What to have ready before you call
Four answers turn a vague conversation into a real number. How many pieces you need. How many colors are in the design, counting the outline and any white.
Where it prints, meaning front only, front and back, or a sleeve as well. And what garment, meaning a basic tee, a heavier tee, a hoodie or a jersey. If you have artwork, say what kind of file it is.
Without those four, any price from anywhere is a range, and ranges are how people end up surprised at pickup.
What to check on your mockup
The mockup is your last easy chance to change anything, so read it like a contract. Check every word and every name, letter by letter, including the ones you are certain about. Check that the design is the size you pictured; art that looks big on a phone is often smaller on a shirt than people expect.
Check the shirt color is the one you meant. Changes here cost nothing but a few minutes. Changes after the screens are burned mean the screens get made again.
A misspelled name is the one mistake that cannot be washed out.
What usually causes a delay, and it is not the printing
Printing a few hundred shirts takes far less time than a group takes to agree on a design. The two things that actually hold jobs up are waiting on a final size count and waiting on somebody to approve the mockup. A distant third is artwork that has to be rebuilt because what got sent was too small to use.
If you want a job to move fast, settle the artwork first and lock the count second, and the printing takes care of itself.
If something is wrong when you pick up
Say so. A shop that prints for its own town does not survive on jobs people are unhappy with. If a count is off, a size is missing or something does not look like the proof you approved, bring it up right away rather than living with it.
What can be fixed depends on what happened, but nothing can be fixed if nobody hears about it. This is the practical advantage of ordering from somebody you can actually reach instead of a website in another state.
One callback about your order. Your information goes to the shop that prints it and nowhere else. Still deciding whether to order at all?
The buyer guide on this site covers sizing, artwork files, ink colors and timing in plain language. It includes the cases where another shop is a better fit for your job than this one.