How Contract Screen Printing Works

A plain-English guide for print shops, resellers, and promo distributors who are new to contract printing, or tired of being surprised by their current printer.

What contract screen printing actually is

Contract screen printing means a production shop prints garments for your business, not for the end customer. You bring the order, the artwork, and usually the blank garments. The contract printer supplies the presses, the labor, and the expertise, then charges you a wholesale decoration rate. You invoice your customer at your own price, and the margin between the two is yours.

It is how a huge share of the apparel you see every day actually gets made. The promo distributor who sold your bank its polos, the local shop that printed your gym’s shirts, the online store selling band merch — many of them never touch a press. A contract printer runs the job behind the scenes.

How contract pricing is structured

Nearly every contract printer prices the same way, and once you understand it you can estimate any job in your head. Three variables set the price:

• Quantity. Rates are tiered. Common breaks are 24, 48, 72, 100, 150, 250, 500, and 1,000 pieces, and the per-print rate drops at every tier. The difference between 72 and 100 pieces is often large enough that ordering 28 more shirts costs less total.
• Colors per design. Every ink color in the artwork needs its own screen, so a 1-color print costs less than a 4-color print at the same quantity.
• Print locations. Pricing is per print, per location. A front-and-back job is two prints on every garment, each priced at its own color count.

The underbase, explained

This is the one that catches new buyers. Printing light ink on a dark garment requires a layer of white ink underneath — the underbase — or the shirt color bleeds through and the print looks muddy. The underbase needs its own screen, so it counts as an additional color. A 2-color logo on black tees is a 3-color job. An honest printer tells you this at quote time, not on the invoice.

Watch for these on any contract quote

• Setup and screen fees. Some shops charge per screen, per job, even on reorders. Some (including us) charge none. Always ask.
• Garment surcharges. Fleece, shorts, and pants are harder to load on a press and usually add a small flat amount per piece.
• Unbagging. If your blanks arrive individually polybagged, someone has to unbag every one. Expect a per-piece charge.
• Rush fees. Fair shops apply rush percentages to the decoration cost only. Some apply it to the whole invoice. The difference is enormous.

The production process, step by step

1. Artwork and separations

Vector art (AI, EPS, PDF) is the gold standard — full detail in our artwork and file requirements guide. The art gets separated into one layer per ink color, and halftones are applied for shading and gradients. Bad art is the number one cause of delays: a low-resolution JPG pulled from a website cannot be printed until someone redraws it.

2. Screens

Each color layer is imaged onto its own mesh screen. Modern shops use computer-to-screen (CTS) imaging, which exposes the design directly from the digital file — no film positives, no manual alignment, and identical screens on every reorder.

3. Press setup and approval

Screens are registered on the press, ink is mixed (Pantone-matched if specified), and a test print is run and checked against the mockup. On automatic presses, this setup is most of the labor in a job — which is exactly why per-piece prices fall so fast as quantity rises.

4. The run

Automatic presses print hundreds of pieces per hour with identical pressure and placement on every garment. Each shirt passes through a flash cure between colors where needed, then through a conveyor dryer that cures the ink permanently.

5. Quality control and finishing

Good shops pull pieces throughout the run to check registration, coverage, and cure. Finishing options like printed size tags, neck label prints, folding, and bagging happen after the run, turning blank-plus-print into a retail-ready product.

6. Shipping

Contract orders ship back to you, or blind ship directly to your customer with nothing identifying the printer. Blind shipping is standard practice in contract work — if a printer charges extra for it or gets cagey, that is a red flag.

Turnaround: what is normal

Standard contract turnaround across the industry is 7 to 10 business days from art approval and garment arrival. Rush tiers compress that — at our shop, down to same day when the schedule allows. Two things blow up timelines more than anything else: artwork that is not print-ready, and blanks that arrive later than promised. Lock those two down and most deadlines take care of themselves.

Who uses contract printing

• Print shops at capacity. When the schedule is full, overflow work goes to a contract partner rather than being turned away.
• Promo product distributors. Sell the program, source the blanks, and let a contract decorator handle production.
• Resellers and online stores. Wholesale decoration plus blind shipping means you can sell nationally without owning a press.
• Anyone with repeat programs. Uniforms, spirit wear, corporate merch — jobs that reorder monthly are exactly what contract pricing is built for.

How to get set up with a contract printer

Send five things and any competent shop can quote you the same day: total quantity with a size breakdown, the garment brand and style, the number of ink colors per location, the print locations, and your real in-hands date. Add vector artwork and you may go straight to production. Most contract relationships start with one test job — run a small order, check the quality, check the communication, then move your volume.

We also keep everything on file — art, separations, ink formulas, placements — so your second order is a purchase order, not a project. That is what contract embroidery and screen printing both look like when they are set up properly.