Its no secret that there are significant supply chain issues impacting almost every industry and unfortunately, the custom imprinted & spiritwear apparel industry was not immune to those challenges. If you were in charge of your school spiritwear orders or even a parent customer who purchased spiritwear over the past couple of years, you’ve undoubtedly experienced back-orders, discontinued products and non-responsive vendors.
A quick google search yields countless news articles about how difficult it has been for screen printers and spiritwear companies to source products. Below are a few examples:
- ‘It’s been a nightmare.’ Local businesses struggle to find T-shirts, hats amid shortage
- Supply Chain Issues Now Causing Problems for Custom Apparel Orders
- Supply chain issues and port congestion continue to affect suppliers and shops alike
While there has been some improvement, overall there are still significant holes and shortages in many products, sizes and colors. For several reasons, including but not limited to, labor shortages, raw material shortages, port congestion, inflation, covid19, covid lockdowns and natural disasters, the large mills that produce the blank apparel products, have been forced to dedicate the precious resources that they have into producing only the most popular items, sizes and colors in the industry. This has created shortages in youth size products as well as new and trendy items.
Your vendors ability to source the products your school sells to your students, parents and staff members is critical. Most vendors & screen printers order their products from the suppliers on an as-needed basis which means they do not have any inventory in-house. They are ordering products only after they receive the orders and payments from you and your school. This is one of the main reasons most vendors were unable to fulfill orders for several months or in some cases at all over the past year and a half. Other reasons orders went unfulfilled include, ink shortages, labor shortages & listing too many product options.
For over 40 years, Custom Sportswear has proudly filled 100% of our orders, ensuring our customers’ Spiritwear & Field Day programs run successfully and on time! We have excellent relationships with reliable suppliers and have secured inventory of our most popular items and colors to fulfill the anticipated orders for the season. We inventory all of our products in-house which ensures that we are able to fulfill your schools orders in time, every time!
