The guide
All Brands
Every brand we stock earns its place the same way: decorators keep reordering it. These are the mills and labels that dominate US printwear, from Gildan's promo standards to Comfort Colors' garment-dyed staples to the heavyweight streetwear blanks that took over the boxy-fit market. What they share is what actually matters at the press: consistent fabric and dye lots, print surfaces that behave predictably under plastisol, water-based, DTG, and DTF, and inventory deep enough that a 500-piece reorder ships in the same color it did last month.
Each brand guide below covers the hero style numbers worth memorizing, the fabric specs behind them (weight, ring-spun vs open-end, blend ratios), and how the garments behave under decoration, gotchas included: cure-temperature limits on pigment-dyed cotton, dye migration on high-poly blends. Use them to match the blank to the job, not the brochure.
Tees & fleece
Gildan
The volume standard
Gildan is the volume backbone of the US printwear trade: the largest blank-apparel manufacturer, and the benchmark other blanks get compared to. Every major distributor stocks it deep, in every size, in dozens of colors. It also owns Comfort Colors, so the two brands share a supply chain even though they serve different jobs.
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Hanes
The household name
Hanes is a legacy US mill brand with a century of basics behind it, and in the blanks trade it means dependable basics: the Beefy-T heritage heavyweight, tagless tees, and a garment-dyed collection that costs less than Comfort Colors.
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Tultex
Soft ring-spun jersey
Tultex makes soft ring-spun tees: retail-weight fabric and a tear-away label label at a price closer to open-end basics. When a quote on Bella+Canvas or Next Level runs over, it's usually the first substitution to check.
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Team 365
Team performance wear
Team 365 is a distributor-exclusive house brand for performance and team apparel. It exists to outfit entire programs (matching tees, polos, fleece, and outerwear for men, women, and youth) at prices school and rec-league budgets can absorb.
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Bella + Canvas
Retail-fit favorite
Bella + Canvas defined the retail-fit tee for the merch era, and its 3001 is the shirt most band, brand, and POD merch is printed on. The pitch is fabric: proprietary Airlume combed ring-spun cotton with far fewer impurities than standard cotton, knit into a smooth, consistent print surface.
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Comfort Colors
Garment-dyed vintage
Comfort Colors owns the garment-dyed, vintage-wash category in US printwear, and its 1717 is the shirt behind most of the boxy pigment-dyed merch you see in the college and boutique markets. The brand is owned by Gildan, which keeps distribution deep, but the product is its own thing: sewn first, then dyed, so every shirt arrives pre-shrunk and already broken in.
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Next Level
Soft CVC heathers
Next Level Apparel built its name on soft, fitted blanks and effectively made CVC a category in US printwear. For shops doing retail merch it is the other default alongside Bella + Canvas, with tear-away labels across the range that make it a favorite for private-label programs.
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Independent Trading
Heavyweight fleece
Independent Trading Co. is a fleece specialist; hoodies, crews, and sweats are the whole catalog, and the trade reaches for it when a job wants heavier fleece than the big-mill blends. For streetwear brands and retail merch programs that have outgrown the Gildan 18500, this is usually the next quote.
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Shaka Wear
Heavyweight streetwear
Shaka Wear is an LA brand that started out supplying the local streetwear scene and rode the market's shift to heavyweight, boxy tees into national wholesale distribution. When a client asks for a thick, oversized, drop-shoulder blank (the silhouette that defines current merch), Shaka's max-heavyweight collection is the trade's go-to answer.
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Lane Seven
Streetwear-cut fleece
Lane Seven is a Los Angeles blanks house, founded in 2014, that built its reputation on streetwear-cut fleece for decorators. It sits in the same conversation as Independent Trading Co. and Cotton Heritage: heavier fabrics, boxier fits, and surfaces engineered to print clean.
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Youth & infant
Rabbit Skins
Infant & toddler
Rabbit Skins is LAT Apparel's infant and toddler brand, and the de facto standard for decorated babywear in the US trade. If a shop prints baby bodysuits commercially, odds are it's printing Rabbit Skins.
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LAT
Youth coverage
LAT Apparel is the youth and women's fine-jersey specialist among US blank suppliers. Where most brands treat kids' sizes as an afterthought, LAT builds its catalog around them. That makes it the default source for school, daycare, and family-event jobs that need matching styles across every age.
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Headwear
Yupoong
Snapbacks & dad hats
Yupoong is the Korean headwear manufacturer (founded 1974 in Seoul) behind both the YP Classics collection and the Flexfit brand. In the US trade its style numbers are shorthand for entire hat categories; if a customer asks for "a classic snapback" or "a retro trucker," they usually mean a Yupoong.
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Flexfit
Stretch-fit classics
Flexfit is Yupoong's stretch-fit brand: same parent company, different fit system. The patented technology, introduced in 1994, weaves spandex into the sweatband and crown so the cap stretches to the head instead of adjusting with a strap, and it remains the default fitted-style cap in the blank market.
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