Ever wonder how they print 50,000 Super Bowl shirts overnight?

The Big Game is upon is and the Super Bowl will crown a champion for the 2009-10 NFL season. When you wake up the morning after, you can visit your favorite retailer and buy a shirt to support the winning team. Ever wonder how they are able to have those shirts printed so fast?

It’s called “Hot Market” printing and it’s one of the most demanding forms of production that you could possibly imagine. After the win, you have mere hours to produce thousands of shirts with only a moment’s notice. Think you can handle the pressure? Let’s see how championship shirts get printed.

In the case of the Super Bowl, Reebok is licensed to produce shirts and has to coordinate production of the appropriate shirts.

At the end of the game, they have to make sure that the winning team has shirts for the players and coaches to wear for the worldwide cameras. Since they don’t know who is going to win the game, designs for each team are printed in advance and are available at the stadium to distribute. They also print a quantity of shirts to sell to the fans before they leave the stadium. 2 batches of shirts in boxes sit in the warehouse of the stadium before the first quarter even starts. One batch gets cut open and the shirts get to join the celebration. The other batch gets shrink-wrapped and shipped away (more on that later).

Time is not much of a factor for this initial run of shirts. There is usually a two week period between when the participants in the Super Bowl are known and the actual game, so those shirts are printed in advance. Reebok may use their own production facilities or they may contract with a printer to the produce the pre-game batches of shirts.

Here’s where it gets hectic.

To be ready to build the supply of winning shirts, Reebok contracts with a network of regional printers across the country to produce shirts for the winning team. By having multiple printers in central locations, they reduce the time it takes to deliver shirts to stores. This is why you can buy a shirt at your local mega-retailer the next day even if the winner isn’t known until the wee hours in the morning.

How do they know which shirts to print?

They don’t. They grant what is called, “If-win” contracts. In each region, printers are contracted for both team designs and if a particular team wins, only those printers continue production. Each shop sets up their machines to run the design for a particular team before the game starts, runs the proof shirts, stages the blanks, and then waits for the game to end. The shop owners, managers, and employees are placed on call and are ready to jump into action when the final quarter ends and the winner is declared.

The shop contracted for the losing team gets to go home and call it a night. The shop with a contract for the winning team, now have just hours to print thousands of shirts and get them distributed. Depending on the contract, the shop may or may not have to provide the blank shirts and delivery, but they always have to provide quality. Just because it is rushed never means that quality can be sacrificed. It seems like a daunting task, given the timeframe and amount of pressure, but Hot Market printers manage to make it work at each and every if-win event.

Once the initial hype wears down, Reebok moves printing of the designs to their normal production channels.

So next time you see your favorite team win the Big One and your favorite player pulls that shirt over his/her head, you won’t have to wonder how the magic happened.

What about the shirts that were pre-printed for the team that didn’t win?

They are shipped to developing countries to help the needy. If you ever seen a picture from a remote part of the world and someone is wearing a shirt that says Super Bowl XLIII Champions – Arizona Cardinals, rest assured that you’re not looking at a picture from an alternate universe.

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