The Best Places to Buy Your Limited Edition and Custom Shirts Online

Raikus — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:27:00 GMT

Are you the type of person who scoffs at tee designs in Target and Wal-Mart? Do you dislike the mainstream designs that you see in stores comprised mostly of skulls, birds and trees? Do you have a unique style and like to wear interesting and even artful shirts? Well boy howdy have you stumbled upon the right blog post. I'm going to walk you through some of the best custom apparel places out there and let you know when, how much and where to go to get the coolest torso-covering material out there.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Place: Shirt.Woot
Price: $10 for daily shirt, $15 for top twenty best sellers
Availability: New shirts daily and the top twenty best sellers
Style: Mostly smooth and simple illustrations.

Shirt.Woot is one of the oldest custom daily shirt sites on the web and one of the most successful. All of their designs are submitted by artists that are, Monday through Thursday, hand-picked by the staff at Woot. They also run weekly design derbies where artists are given a theme and submit their entries. The entries are voted on by the Woot masses and the top three are sold Friday through Sunday. This allows Woot to evolve to the tastes of its audience and highlight new and upcoming designs that capture their demographic.

The shirts themselves are American Apparel which is arguably one of the best made apparel lines and they sell men's, women's and kid sizes. They introduce a new shirt every day for $10. After that, you can still buy the design for the next week for $15 after which the shirt enters the "reckoning" which is alot like Highlander, except instead of there only being one, there are twenty. The top twenty designs based on sales continue to be available at $15 a pop. This is a really great way to buy designs you may have missed in the past. The current chart oldest selling design is at 90 weeks.

I have bought many, many shirts from Woot. The quality is always amazing and the wear and tear is minimal. If you're in to more cartoony designs that are simple or have a clever message then check them out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Place: Threadless
Price: From $5 on sales to $20. Most run $15-$18
Availability: Hundreds of designs available. New designs introduced on Mondays.
Style: Extremely clever or beautiful designs -- some type only, some graphic only -- but all have excellent artwork.

Threadless is a constant source of witty, clever, arty and just plain amazing shirts. They aren't a shirt-a-day site. Think of them as an online retail store that has hundreds of designs available at one time. Designs do sell out, but the most popular are reprinted again for another run. One of the best things about Threadless is their regular sales. They mark down designs into $5, $10 and $15 categories and you can really get some great bargains. The normal prices are a bit higher than most of the other sites on this list ($15-$20), but you get what you pay for.

Like Shirt.Woot, Threadless gets its designs by picking submitted art from designers and it's available for vote by the Threadless members. Unlike Woot there is no theme or time restriction and Threadless doesn't go strickly by vote totals when picking designs. They sell the gamut of sizes in addition to kids and even long sleeved shirts, hoodies, wall decals and prints.

The only thread I have to pick with Threadless (ahem) is that their shirts are inconsistent. Due to them having such a large catalog of designs -- some printed a year ago or some printed this week -- the shirt stock changes. Sometimes designs print on thicker or thinner shirts, or shirts that have a tighter or looser fit. Unfortunately there's no way to tell. I've bought a few designs that I absolutely love but can't wear due to the fit being uncomfortable. Still, there's almost nowhere better to get shirts that will strike up a conversation than Threadless.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Place: Teefury
Price: $11
Availability: Available for one day only.
Style: Range from artistic to cutesy. Usually run large designs. Loves animal designs.

Teefury is one of my favorite shirt-a-day sites. Their designs range from simplistic, cutesy, artsy or iconic and, in rare cases, all of the above. They always go big with their designs (a good thing in most situations) and have a great track record of putting some of the most popular designs out. There have been a few hick-ups lately with plagiarized work (a HUGE no-no in the custom shirt world) or traced designs that they've promoted, but the fault of that belongs to the artist that submitted the work. Still, a little more research on Teefury's part would go a long way to making sure things like that don't happen.

The people at Teefury are great, kind and helpful to the artist community and to their customers. They just finished celebrating their one year anniversary and within that year have established themselves as a top daily shirt site. The quality of the prints and designs are superb and the make of their shirts is my favorite out of all apparel styles (Note: Unfortunately Teefury has recently switched to Gillian tees which, while fitting nearly the same as their previous shirt, are slightly itchy and stiff. There's been a noticeable quality degradation because of it. While they still are wearable tees they are no where near the comfort that they used to be. Hopefully this is something Teefury can remedy soon). Teefury shirts take up more of my closet space than any other shirt site and for good reason -- they're one of the cheapest and the best.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Place: RIPT Apparel
Price: $12.50 for Men's S-XL; $14.50 for 2XL and 3XL
Availability: Available for one day only and then gone forever.
Style: Artistically interesting -- sometimes very stylish, sometimes very questionable -- but nearly always very cool.

RIPT Apparel is a newcomer to the shirt-a-day group, but their interesting designs and low prices are getting them a lot of quick attention. RIPT sells one shirt every twenty-four hours and then sends it to the Graveyard to rest in peace. In fact, RIPT is an acronym for "Rest In Peace Tees." Being that they're less than two months old, they are still fighting the uphill battle of establishing a foothold in the shirt site market and only sell men's tees at this time. However they have plans to introduce female sizes in the near future which is a very good thing as they tend to sell a decent amount of designs that are feminine or effeminate.

RIPT takes a lot of chances with the designs they sell. Most are quirky and cool but appeal to a smaller market than, say, Threadless or DBH designs. But that's what makes RIPT so great. They're the only place to pick up designs like this. Their shirts aren't appealing to everyone 100% of the time, but often one comes up that fits your personality to a tee. In addition, the runners of RIPT have an excellent eye for shirts and spread the variety of designs to their audience exceptionally well.

The shirts themselves are a slightly lower quality than American Apparel, but they are by no means cheap, thin or bad quality. My main plus with RIPT is that their shipping speed is amazing. I once ordered a shirt on Thursday and received it on Monday. That's far faster than any other apparel company I've ever bought from.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Place: Design by Humans - DBH
Price: $15 for shirt of the day, up to $25 for regular shirts. Plus $8.65 shipping for each order.
Availability: Large catalog of designs available for sale.
Style: The best place for custom artistic shirts, hands down.

Design by Humans is the place to go for quality artistic tees. You will see designs here that will absolutely amaze you. DBH has no limitations on colors or shirt printing so the artist can take full advantage of printing whatever they want. Due to this they constantly come up with beautiful works of wearable art.

The main criticism of DBH are the prices. Most designs run $25 per shirt and then there's a $8.65 shipping charge on top of that. However, when you think of the quality of print and design you're getting it's not a bad price at all. Most shirts of this caliber that are available in stores would sell for $65 or more. When put in perspective DBH shirts are a steal.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

There are many more shirt companies out there that I'm afraid I can't get to in this post. If you have the time, take a look at Teextile, Emptees and Shirt Fight. Also, there are some great compilation sites that round up all the daily shirt sales in one place: Daytee and TeeMagnet. Finally, if a shirt you love has sold out or is no longer available, your best bet may be checking out TeeTrade.org. There are a lot of never-to-be-printed-again designs up for trade and sale there.

I hope this has been a comprehensive guide to the best limited edition and custom shirt sites that are out there. If you have any questions about any of this please post a comment below and it will be answered.

The Wastebucket : teemagnet, shirt a day

The Best Places to Buy Your Limited Edition and Custom Shirts Online