Every custom apparel shop you've ever seen has a minimum order requirement. Usually it's 24 pieces, often it's 48, sometimes it's even higher. When you ask why, you get a vague answer about "setup costs" or "production efficiency." This post explains what's actually going on economically, how DTF technology changed the calculus, and exactly what "no minimums" means in practice for your order — including the pricing implications that most shops won't explain to you.
Minimum order requirements in screen printing are a direct consequence of the economics of making screens. To produce a screen-printed garment, the printer first has to create a physical mesh screen for each color in your design — essentially a custom stencil. This process takes labor, materials, and setup time. A typical 1-color screen costs $25–$40 to produce. A 4-color design might have $100–$160 in screens alone before a single shirt is printed.
To make that setup cost economical, the printer needs to spread it across enough shirts. If your job only produces revenue from 6 shirts and you've spent $100 on screens, the math doesn't work unless the per-shirt price is very high. Setting a minimum order of 24 or 48 pieces guarantees enough volume to amortize the setup cost and still make the job profitable.
This is a completely legitimate business reason for minimums in the context of screen printing. The problem is that the industry has treated minimums as a standard requirement even when the technology has changed to make them unnecessary.
Direct-to-Film (DTF) printing completely disrupted the minimum-order model because it eliminated screen setup entirely. DTF prints your design from a digital file directly to a transfer film using inkjet technology — the same way your home printer works, but with far higher quality inks and a commercial heat press to apply the transfer.
There's no screen to make. No per-color setup cost. No minimum volume required to make the job economically viable. The cost of printing one DTF transfer is the same cost as printing the first of a hundred — because the machine just runs your file regardless of quantity.
This is why we can print a single shirt. Not because we're doing you a favor or absorbing a loss on small orders — but because the production method genuinely supports it. The economics work at any quantity.
No minimums doesn't mean every quantity costs the same per piece. It means there's no quantity floor below which we won't take your order. The price at 1 piece is higher per piece than the price at 100 pieces — that's true at virtually every print shop and it's true here. What's different is that we'll take the 1-piece order at all, and we're transparent about exactly what you'll pay.
Here's how our pricing structure actually works at different quantities:
Birthdays, memorials, custom gifts, personal projects, branded merchandise for a personal brand — these all involve 1–5 pieces and would be completely inaccessible at most print shops that require 24+ pieces. A single custom shirt for a friend, a one-of-a-kind piece for yourself, a prototype before committing to a larger run — all of this is now accessible without the overhead of a large order.
Before ordering 50 branded shirts for your staff, you might want to see how the design looks in person, test the fit on different team members, and make sure the color works with your branding. Ordering 3–5 samples before committing to a full run makes complete business sense — and no-minimums printing makes that possible without the cost of a traditional sample order.
A team of 14 needs 14 jerseys. If a player leaves mid-season and a new one joins, you need 1 replacement. With traditional print shops, that single jersey might be impossible to order at any reasonable cost. With DTF and no minimums, a single replacement jersey is a completely normal order.
School groups, clubs, nonprofits — these rarely have round-number memberships. If your club has 31 members, you shouldn't have to order 48 shirts to meet a minimum. Order exactly 31 (plus a few extras for new members) and that's it.
All orders include a $25 flat setup fee. This covers artwork digitizing or screen preparation, the digital proof we send before production, file management, and quality control. It's a flat fee regardless of order size — it doesn't increase if you order 1 shirt or 500 shirts.
The only exception: reorders of a previous job have the setup fee waived. If you've ordered from us before and you're reordering the exact same design on the same garment, we already have your file and screens/digital files prepared. We pass that savings directly to you.
The quality of a single-piece DTF order is identical to the quality of a 500-piece run. The same ink, the same film, the same heat press, the same production process. We do not have a "small order" workflow with lower standards. Every piece goes through the same inspection before it's packed, regardless of order size.
We've been in this business for 25 years. Our reputation is built on every single garment we ship — not just the large ones. A single shirt that arrives perfectly produces a customer who comes back with a team order. A single shirt that arrives with a quality issue does the opposite.
No minimums means we're ready for whatever quantity makes sense for you. Start your order and get a free proof within 24 hours.
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