With the proliferation of fashionable garments, more and more customers that would have manufactured their own garments merely relabel an existing garment.

I got a call today from an old friend in the business today and he said, “I figured my cost is $.70, but I know they won’t pay that!”

Little tiny print unfortunately makes too many customers think it is a little tiny price. It is not.

Even if you are very efficient, cutting out a label and printing a new one is more expensive than putting a giant print on the front of a shirt, and typically more difficult to get right.

If you are not careful, a screenprinted label will show through the back of a shirt, particularly the thin fashionable kinds that most people want to use for their private label line.

One thing that helps, with shirts like Aurum Organic or some Anvil shirts is that they have nice perforated “tear away” labels that just rip right out. If you aren’t so lucky, you are talking razors or scissors and a time consuming process, and worse if you need to open the seam to sew a new label under.

The options for relabeling:

• sew over
• sew under
• transfer
• screenprint
• pad print

All these methods have a plus and minus to them depending on how many colors, quantity, size, type of shirts, turn time…

More on these later.

But conclusion with my pal was, try to get close to break even on relabeling and mark up the whole job, because customers won’t pay what it really costs.