a white or off white print on darker shirts, or on medium colors the print will be a lighter shade of the shirt's color. We can also add pigments to the discharge to get a color. Discharge is an amazingly soft and vibrant way to get a red print on a black shirt, for example.

Waterbased inks are great for white and lighter color shirts, and even medium and dark colors for certain print colors. Like discharge, they result in a super soft print. Also, they generally eco friendly. Bright color in a soft print on a soft shirt is always great.

We print on American Apparel a lot, so we're used to using their garments. They aren't radically different than other brands, but being a thinner fabric does take a little getting used to, and we've printed thousands upon thousands so we've had plenty of time to get used to the quirks of printing on American Apparel.

We're not a huge company. We're a fairly small shop, still capable of producing a lot of shirts every day, but not so huge that you get lost in a flood of customers.

You will receive special attention work with us and we guarantee you'll be happy with your order.

We can get to your order more quickly. Since we're not a huge company, we don't have a backed up production schedule where your order is in queue to be printed in three or four weeks. If you need it, we can often print an order in less than two weeks after getting the blank garments into our shop, which takes one or two business days from our local distributor, or about a week if we have to order straight from American Apparel.

We are easy to communicate with. Expect generally quick replies to emails and friendly phone calls. Our customers are often amazed by how quickly we reply to emails, and how easy we make the entire ordering process, from start to finish.

We provide affordable pricing. Considering the higher value of the shirts or hoodies, our prices are very reasonable, especially with the types of special inks we use. We can custom print American Apparel shirts cheaper than you can buy them blank in the store!