A custom cap and hat business

Who is this for?

A shop that decorates caps, trucker hats, dad hats or beanies, with heat transfers, DTF or embroidery, that wants customers to order from the website with their own logo, a club’s initials or a name, instead of sending artwork and waiting for a mock-up. Starting a hat business means choosing blanks and a way to decorate them; this page is about the part online: how a customer’s design reaches you ready to produce.

What matters in PrintBlob?

• Your cap, on your photo (PrintBlob Pro). A cap is a mockup like any product: a photo of the cap from the front, the print area drawn over the front panels and its real size in centimetres. Customers see the print area as a dashed line on your cap and place their logo or text inside it.
• A small print area at its real size. A structured cap’s front takes about 4 × 2 in (10.2 × 5.1 cm), and every hat placement, for embroidery and for print, is in hat logo size. The designer shows the print area’s size in centimetres, so a customer judges their initials against it.
• Logos that print sharp. Customers’ logos are often small images. While they place one, the designer shows its resolution at the print size and warns below 150 DPI. A 4 × 2 in (10.2 × 5.1 cm) front is 1200 × 600 pixels at 300 DPI, so a logo far smaller than a t-shirt needs can still print sharp.
• Text typed on the cap. Initials, a name or a date, typed on the cap itself in one of the four bundled fonts, bold and an ink colour; with PrintBlob Pro, the fonts you add to WordPress’s Font Library too.
• Files for each order (PrintBlob Pro). When the cap goes into the cart, the print becomes a transparent PNG at 300 DPI at exactly the print area’s size, and a vector PDF and an SVG with typed text as outlines. Print the PNG as a transfer, or send the files to your digitiser.
• The print queue (PrintBlob Pro). PrintBlob › Print queue lists the designed items of processing and on-hold orders still to produce, oldest first, and Download order (ZIP) gives an order’s files with a print list.

What should I know before I start?

• Embroidery. Embroiderers ask for letters at least 0.25 in (0.6 cm) tall, and thin lines and gradients stitch poorly. Say on the product page what size of text stitches well. A PNG, PDF or SVG is not a stitch file: every embroidered logo goes through a digitiser.
• Transfers on structured caps. Transfer suppliers say a wide transfer on a structured cap needs a cap press, and hat logo size gives the widths they publish; check your press and your supplier’s limits before you set the print size.
• Colours. Recolouring tints every white and grey part of the photo the same colour, so it suits a cap in one colour. For two-tone caps, such as a trucker hat with a white mesh back, leave it off and photograph the cap as you sell it.
• Setting up the product. Colours, a simple or variable product and the designer tab are in sell custom hoodies, mugs, tote bags and caps.

What are the limits?

• No embroidery file and no stitch pricing. PrintBlob makes PNG, PDF and SVG files, not a .DST or .PES file. A side’s print price is set per product, and PrintBlob Pro’s quantity breaks lower it for larger orders; it does not change with the logo’s size, its stitches or its colours.
• A flat print on a photo. The print area is one flat rectangle on the photo of a curved front, and the design is shown flat on it.
• No 3D cap. PrintBlob Pro’s 3D view is made for garments on a hanger and needs a front and a back photo; a cap with only its front shows no 3D button. If you turn on the back, set Product view to Front and back only (2D) in its PrintBlob tab.

How do I try it?

Open the text demo and type over the line on the shirt, as a customer would type their initials on a cap. Then photograph one cap and make its mockup with PrintBlob Pro.