The VirtualTees Small Business Program
Custom Apparel Printing for Businesses in Muskoka
Unfortunately, in the business of custom apparel, it's common practice for retailers to make you work for something as simple as the price.
You send an email, you wait, you get a quote with a minimum of a dozen shirts, and by the time you've sorted out artwork you've lost a week. If you just need eight polos for the crew or a couple of branded hoodies for the front desk, that whole process feels like overkill.
Here at VirtualTees, we do things a little differently, and that comes down to two simple things: you can see what everything costs before you commit, and you can order as few as one. And since we print here in Bracebridge, your merchandise isn't stuck in postal limbo for weeks on end.
Let's go over exactly how it works.
The Small Business Program, and who it's for
The core of our custom apparel service is the Small Business Program.
It's a free account built for businesses and resellers who want branded apparel at member pricing without placing a giant order every time. There's no setup fee and no minimum. You order when you actually need shirts, not when a minimum forces you to.
What you get as a member:
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Free to join. No setup cost, no annual fee.
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No minimums. One piece is fine. So is fifty.
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A typical 3-day turnaround once your order has been approved.
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5% REWARD$ credit on purchases, which you can redeem on future orders.
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Online ordering and reordering, so repeat jobs take a couple of clicks.
However, not every customer qualifies for this program. It's for legitimate businesses and resellers, not consumers, and not one-off events like a tournament or a family reunion. If that's what you're planning, skip down to the Custom Shop section. We've got you covered there instead.
How ordering works, step by step
Sign up
You create your account on the Sign Up page. It takes just a few minutes, and you don't need to pay a cent to set up. Once you're in, you'll see member pricing across the whole catalogue, and you get a dashboard where your orders and saved artwork live.
Already have an account? Just log in and carry on.
Upload your artwork
You'll add the design you want printed. This can be a logo, a tagline, a department name, an event graphic, anything you've got the rights to use.
Vector files print cleanest, but a high-resolution image works too. If a file needs a tweak to print well, we'll flag it before anything goes to the press and work with you to sort it out. Nothing gets printed until you've approved it, so you're not going to open your package and find a surprise.
Pick your garments and colours
Our catalogue runs across short and long sleeve tees, ladies' tees, tank tops, crewnecks, hoodies, polos, caps, and jackets. The brands are familiar favourites such as Gildan, Bella+Canvas, Comfort Colors, M&O Knits, and Adidas.
The range of colours we carry is as varied as you'll need. Our featured M&O Knits Soft Touch tee comes in 38 shades on its own, and the Gildan Heavy Cotton 5000 stretches to 68. So if you need one exact colour to match your sign out front, you'll find it, and if you want a different shade for each team, that's there too.
A few things worth keeping in mind while you choose:
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Be mindful of the colour of your shirt against the colour of what you're printing on it. You want the design to pop, so a light logo on a light shirt might not be the best call.
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Front-of-house staff, shop crew, and giveaway shirts often call for different weights. You don't have to put everyone in the same garment.
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You can mix sizes in one order. No need to place separate orders just because one person wants a Small and another wants a Large.
Set your print locations
A print location is just a spot on the garment where your design goes. Most orders are a single location, usually a left chest logo or a full front. If you want more, we can give you more. Common setups are a left chest with a full back, a full front with a full back, or a left chest with a back and a sleeve.
Every location you add is priced the same way each time, which we'll get to in a second.
Place the order
Give your order a glance first to make sure you're happy with the garments, colours, sizes, and print locations you've chosen. After that, you place your order.
Because there's no minimum, an order of one goes through the same as an order of a hundred. Plenty of businesses start small, see how the first batch wears, then reorder once they know it's right. After you give final approval, you'll usually have the finished order in about three days. We hope that's quick enough to cover a new hire who needs to be in your branded apparel by Saturday.
Pick up in Bracebridge or ship
When everything's ready, you've got two options.
If you're local to the area, the fastest and cheapest route is to swing by and grab it at 15 Gray Rd, Unit 1, open Monday to Friday, 8 to 4 Eastern. You can also have it shipped if you're out of town or short on time. Either way, it was printed here in Muskoka, not sent to some far-off facility and trucked back.
What it actually costs
Something we're proud to offer is upfront pricing. The cost is listed right off the bat, so you don't have to mess around with emails or phone calls or anything like that.
There are two parts that go into the final cost of any custom piece: the garment and the printing.
The garment price is listed for every style on the member pricing pages, so you see the per-shirt cost before you commit. It varies by brand, style, and size, and once you're logged in you're looking at the member rate, not retail.
The printing price is an upfront $6.50 for the first print location, then $3.50 for each additional print. That's per garment. So a left chest logo on a tee adds $6.50 in printing per shirt. Add a full back and you're at $10.00 per shirt in printing. To keep things simple, that's the price no matter how many shirts you order.
Here's a quick example. The member garment price on a standard-size tee sits around $8.23. One print at $6.50 puts a finished, branded shirt near $14.73 before tax. Add a second location, like a back to go with the front, and that's another $3.50, bringing you to around $18.23. Garment prices shift over time, so check the live member pricing for the exact figure, but the print charges stay the same. That's what makes them easy to budget around.
The 5% REWARD$ credit also stacks up on every order, so the more you run through the year, the lower your real cost ends up.
Are you running a one-off event instead?
If you're organizing a car show, a fundraiser, a club tournament, or a reunion, you won't go through the Small Business Program. That's not what it's built for. The Custom Shop is what you need.
It handles one-off and volume orders, and it's set up for exactly these jobs:
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Any quantity, from a single tee to a hundred pieces.
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A typical 5-business-day turnaround.
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Instant online quoting across dozens of styles and colours.
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A straightforward proofing and approval step.
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Discounts for community fundraisers that qualify.
You get your number right away on the Custom Shop quoting page. There's no account needed, so you can see the price and decide the same day.
Why print in Bracebridge?
A lot of apparel sites will happily take your order, then print it hundreds of kilometres away, which leaves the shirts trickling back over a week or two. So when something isn't right, you're filing a support ticket and hoping for the best.
Local printing is practical for a few solid reasons:
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Turnaround is faster because nothing's stuck in a shipping queue waiting to be made.
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You can pick up in town and skip the shipping cost entirely.
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Any questions you have get answered by the people actually running the print, not a chat window three time zones away.
For a Muskoka business, that combination is hard to argue with. Garments made nearby, priced openly, with no minimum to clear.
Getting started
If you run a business or resell apparel, the next move is to create your free Small Business account, upload your artwork, and place a first order. Member pricing is in front of you the whole way, and that first run can be a single shirt if that's all you need. Or if you're a consumer instead, the Custom Shop process is just as simple.
Sign up for free, or if you'd rather talk it through first, get in contact.
We'll help you get your brand onto a shirt without a single surprise along the way, guaranteed.
