American Made Pocket T-shirts

[old guard graphics]

I need to find a new supplier for American made pocket t-shirts. Have been using bayside, but they have stock issues and they are not the best quality shirts, a little rough. Our Customer likes American Apparel, but they don't have much of a color selection.

We need: Navy, Forest, Cardinal, White, Carolina Blue, Caribbean Blue, Red.

I have been searching, but not a lot of companies that I can find that can meet the volume without extreme lead times, we generally order 5,000 in mixed colors 4-5 times per year.

We will also need to de-tag the shirts so we can private label, and would prefer that this be done at the mill, we just dont have the staff to dedicate to cutting out tags.

Thanks in Advance for any suggestions.

[cbjamel]

Try Jensen Apparel.
Shane

[old guard graphics]

Thanks, just sent them an email.

[Homer]

Camber is good too just expensive. And they do not offer a volume price structure. so 1k is the same as 1 shirt....

http://www.camberusa.com/

[ebscreen]

Sanmar has the USA100P though not in all those colors. I think Anvil started getting in the
American Made game as well.

[ZooCity]

Anvil's US911 has a few of those colors but not all, at least not yet. 

It may be one of the most horrifying experiences of your printing career but if yer client likes the AA pocket Ts you can have them dye to suit for you at that qty as well as omit labels. 

There are also quite a few ops in LA doing cut/sew that might be worth checking into aside from AA- just send them a size run of AA pockets and have them match the pattern and build with ringspun.  If you are at around 800pcs per color on the avg run it should be reasonable pricing and the lead should not be more than 5 weeks, though it will depend on the time of year and small U.S. mills really get backed up sometimes. 

[mk162]

be careful with california stuff, I am not sure if it's just stuff being sold in cali, but it might cover stuff being shipped out of cali too, if 1 component came from another country, it cannot legally be labeled Made in the USA.  I guess some guy sued Kwikset because the screws on his doorknob where made in Mexico.  Not a joke.

Keep your ears open for it.

[ZooCity]

be careful with california stuff, I am not sure if it's just stuff being sold in cali, but it might cover stuff being shipped out of cali too, if 1 component came from another country, it cannot legally be labeled Made in the USA.  I guess some guy sued Kwikset because the screws on his doorknob where made in Mexico.  Not a joke.

Keep your ears open for it.

Yep that's FTC reg's, they're very clear about it.

One of our cap mfg's refused to put our labels reading "Made in USA" on their caps as one of the plastic snap components was made overseas so they had to have "cut, sewn and assembled in the U.S.A. of foreign and domestic components" or something to that end. 

While technically correct, I think it may be well nigh impossible to truly label anything in the textile/accessories industry as "Made in USA" by FTC definition.  I understand the rationale for the strict guidelines, it's painfully apparent that companies would take advantage of this in unscrupulous ways if they had too much leniency.

CYA would be to label a little more creatively or literally I suppose-  "Sewn by Americans", etc. 

[dirkdiggler]

Platinum Sportswear, in ATL.  Union shop made in the USA t's.