T Shirts and Printing companies…

An email from a window cleaner asking where I bought my t-shirts:

Hey Steve, How are you? I just wanted to ask where would be the best and cheapest place to buy customized work shirts? Do you know of any places that has no minimum requirements?
  
Thanks Steve and take care!
Mike

My Reply:

Hi Mike:
 
It's good to hear from you.  Doing just fine, just fine.  How are you doing over there?  Raking in the profits? 
 
As far as work shirts, I found a screen printing company in the yellow pages.  They had a small minimum of only 6 shirts.  It ran $50 for 6.  The chance of you finding someone with no minimum would be hard because they do have set up time and initial expenses involved.  So most places aren't willing to do only one or two shirts.  It's not worth it for them.  And that makes sense.  If you look in the yellow pages though, you should be able to find a "screen printer" with a low minimum like 6 or 12.   
 
Another option is to do a search on google for "screen printers". 
 
Take care for now and have a profitable day.
 
Regards,
 
Steve

A follow up email from Mike:

Thanks for the reply Steve. Doing fine here also, thanks! Yeah, I understand the setup time you explained but most of the companies I found had a minumum of 12 shirts and in the 150 to $200 range and with being new and having other bills I was just trying to find the least expensive route for now.
 
Another question I have is, Just out of curiousity, How much do a thousand business cards usually run you with the card in your package? I took the marketing cd to a printing company today and she said 1 to 2 colors $80. To print the cards exactly like on the cd, it would be pretty expensive..in the $100's is what she stated. She's going to have another lady look at it tomorrow and call me with a quote. Does that sound right?
 
Thanks alot for your time Steve, It's really appreciated!
Mike

My response:

Hi Mike:
 
The company I found with the minimum of 6 shirts was a small company run by one person.  So it does seem like the bigger companies are going to deal in higher minimums vs the one man/woman shops that don't have quite the expenses the big boys have. 
 
That doesn't sound right as far as the business cards go.  I would definitely recommend that you don't get any full color printing done locally.  When I first priced my full color postcards, a local print shop wanted over $800 for 1000 cards.  I told 'em to jump in a lake.  :o)  They're just not set up in most cases to handle full color printing on a massive scale.  So they charge you an arm and leg for it.  Stick with the printing companies online who do this day in and day out.  The 3 I've used over the years are:
 
PSprint.com
48hourprint.com
Postcardpress.com

All have good quality products at reasonable prices.  For example, I just visited psprint and they have 500 business cards for $45 plus shipping.  5000 postcards is under $300.  There is no way a local print company can match that or even come close.  Plus psprint recently upgraded their card stock from 12pt to 14pt giving you a thicker business card or postcard.  All you have to do is place order/make payment and upload your file to them.  Some folks will have barbara edit the files and get 'em ready for either of the 3 companies above.  Other folks take their desired file to kinkos for example, and have them make the edits.  Once the file is edited, it's just a matter of making payment and uploading the file as I mentioned.  Easy.  And reasonably priced.  So I would run as fast as you can away from that print company that said it'll be hundreds.  The only thing local printing companies can do at decent prices is company letterhead. 
 
Hope this helps.
 
Regards,
 
Steve