Saturday, April 3, 2010

Summer Pricing for Gildan Heavy Cotton T-shirts $1.35/ea Gildan Ultra T-shirts $1.85/ea

The titles says it all. I am lowering the prices to get the ball rolling for the summer. The prices for the Gildan Heavy Cotton t-shirts 5000 are $1.35/ea on white and $2.35/ea on color. The Gildan Ultra Cotton t-shirts are $1.85/ea on white and $2.85/ea on color. Check out http://store.blanktshirt.com to place a wholesale t-shirts order for these blank Gildan T-shirts. I am still working on the shopping cart interface to offer all of the colors. I spent the weekend trying to bring the pricing and ordering structure up to speed and I am not quite done on the Gildan Ultra t-shirts, but it works pretty well for most colors. This will be my main shopping cart for future blank t-shirt orders for wholesale customers that are printing shirts or that need t-shirt printing.

Shipping and prices - United States only - Priority Mail or Fedex

There is a balance I have to be considerate of between pricing the product and shipping to cover my expenses, but to make sure everyone gets their products promptly. Currently I use FedEx, UPS and USPS Priority mail for shipping. Typically I will pick based on the weight of the product as to how I ship it, unless the address is a PO Box or if the package is very small. My old system allowed me to have price breaks at different quantity levels for customers, but for simplicity sake I am pricing all the shirts at one level, the lowest level, until I get all of the products online. Keep in mind the shipping cost is expensive if you are ordering only 1-2pcs, but it gets cheaper as you add more to your cart. I am not shipping internationally for blank t-shirt orders at this time. I have had to eliminate Alaska and Hawaii for the meantime too.

Gildan Products - Where do I buy them online?

My prior explained everything you need to know about t-shirts and the Gildan brand. I'll be editing that basic info and providing additional links over the next few weeks. To coincide with the development of this blog I will also need to provide links to the products that I sell so that you can buy these shirts when you need them. Currently I have two businesses, one is more retail in California and it sells blank t-shirts for screenprinting and embellishing and the other is my wholesale business that is focused more on the t-shirts and printing from Nevada.

To keep pace with my writing I will need to bounce back and forth between updating my products online to match all of the products that are for sale from Gildan that are relevant to my business. Currently I used the Gildan Heavy Cotton 5000, the Gildan Ultra Cotton 2000, the Gildan Blend 50 50 poly cotton 8000 and the newer Softstyle 64000 for most of my Gildan endeavors. I can't justify writing about more items until I update my pages to offer all of the colors and style sizes, comprehensively, before I go on.

Currently you can buy the Gildan t-shirts here: http://yque.com and http://blanktshirt.com

Gildan Blog - Why?

Simply put I sell a ton of these t-shirts and I want to answer every question I can for my customers without having to pickup the phone. I plan to sell even more of these shirts this year, because of their competitive pricing and wide range of colors, and I feel if I invest my time in anything it should be in this product line for my wholesale t-shirt business. More information is more sales and this is one of those shirt brands that is everywhere, but we may no very little about how it got there and why it is successful as a t-shirt for the world.

This blog is an accessory to my retail and wholesale website, but the comments are more subjective and inquisitive in order to figure out and discuss the market relevance of Gildan t-shirts to the consumer. This is not an interesting blog that is going to inspire or captivate the imagination, but it should answer questions about the styles and be used as a resource to find out more about Gildan products before you buy.

Gildan versus other brands. The main brands for wholesale t-shirt printing are Hanes, Gildan, Anvil, American Apparel, Fruit of the Loom, Jerzee, Tultex, Alstyle and a few more.

The best known t-shirt on earth is the Hanes Beefy T, which has dominated the US for over 25 years and is a decent quality medium priced garment. American Apparel has made a big run into the t-shirt market, but tends to be overpriced for mass consumption in the wholesale t-shirt distributors world. Fruit of the Loom has faded from significance, but they are there. Anvil provides some good products, but the inventory availability is always lacking when I need it most. Same thing goes for Alstyle, a good t-shirt company, well liked by the kids and not overly priced, but I can't always get what I need when I need it and that creates problems. Gildan is popular because of the cheaper t-shirts, the Ultra Cotton and the Heavy Cotton, which both use open-ended less expensive cotton, but they do a decent job at the manufacturing and except for style issues, these are the best value shirts on the market. This is why Gildan sells so many shirts and this is why I have this blog.

