Custom T-Shirts & Their Effect: H&M Breaks The Internet

Making a Custom t-shirt (hoodie or other custom apparel) is a pretty common thing nowadays, since there is always a use for customized shirts. Every other person is looking to make their own clothing line, customize a shirt for an event, customize shirts for their company or make custom shirts for their school trip. As an owner of a T-shirt printing company I’ve seen shirts being made for many different reasons and occasions.

Sports Team Uniform Printing

One common reason for making custom t-shirts, or other custom apparel if for local sports team and leagues. Manny of the smaller non corporate leagues give away a t-shirt with the team information printed, rather than a jersey, when signing up. This is because for a nice jersey with a custom print they might spend $12 per unit versus a t-shirt where they might spend $5-$6 each shirt. They are able to maximized their profit and usually the players on the teams don’t really care since the shirt ends up becoming pajamas after the season is over. In New York, where we are located, there are many social leagues who order custom t-shirts from us for their players. Some of the leagues include S3 Leagues and NYC Social League which are a great way for people to go out be social and enjoy their favorite sport at the same time.

Business and Corporate Uniform Printing 

Another very common reason for customers to make custom t-shirts is for their business  as uniforms for their employees and colleagues. Look around you any store you walk into, or any restaurant you eat at you will see staff in apparel that was most probably custom printed. By putting all staff in a uniform the establishment looks more professional. Since there are so many companies and businesses around today there is a great need for custom t shirts in this aspect.

Clothing Lines Custom Printing

Another reason, but less common, reason for making a batch of custom t-shirts is to start your own clothing line. This is actually a difficult thing to do, since most of the customers looking to do this only think about creating the line, not actually the means of how to sell it. But nonetheless we still get many phone calls from customers who are looking to start their own line and want to make custom t shirts

Custom T-Shirts For Retail Stores

Like uniforms, there is a big demand for custom t-shirts in the retail stores market. If you walk into any store like Gap, Target, Walmart and H&M you will absolutely see different versions of custom t-shirts for sale. if you think about it what is happening is the stores are actually making their own “clothing line” and selling it through their stores. They even go as far as having their own private label printed on the inner part of the shirt by the neck area. There is a large demand for custom shirts in retail stores and this is probably since customers need clothing, so why not wear something trendy. Well, this is what H&M figured when they decided to come up with a “trendy” custom hoodie this past week.

H&M Breaks The Internet

This week H&M added to their website a custom hoodie for kids and did not realize the effect it would cause all over the internet. The sweatshirt (seen on the right) reads “COOLEST MONKEY IN THE JUNGLE” and is modeled by an African American child. The sweatshirt alone would not be offensive, but the fact that they used an African American kid to model it on their website really caused a big controversy online because it’s insinuating that the African Americans are the coolest monkeys in the jungle. This was obviously rude and very offensive; eventually though H&M issued an apology for this and removed the product from their website.

Big Bang Screen Printing is a T-shirt printing company in New York which specializes in custom t-shirts and other custom printed apparel.