A common question that goes through my head when I put on a shirt: do I look sexy in it? Up until now this answer has only come from the eye of the beholder. But how, how, HOW can I guarantee that my shirt can become a flirt-shirt?

We’ve thought long and hard about this question – and decided to try and do something about it. To offer our customers something they’ve never had before. We put our test lab on the task. And they didn’t disappoint.

Starting today we are releasing our brand new Pheromone t-shirts. The results were quite astounding. And the best part about our newly-developed spray – you can select it when going through checkout and we will add it to the shirt during production. All you have to choose is whether to attract women or men. Find out more details on our Pheromone Shirt landing page. You can also see the spray and its guaranteed results in this (small) promotion video:

Here’s to shirts making flirts that much more successful! And I hope you enjoyed seeing me get smacked around – but it all worked out in the end!

We have emerged from our Test Lab with great results!  Four new products are now available for our Digital Direct printing method:

• Men’s Hooded Sweatshirt
• Women’s Hooded Sweatshirt
• Kid’s Hooded Sweatshirt
• Toddler Hooded Sweatshirt

Find all available products for Digital Direct in this helpful FAQ.

If you operate a Spreadshirt shop, then the existing products in your accounts were also updated from the Digital Transfer or Digital Transfer Overlay process to the Digital Direct process.

Some points to keep in mind for the update…

• You will want to check the pricing and your commission on these products, because Digital Direct is priced differently than Digital Transfer methods. Read more here.
• Digital Direct uses 200 dpi, so your current uploaded digital images may appear smaller when using Digital Direct, as Digital Transfer only requires a dpi of 120. This will be apparent in Designer Shops and depends on the dpi of the original uploaded image.

We are going back to the Test Lab to test more additions and once new products are available for Digital Direct, we will let you know!

As you may have noticed from our blog, we are obsessed with t-shirts here at Spreadshirt, but obsessed in a good way. We want everyone who orders a Spreadshirt to be thrilled with their shirt and part of that is helping you order the right size. T-shirts can be tricky things – since they are mostly cotton there is a little bit of shrinking that takes place. We are always testing, washing, testing, photographing, washing, wearing shirts to make sure they are top quality. So we thought we would share some of our research with you. This is our first Test Lab post and we are starting with a look at the American Apparel men’s t-shirt.

In order to find out how good the AA shirts actually are, we went to our Spreadshirt Testlab for the very first time. Markus, a guy from production, took a bunch of black AA tees, washed time up to 20 times and checked how the lengths of the shirts, the lengths of the sleeves, the chest and the waist widths developed. We were also able to take a look at how the color and the fabric changed with washings.

Here´s the highly scientific setup:

• Products: American Apparel Men´s shirts
• Exact product name: AA 2001 Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T-Shirt
• Color: black
• Sizes: S to XXL
• 1 regular washing machine
• middle-class laundry detergent
• 1 special shirt measuring tape
• 20 washes
• measuring-sessions after 5, 10 and 20 washes

and the findings:

Length (A)

• in average, the shirts got 1.02 inches shorter – the XL-shirt performed best and only lost 0.39 inches
• overall it showed that small sizes lost more in length (about 1.18 inches) than big sizes (about 0.59 inches)
• result: it lost about -3.5%

Chest Width (B)

• on average, the shirts got about 0.75 inches tighter
• for the chest width as well, Ss and Ms lost more width (about 1.18 inches) than the large shirts (about 0.39 inches)
• result: it lost about -3.7%

Waist Width (C)

• the shirts lost about 0.87 inches waist width in average
• the average loss for small and medium was 1.06 inches and 0.59 inches for XL and XXL
• result: it lost about -4.0%

Sleeve Length (D)

• the sleeve lengths were the most stable measurements in the test – in average, the shirts lost only 0.28 inches in sleeve length
• the effect was a little stronger for the big shirts (about 0.39 inches) than it was for the smaller ones (about 0.2 inches)
• result: it lost about -3.2%

Wrap-Up: Size

• see an AA shirt (large) worn by Tobi (size: 6.1 feet)
• after 0, 5, 10 and 20 washes

Changes in Color and Fabric after Washing:

• saturation gets a little lower
• fabric gets a little linty

Conclusion

When it comes to shrinking, the AA shirts couldn´t totally satisfy my expectations. Especially when buying smaller sizes – depending on how one wants the shirts to fit – one should think about going for a larger shirt as the shirts come relatively fitted anyway.

However, what I found to be very positive is that the shirts overall shape stays stable. While you find other shirts to look like “As” or “Us” (the bottom and the neck often stretch out) after several washes, the AA keeps looking like a “T”. Also the collar – generally an Achilles heel of blank shirts, doesn´t lose shape.

The intensity of the black gets a little lower which I guess is a very common effect which could maybe be reduced by using better washing powder.