We use a local company in our town. Delivery is fast and we can see the product sample before he goes into production & use them during the ordering times. The tshirt quality is a big concern since so many companies have a great low price on tshirts, but the quality of them won't last through the end of the school year. Make sure you get a good brand of shirt.
Will you be taking orders and then filling them or purchasing a large amount of each and then selling them. You have a risk by doing the latter due to falling short in some sizes and have too many in others. If you haven't done it before, you run the risk of running short or having too much extra.
We sell tshirts (short and long sleeves), sweatshirts and sweatpants. We have 2 different logos and one of them we can cover up the school name. This way the 5th graders can still order them and use them in middle school when they start in Sept since the mascot is the same!
We used t-shirtpeople.com last year. You can design your own logo, set your own prices and they even make order forms for you. We were pleased with everything we tried except for bottoms. Tops were all great.
We also sell t-shirts, sweatshirts as well as water bottles-- we sold last year at our ice cream social before school started and had a great turnout-- we use a local company for our products, but we have used a company out of New Jersey and they were great-- they do it as a fundraiser- but the plus with them is that they had free artwork design-- free shipping on the product, they will print all the fliers you need including reminder fliers, plus they give you 2 posters to hang-- thyey also separate all the orders by teacher and grade and package each order individually when they send it back. This was a great company, the only downfall with them, is that the run the spiritwear like an event, it's a one time thing, not ongoing all year--
Great if you want to put out sweatshirts for fall only type of company!
If not, you can try what we presented to our new Principal last year. Let me give you some history...
A few years back, before I was involved, the group appoached the old Principal with the idea of a new school mascot. The PTO was hoping that the students could present mascot suggestions and from those suggested one could be selected. Well, it turned out that the Principal did not like any of the suggestions so decided to just pick one herself, the "Stars".
"Stars" is ok, but it's definitely not what the PTO was thinking of. So during last summer, when I first met the new Principal I presented this idea again, which he was more than willing to run with. He had ech class within the school vote on a mascot suggestion, then had the PTO and staff perform weighted voting to get us down to three ideas. Then he had all of the students vote on one of these three mascots so that the one that was chosen would be the one that the majority of the children wanted.
So, once we were officially the "Huskies" I went off and started to work on a brand new mascot logo. After some major changes we had an approved logo. I then had brand new T-Shirts made using the new logo, in time for Open House. The new logo design was unveiled at Open House and the response was crazy. We sold over $2000 worth of apparel that evening, and even sold out of some of the youth sizes. Then over the year we added ballcaps (in both the school colors -royal blue and white - and pink), as well as car magnets, water bottles and sweatshirts.
The point is that this new logo has really created a new sense of spirit within the school and this is apparent by the quantity of sales that we had. If your school does not have a mascot, or one that really makes sense, then I would recommend presenting this new mascot idea to the Principal. If you already have one maybe you could try a new logo, maybe even make it a contest. Unveil it at the Back to School night and I'm sure it would be a huge success.
We also use a local firm. We do tees and hooded sweatshirts. At our middle school they have tried other products, but didn't do well with them. I think it depends on your school. What we did at elementary was order a quantity of tees to have on hand and then took prepaid orders for the sweatshirts.
I'm also a big proponent of using local companies. Parent groups rely on the support of businesses and the community to support their functions. To me, it's only fair that the parent group purchase locally whenever possible.
Like era5678, we do t-shirts, but simply at a price to cover costs. Not really as a fundraiser.
