11/26/2012 UPDATE: Our back catalog re-launch has been an overwhelming success! Literally. We're overwhelmed. We're putting the catalog on hold until we can scale up to meet the demand while completing all current orders. Check back soon!
Unless you've been diligently buying shirts from us since day one back in 2007, you've probably missed at least one Shirt.Woot design that would look great on you... maybe become your favorite shirt... possibly even change your life. All you could do was wallow in regret and hope for the off chance that it would reappear in a Woot Plus event.
Until today. Almost every Shirt.Woot design ever is now available once again on our All Designs page. That's right: you can browse every shirt design we've ever issued, and buy nearly every one. Not a dream! Not a mirage! Not an imaginary story! This is as real as cotton. You probably have some questions, like...
How is this miracle possible? Well, digital shirt printing has made enormous advances in the five years since we launched. At the time, it just didn't meet our standards of quality. And as long as we were limited to screenprinting, keeping hundreds of designs in print just wasn't economical. But once we finally found a printing system capable of producing shirts we'd be proud of, we knew it was time to bring the entire catalog back into print. Almost the entire catalog, anyway.
What do you mean "almost"? Digital still can't do special effects like glow-in-the-dark or metallic ink. And a handful of designs have rights issues that prevent us from offering them again. But the vast majority of our designs - up past 1,700 at last count - are available for purchase.
Are you moving to digital printing for all shirts? No. The shirts in the Reckoning will still be silkscreened. Or, as we call it now, the shirts in our Top 20 Tees will still be silkscreened, along with #21-27 on the chart and the shirts too new to be Reckoned.
Doesn't this render the Day of Reckoning meaningless? Not quite. As we said, when a shirt drops off the chart, it moves to digital printing instead of silkscreen. And the price for those shirts will go up from $15 to $18.
Why are the print on demand shirts more expensive? Because it's a special order, basically. When we're moving mass quantities of a certain design, we can economize a bit. Without that scale, they just get a little more expensive to process and produce. But we still think $18 stacks up well against anybody, especially with free standard shipping in the U.S.
Doesn't digital printing produce an inferior product? Not anymore. Not only has it practically caught up to silkscreen in overall quality, there are certain things digital does better: fine lines, photo imaging, gradients. Digital can do more subtle things than silkscreen.
How can I find that one shirt I missed? The search tools on our All Designs page let you search for full or partial titles, by artist, by keyword, by category, by color, by price, or by any combination of any of those. We're still refining the search tools, too - if you see a mis-tagged or otherwise wrongly labeled shirt, let us know. And if none of that helps you find the shirt you're thinking of, you could probably ask in the forums. Shirt.Woot members are amazing with that kind of thing.
How long will print-on-demand shirts take to produce and ship? We'll level with you: we're not sure. We're new to this, and if there's a huge surge of orders for these shirts, we might run into some delays. We'll try to keep you apprised of the expected shipping times for the shirts you order. Forgive us in advance for any unexpected insanity.
We're sure we haven't thought of everything, so fire away below and we'll try to answer your questions about this brave new Shirt.Woot world. Or just get down to browsing & buying on our All Designs page.