Coloso Crew — workwear and team kit production | colosocrew.com

Decide the six fields before asking for a number

A quote becomes comparable only when every supplier is pricing the same six-field specification.

Any workshop can price a team order, but only against a written spec: garment type, fabric weight, fit, colour count, decoration placement and the sizing run. Leave one field blank and each supplier fills it with a different assumption, so the figures that come back cannot be compared line by line.

Fabric weight is quoted in GSM. A standard t-shirt sits around 180 gsm, a mid-weight tee at 240-260 gsm, a polo at 280-320 gsm and a fleece at 320-380 gsm. The weight decides how the garment hangs and which decoration it carries well.

Placement sounds cosmetic but moves the price. A left-chest logo typically runs 3,000-8,000 stitches, while cap-back embroidery is priced as its own location. The full field-by-field breakdown is on the Specifying the order page.

• Garment type — t-shirt, polo, fleece or cap
• Fabric weight — quoted in GSM
• Fit — the cut and the sizes offered
• Colour count — how many colours in the artwork
• Decoration placement — left chest, back, cap back
• Sizing run — the distribution of sizes, not a wish list

Where the money actually goes

Almost all of the cost sits in two places: setup that happens once and per-unit work that repeats.

Screen printing charges a setup per colour, commonly USD 25-60 per screen per side. A four-colour design printed on the front and the back carries eight setups before a single garment is printed — that is the line that surprises first-time buyers.

Embroidery is priced per stitch, and a left-chest logo is typically 3,000-8,000 stitches. Simplifying the artwork — fewer colour changes, larger shapes — cuts the stitch count and the per-unit price falls with it.

Because setup is fixed, it has to be amortised across the run. That is why minimums exist — 12-24 pieces for embroidery, 24-50 for screen printing — and why unit prices break downward as the run grows. The full mechanics are on the What decoration actually costs page.

Pick the decoration method from colours and garment

The number of colours in the artwork and the type of garment choose the method — preference comes second.

Bold artwork in a few colours on t-shirts points to screen printing, where each colour is one screen. Logos with fine detail on polos, fleece and caps point to embroidery, priced per stitch, with cap-back work counted as one location.

Screen printing cannot hit an exact hex match, because inks are mixed from a physical swatch rather than printed from a digital value. Where a close digital match matters at small runs, DTG prints process colours and gets nearer to the on-screen reference.

The practical rule: count the colours, name the garment, then choose the method. Reversing that order — picking a method first — is how teams end up paying for eight setups on a design that wanted two.

• Few colours, bold shapes, t-shirts — screen printing
• Fine detail on polos, fleece or caps — embroidery
• Many colours or photographic art at small runs — DTG