Screen Printing and Custom Shirts for Dayton, TN Fundraisers and Teams

Fundraiser shirts live or die on one number, and that number is what your group keeps after the printer gets paid. Everything else is decoration. Below are the six questions we get asked most by Dayton parents, coaches, band directors, and church volunteers who are staring at a spreadsheet and trying to figure out whether a shirt sale is worth the effort. Short answer, it usually is, as long as somebody does the arithmetic before the order goes in instead of after.

1. What does a booster club in Dayton actually net per shirt?

Take your sale price. Subtract your printed cost per piece. What is left is your margin, and you multiply that by however many shirts you actually move. That is the whole formula. No mystery to it.

The lever you control most is the printed cost per piece, and on screen printing in Dayton that cost drops as the run gets bigger and as the ink count comes down. A one-color front print on 24 shirts costs less per shirt than a four-color front and back on 12. Same shirt, same quality, very different math for your treasurer. If your group has a design with a lot of gradients and shadows in it, that is fine for DTF transfers in Dayton, but for a large screen printed fundraiser run it is worth asking whether a cleaner two-color version would put another chunk of money in the account.

Run your real numbers on the live pricing calculator. It gives you per-piece pricing on custom t-shirts, custom hoodies, and spirit wear by quantity and ink count, so you can set a sale price that clears your goal instead of guessing at it in a booster meeting.

2. How many custom t-shirts does a Dayton fundraiser have to order?

Twelve pieces for screen printing and twelve pieces for embroidery. That is the minimum, and it is genuinely low for a shop running real presses.

DTF transfers, laser engraving, and sublimation all start at one piece. That matters more than it sounds for a Dayton fundraiser. It means your group can screen print the main custom t-shirt run at twelve or more, then fill the odd requests with DTF, the coach's 4XL, the one grandparent who wants a long sleeve, the three extra shirts somebody forgot to add to the count. You are not stuck telling a donor no because they came in after the sheet closed.

Presell if you can. Collect sizes and money first, then order what you sold. Groups that presell in Dayton walk away with margin. Groups that guess at sizes end up with a tub of unsold smalls in a closet, and that tub is the single most common reason a shirt fundraiser underperforms.

3. When does the order need to be in?

Turnaround is 10 to 14 business days from an approved proof, and the shop is closed weekends, so business days really do mean business days.

Count backward from the date you want shirts in hands. Homecoming, a tournament weekend, a fall festival, the first home game, whatever it is. Then add a few days for proof approval, because that clock starts when you say yes to the artwork, not when you first email us. Dayton groups that reach out three weeks ahead are relaxed. Groups that reach out five days ahead are not, and neither is anybody else.

If you already know your event date, put it in the quote request and we will tell you straight whether it fits.

4. Which decoration method keeps the most money in the account?

Depends what you are selling.

Screen printing wins on volume. It is the cheapest per piece once you are past a couple dozen custom shirts in Dayton, and it is what we put on most fundraiser shirts, spirit wear, and team uniforms. Embroidery costs more per piece but it sells for more per piece, which is why embroidered polos and custom hats work so well as an upsell tier next to a basic tee. Parents who will pay for a shirt will often pay considerably more for an embroidered hat, and your margin on that hat can be better than the shirt.

DTF transfers in Dayton are the flexible option. Full color, no ink limits, no minimum, ideal for small batches and one-offs. Laser engraving and sublimation open up the non-apparel side, tumblers, plaques, awards, mugs, the stuff that sells at a table next to the shirts and requires no size guessing at all.

A lot of Dayton fundraisers do best with a tiered menu. Screen printed tee at the entry price, custom hoodie in the middle, embroidered polo or custom hat at the top. Three price points, one order, one pickup.

5. Can a Dayton group sell more than shirts?

Yes, and most leave money sitting there by not trying. Custom hats in Dayton, embroidered polos for coaches and staff, work shirts for the sponsor businesses whose logos you are already printing on the back of the shirt, laser engraved awards for the banquet, sublimated mugs and tumblers for the concession table.

The sponsor angle is worth a second look. If Dayton businesses are buying ad space on the back of your fundraiser shirts anyway, several of them also need work shirts, embroidered polos, or custom hats for their own crews. Same shop, same art file, separate order. Point them at the quote form and let them handle their own purchase.

6. Who handles the art, the sizes, and the sorting?

We do the printing and we help with the art file. You handle collecting names, sizes, and money, because nobody in Cleveland or Dayton knows your roster better than your own volunteers.

Send whatever art you have. A logo, a sketch, a photo of last year's shirt, a rough idea written in an email. We will tell you what will print cleanly and what needs cleaning up first, and you approve a proof before anything hits a screen. Sizes come to us as a simple count. Twenty adult mediums, eighteen larges, and so on. Keep that list, because your reorder next season gets much easier when you already know what actually sold.

Straight talk about geography. Express Screen Printing & Embroidery is not located in Dayton. The shop sits at 15 Broad St NW in Cleveland, TN 37311, and it has been family-owned since 2001 and veteran-operated the whole way. Dayton is a manageable drive, and plenty of Rhea County groups make it once for a proof or a pickup and handle the rest by phone and email.

We print for Dayton, Spring City, Graysville, and Soddy-Daisy, which means the drive is short whether you are coming down 27 or over from the lake side. Boosters in Spring City and Graysville run the same fundraiser math as Dayton groups and hit the same minimums, twelve pieces on screen printing and embroidery, one piece on DTF, laser engraving, and sublimation.

Why a Dayton group would look toward Cleveland instead of ordering online. Online sellers quote a low unit price and then hit you with setup fees, art fees, rush fees, and a shipping charge that eats the margin your fundraiser was built on. Worse, when a box shows up with the wrong color or a crooked print, there is nobody to call. Here you get a phone number that a person answers, a proof you approve before we print, and a shop with 4.6 stars from 71 Google reviews standing behind the order. Shop Local. Get It Fast.

Reorders are simple too. Once your Dayton spirit wear or fundraiser design is on file, the second run is a phone call.

Do the math before the meeting, not after it. Pull your per-piece cost on custom t-shirts, custom hoodies, embroidered polos, and custom hats, set your sale price, and know exactly what your Dayton group nets per shirt before a single order form goes home in a backpack.

Express Screen Printing & Embroidery, 15 Broad St NW, Cleveland, TN 37311. Screen printing, custom t-shirts, custom hoodies, embroidery, custom hats, team uniforms, spirit wear, DTF transfers, laser engraving, and sublimation for Dayton, Spring City, Graysville, and Soddy-Daisy. Shop Local. Get It Fast.