Open-ended cotton is the basic thread style that cheaper because it is less refinded than other thread types. The more refining, the more expensive the cotton thread. The more expensive the thread, the more expensive the shirts, just that simple. Ring-spun cotton thread is the higher end thread that is used to make softer cotton t-shirts. Generally these shirts are knitted tighter and with smaller diameter thread counts in order to make tighter knitted garments, but with a lighter feel. The Hanes Beefy T 5180 t-shirts is a thicker version of a ringspun garment and the American Apparel Jersey t-shirt, 2001, is a lighter version of the ringspun cotton t-shirts. The difference in price is 30-50% more for the ringspun equivalent of the open-ended cotton thread garments.

Weight and thread-count are two other concerns when it comes to comparing garments. Usually ounces, as measured in some dimension, square inch I think, is shown in a range of 4.5-6.2oz. for the different t-shirts. 4.5 oz t-shirt is lighter than a 5.4 oz. t-shirt. Thicker shirts are in the 6 oz range and tend to be stronger work style shirts that may last a lifetime, these are the Hanes Beefy T and the Gildan Ultra, with the Hanes Beefy T being softer, because of the ringspun cotton, than the Gildan Ultra Cotton t-shirts. These are both boxier cut t-shirts for men, but they come in youth sizes also. The weight drops to the 5.4 oz level for the lighter, but cheaper Gildan Heavy Cotton t-shirts and it still isn't see-through, but it is a lighter garment.

Over the years many people prefer a lighter garement than the heavier t-shirts, so this is still a sellable product on the retail side and with the economy in the situation that it is in, people tend to look at their wallets when they are buying 2-500 t-shirts. On a small scale customers tend to go towards the Gildan Ultra or other shirts, unless they are for a one-time use promotional event. Both of these styles of shirts print reasonably well.

Gildan T-shirts Introduction and Information on the Brand

History: There is a complete article on the transition of this family business to a giant t-shirt corporation here: http://www.answers.com/topic/gildan-activewear-inc

Brand: Gildan is a large, large t-shirt company that seems to be growing by using low prices and high quality standards in a effort to cover the world with moderate quality cotton. Gildan is a public company with nearly 20,000 employees. The company was founded by two brothers, Brothers Gregory and Glenn Chamandy in 1984 and it appears they relinquished their control in 2004.

Products: Gildan offers a wide range of t-shirt styles and products but we are focusing on the 2000 Ultra Cotton, 5000 Heavy Cotton, 64000 Soft Style and the 8000 50 50 poly cotton blend here.

Ordering: I offer the Gildan t-shirts through my wholesale website at BlankTshirt.com and my retail website at YQue.com

Colors: Gildan has one of the largest color selections available for affordable t-shirts. Here is a link to the pantone color chart that shows a small sample of all of the colors that Gildan works with. http://gildan.com/distributors/colorpalette/ This does not mean that every product is available in these colors, but this is generally the colors that are available. Each

Styles: Generally a boxy cut type of shirt the Gildan Heavy Cotton 5000 is the economical choice for many t-shirt printers. Surprisingly it is a decent shirt at 5.4 ounce and there is a wide range of colors. The Gildan Ultra Cotton 2000 is a heavier shirt, not super smooth, but a decent good quality strong shirt that comes in an even wider range of colors. Following these is the Gildan 50 50 t-shirts, 8400 and the 64000 which is a fashion cut style of Gildan t-shirts that are lighter and softer than the standard t-shirts mentioned above.

Sweatshop labor: Here is an excerpt from their corporate website, "No. All Gildan facilities (and contractors) adhere to our strict internal code of conduct, local & international laws and the codes of WRAP and the FLA." There is more information regarding this company and it's policies at their corporate website here. http://gildan.com/corporate/home.cfm These shirts are manufactured internationally and the corporation of Gildan appears to have a strong committment to preserving their brand, which makes it unreasonable for a company to purposefully use sweatshop labor. Based on the PR statements and up front statements I would have to take the company for it's word and read the accredidations if you need more information about this subject. WRAP and FLA are two independent organizations that have accredited Gildan in different parts of the world. The corporate citizenship page has a lot of interesting info on this subject: http://gildan.com/corporate/corporateCitizenship/codeOfConduct.cfm

http://GildanUltra.com