Amarillo companies face supply chain challenges to complete custom t-shirt orders for the holiday season

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) – As the holiday shopping gears up, businesses say it won’t be a quick buy to get personalized t-shirts.

Amarillo Screen Printing and Great Armadillo Printing have been open for years and are now facing challenges completing t-shirt orders.

“To fill an order, it might take us six or seven suppliers to fill an order,” said Eddie Lancaster, owner of Great Armadillo Printing.

“It takes two or three more hours a day to spend my usual day finding these t-shirts for these people,” said Terry Gervasi, owner of Amarillo Screen Printing.

Gervasi says the t-shirts have been out of stock for six months and some who can’t wait are canceling their orders.

“T-shirts are just starting to get really hard to find,” Gervasi said. “You have different sizes, maybe you are missing medium and tall. If you go for a different color, you might miss out on XL, 2X or 3X shirts.

Great Armadillo Printing sells t-shirts locally and in other states on the basis of contractual agreements.

With the shortage of t-shirts, they have lost income as the price goes up for anyone trying to buy shirts.

“We have increased our prices once this year and we just learned that all of our t-shirt suppliers will increase another 6-10% on the first of the year, so we can’t keep up with a lot of money than that. costs us to do business, ”Lancaster said.

For organizations like kids inc. providing shirts to over 1,000 kids in their athletic program, they have to place orders months in advance to avoid problems.

“We would wait until April to place this order, and now we’re doing it here in November, so it’s six or seven months away,” said Craig Wilfong, executive vice president of Kids Inc.

Delays in delivery are now common in obtaining orders and some schools have had to cancel student t-shirts for special events.

Lancaster recommends that people start ordering now to have the best chance of receiving them for the holidays.

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