Relabeling

Relabeling swaps a stock garment's factory tag for the buyer's own — cutting or ripping out the sewn-in Gildan, Bella+Canvas, or Next Level label and replacing it with a custom woven label, printed satin label, or heat-applied tag bearing the buyer's brand name. Shops that offer it charge per garment, typically $0.75 to $1.50 each depending on whether the new label is sewn on a machine or hand-tacked.

This is the mechanical heart of private label — without relabeling, a shirt is still wearing someone else's brand on the inside collar no matter whose logo is printed on the front. We've relabeled runs where the customer supplied their own woven labels from a separate vendor, which cut the per-unit fee almost in half since the shop only had to remove the old tag and stitch in a label that already existed.

Pros budget relabeling as its own line item, separate from decoration, and time it into the production schedule since it's typically done after the shirt is printed or embroidered, not before. Ordering tearaway-tag styles from the blank supplier in the first place saves a chunk of that labor, because the original tag comes out with one pull instead of a seam ripper.

Buyers commonly assume relabeling means they can drop all traces of the original manufacturer, including fiber content and care instructions — federal labeling rules require that information to stay on the garment somewhere, so a compliant relabel keeps or replaces the care content, it doesn't just delete it.