How to decide which customisation method to choose for your branded garments

As one of the leading UK clothing manufacturers, we're here to help make the process of deciding what's the best application method for your custom clothing a lot easier.

Where most businesses simply offer screen print due to it's cost effectiveness, we offer DTG, screen and vinyl print as well as embroidery; but we understand that more options might leave potential clients wondering what is the best option when choosing custom clothing manufacturers.

The reason we're writing this blog is because we've had a lot of clients ask this question on contact forms and in general discussions, so we wanted to run through each customisation option and where we personally feel it suits best (although, please advise this is simply our recommendation and no particular method is better than another, but they can definitely be better suited for particular garments).

Embroidery

Let's start easy... quite possibly the best customisation in terms of durability there is. Embroidery tends to work best on tracksuits and heavy cotton garments; be it sweatshirts, hoodies, joggers or even tees. We wouldn't recommend this style of customisation on any female items- such as sports bras, or leggings only because the garments are so close to the skin that it might cause irritation under the logos application, as well as stretching the fabric around the logo which will much more apparent on tight garments. Embroidery is a staple for any clothing manufacturers in the UK as it's widely popular on products like caps!

DTG (direct to garment)

This style of customisation is where specialised aqueous ink jet technology is used to apply a logo to a garment. The printer inks are jetted, or sprayed onto the garment- check out a video of the process here https://www.facebook.com/White2LabelManufacturing/videos/2429208777393415/

This style of customisation is amazing for highly detailed garments and isn't limited to colours- so is much better applied for depending on the logo file itself, oppose to preference over which garment it's applied to. Wherever screen print is available, but limits either colours, or resolution of the logo; that's where DTG comes into play! DTG is the most expensive out of the options on here- this is because the overhead of machinery and cost of ink is quite high; therefore leaving any UK clothing manufactures to have to charge to cover the costs of operation on such machinery. That being said, any graphic products always yield a higher RRP; so you can cover this in your margins.

Screen print

The most popular option- due to it's cost effectiveness and general good quality. Provided you've found a good UK clothing manufacturer to screen print for you, then the finish can come out very well on your garments. We would recommend this on most garments if you're looking to firstly establish your brand and want a cost-effective, but good quality option to brand your products. Most, if not all custom clothing manufacturers will be able to screen print with the only exception being CMT factories (cut, make and trim) who tend not to customise onsite.

Vinyl print

Vinyl printing is essentially where the vinyl logo is cut out and then heat pressed onto a garment- this is a great method of application on 100% polyester garments. Items such as our women's sports bras, or leggings are a good selection of garments where vinyl print would be suitable. However, this does give a shiny texture, therefore we wouldn't recommend this on logos that are intended to have a matte finish. The good thing about vinyl application is the fact there's no setup process, or fees- meaning this really would be the best option for those looking for clothing manufacturers with low MOQs. We'd always recommend vinyl on anything below 50 pieces over screen print, as avoiding the screen setup fee will actually decrease your overall unit cost and produce a more cost effective solution.

We hope this has helped you decide which customisation option to use on your white label clothing... the best advice we could give is to use a UK clothing manufacturer who can facilitate all of the above options and offer a range of white label clothing, as well as private label label clothing solutions for you, as it's likely that each customisation option will serve it's purpose on different products, throughout different seasons and collections.

The good news is that we provide all of the above, so if you don't already know about us and what we do; hit the link below and leave your contact information and one of the team would love to chat to you and hear more about your plans and how we can help!

www.white2labelmanufacturing.com