Team Uniforms

Most apparel orders are one design repeated. A team order is thirty different garments — different names, different numbers, different sizes. That changes the method, the cost, and the timeline, and it's worth understanding before you collect a single size.

The approach we'd recommend for most teams: print the shared team design in bulk, then add names and numbers with DTF. Screen printing the shared elements keeps the per-shirt cost low, and DTF handles personalization with no per-piece setup. Nobody can tell from looking, and it's usually the cheapest route by a distance.

The roster is only part of it. Most teams end up needing practice and warm-up gear, coach and staff polos, and — usually the largest run — fan shirts for parents and siblings.

That fan run is worth planning deliberately rather than as an afterthought. A team has twenty players and often a hundred-plus supporters, and a simple shirt in team colors sold alongside the roster order routinely funds the uniforms outright. The mechanics are the same as any t-shirt fundraiser.

Team gear gets sweated in and washed constantly, which rules out cotton for anything played in. Moisture-wicking polyester is the standard for jerseys and practice wear, and it has a decoration consequence worth knowing: screen printing onto polyester risks dye migration, where the garment's dye creeps into the ink and discolors it.

It's solvable with low-cure inks and a blocker, and DTF avoids it entirely — which is another reason we lean on it for team work.

Two things sink team orders, and neither is the printing.

Collecting sizes, numbers, and payment. A paper sheet and a group text is how most teams try it, and it's why coaches burn out on merch. An online store takes name, number, size, and payment in one step with no minimum, so parents order directly and nobody chases anybody. It also stays up all season for the family who wants a hoodie in week six.

Starting too late. Season openers and tournaments don't move. Standard turnaround is two to three weeks from artwork approval, with names-and-numbers work adding a little on top. Work backwards from the first game and add a buffer.