The short answer
- Contract work covers three cases: capacity, capability and geography
- Agree lead time, quality standard, who supplies garments and who carries reprints — before the first job
- Send a complete spec, not a conversation. Their proof should match yours
- The customer relationship stays yours; make that explicit in writing
- Blind-ship so packaging carries your details, not theirs
Very few decorating shops do everything themselves. Almost all outsource something — embroidery if they are a printer, screen if they are an embroiderer, oversize format, or simply overflow in a busy month. Done well it extends what you can sell without buying equipment. Done casually it produces the worst kind of failure, because the fault is yours and the control is not.
When does contracting out make sense?
Capacity. The work exists and your shop cannot fit it this week. Contracting the overflow keeps a customer served and a deadline met, and it is cheaper than turning down work you would otherwise have to decline.
Capability. A customer wants something you do not do — embroidery, large format, a process you have no machine for. Contracting lets you serve the whole account rather than surrendering part of it to a competitor who will then quote for the rest.
Geography. A customer needs delivery somewhere far from you, and a decorator nearer them can produce and ship it more cheaply and faster than you can freight it.
The case where it does not make sense is ongoing core work at volume. If you are contracting out the same job type every week, you are paying someone else's margin on your bread and butter, and the arithmetic for bringing it in-house is worth running — using the same cost-per-print method as any equipment decision.
What to agree before the first job
All of it in writing, once, so it does not need renegotiating per job.
The terms sheet
- Lead time from receipt of goods and artwork, in working days
- Quality standard — and a physical sample you have both approved
- Who supplies garments, and who owns them in transit
- Spoilage allowance — what percentage is accepted, and who pays beyond it
- Reprints — who carries the cost when the fault is theirs
- Pricing, including setup, and whether it changes at volume
- Blind shipping — your details on the packaging, not theirs
- Non-solicitation — they do not approach your customers
The spoilage line is the one that produces disputes. A contract decorator will spoil some garments; that is normal. What matters is the agreed percentage and what happens above it — without a number, every occurrence is a negotiation held under time pressure with a customer waiting.
The customer does not know your contractor exists. That is the arrangement, and it only works if you built it deliberately.
Sending a job properly
A contract decorator cannot ask your customer a question. Everything they need has to travel with the job, and an incomplete spec is the commonest cause of a contract job coming back wrong.
| Send | Why |
|---|---|
| Print-ready artwork, correct format | They should not be interpreting |
| Print size in inches or millimetres | "Left chest" is not a specification |
| Placement measured from a fixed point | Removes the commonest disagreement |
| Colours with references | Their idea of navy is not yours |
| Garment brand, style and colour | Affects underbase and settings |
| Size breakdown | Counted on receipt, not assumed |
| Your approved proof | They should match it, not reproduce it |
| The date you need it back | Not the date the customer needs it |
Note the last row. Give them a date that leaves you room to inspect, repack and ship — if your customer needs it Friday, your contractor's date is Tuesday. A contract job arriving on the customer's deadline gives you no chance to catch a problem.
Sending all of that as structured data rather than as an email thread is also what keeps the job trackable on your side. If the work is out of the building, your own production tracking should still show where it is and when it is due back, or you have lost visibility of a job you are still accountable for.
Who carries what risk?
Be explicit, because the default is that you carry all of it. Your customer has a contract with you, not with your contractor, so a failure is yours to remedy regardless of who caused it.
| Failure | Usually |
|---|---|
| Spec was wrong or incomplete | Yours |
| Spec correct, output does not match | Theirs |
| Spoilage within the agreed allowance | Yours, priced in |
| Spoilage beyond it | Theirs |
| Late because artwork arrived late | Yours |
| Late with everything supplied on time | Theirs |
| Garment fault from the blank | Neither — the supplier |
Whatever the table says, you remedy it with your customer first and settle with the contractor afterwards. A shop explaining to its customer that the delay is a contractor's fault has told them two things: that there is a contractor, and that you are not in control of your own delivery.
Protecting the relationship
Three practical measures, all worth agreeing before you send anything.
Blind shipping. Packaging, labels and paperwork carry your details. A box arriving with another decorator's name on it tells your customer exactly who to call next time.
Non-solicitation in writing. Most contract decorators are professional about this and it is standard in the trade. Having it written removes ambiguity, particularly if their salesperson later sees your customer's name on a job.
Keep the customer's data yours. Send what the job needs — artwork, sizes, spec. There is rarely a reason to send your customer's contact details, and there is never a reason to have them appear on the packaging.
Being the contractor
The other side is a genuine business line, and shops with capacity and a specialism often find it steadier than retail work. Contract customers order predictably, know what they want, and do not need educating about artwork.
What they need from you is reliability above all: hit the date, match the spec, blind-ship cleanly, and never contact their customer. Do those four consistently and contract work compounds through referral within the trade, because decorators talk to each other about who is reliable.
Price it deliberately — lower per unit than retail, because they are bringing you volume and doing the selling, but not so low that a busy month makes you resent it. And apply the same discipline you would to any account: agreed terms, recorded specs, and payment terms you actually enforce. The rest of the suppliers archive assumes the arrangement is written down before the first job.
