General Retail Questions

What is the Cayucos Collective?

The Cayucos Collective is an art gallery and custom printing business in the small beach town of Cayucos, Ca. We are an artist’s collective inspired by the surf n’ skate lifestyle of California. We display art, make art and print it on things like t-shirts, hats, hoodies, wood, and more.

As a service to our community, we extend our graphic art skills to you by offering small and large quantity custom printing for your small business, band, or a single birthday gift for a loved one. See the “Create” link for more info.

What is a Take Out T-Shirt?

It’s an instant custom t-shirt featuring artwork created by our team here at the Cayucos Collective. You choose the graphic, the tee style, and we print it for you and put it in our world famous Take Out T-Shirt gift box. Order online here or walk into our store on the beach in downtown Cayucos to create your Take Out T-Shirt on our big screen kiosk. Either way, you’ll be getting some tasty artwork printed fresh for you! Enjoy!

Do you Ship?

Yeah, we offer FREE SHIPPING after $50, excluding original art pieces. The original art pieces must be priced individually for shipping as their size and weight are variable factors that dramatically effect the shipping cost. If you purchase an art piece to be shipped, we will contact you after you submit your order online, then contact you for the shipping payment after we calculate the cost to your area.

Custom Printing Questions

We offer custom printing as a service to our fellow artists, musicians, local businesses, and others looking to make some high quality t-shirts, hats, hoodies, etc. Our printing method is DTG (direct to garment) and dye-sublimation. Learn the basics in the FAQ below:

YES! We can take just about anything and print it on a shirt. From graphic art to kids drawings to a photo of your cell phone, it’s all possible. We recommend using our CUSTOM DESIGNER to build your item, or if you’d like some help with your design, feel free to call us to set up an appointment to help you. Hourly rates start at $60/hr with a 15 minute minimum.

YES! Our specialty is small quantity orders with lots of colors in the printed artwork. We can do anything from one to a couple hundred items for you or your organization.

YES! Discounts start at just two items. Save more at each quantity break point of 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, and 96+ or more. The price will reduce when you reach the next bracket and will be automatically discounted in your cart before checkout.

Use the Custom T-Shirt, Custom Hoody, or Custom Trucker Hat designer to see what kind of discounts you can get with larger quantities.

For single items, the turnaround time can be about an hour or so, sometimes even less if we’re not busy and have the desired garment in stock, which we usually do.

For larger orders of 12 or more items, general turn around time is about one to two weeks. If you’d like to rush your order, we do offer a rush fee to help you get your project on time.

Our custom printing service works differently based on what you need and how tech savvy you are.

For Small Orders of 12 or less, we recommend using our Custom Designer to build your shirt from a file off of your cell phone or a graphic file you’ve built in programs like Photoshop™ or Illustrator™.

For Larger Orders of 12 or more, we recommend using our wholesale custom order quote page. Make a mock up of your project in the designer, and submit along with a short description of your needs. We’ll get back to you within 48 hours with a quote for your project.

For the less tech savvy, we can help you get started with your custom item on site at our business in downtown Cayucos. We do charge a minimum of $15 dollars to sit down and work out a design for your custom project. Most of our customers end up with a $20-30 tab for the graphic art help….

If you have any more questions, please contact us.

The key for a successful print is file quality. We like to use .png files with a transparent background. RGB file format, at least 1000px wide, but up to 2500px is best.

We can also use Photoshop™ (PSD) files or Illustrator™ files, but you will need to email us those directly at info@cayucoscollective.com. Other files that work are .jpg for photographs, or .pdf for graphic files.

Most importantly, don’t put a color in the background for shirt color, we don’t need it. The only content in your file should be what you want to print…no random specs, no text, no background color, unless you want it to print on the shirt.

If you have any questions about your art file, please contact us.

Due to the sensitive nature of DTG printing, we DO NOT ALLOW our customers to bring in their own garments, unless you plan on ordering more than 50 items.

DTG is a water based ink that doesn’t print well on many synthetic fabrics like nylon, acrylic, and many kinds of polyester and polyester blends.

We offer a variety of Mens, Womens, Long Sleeve, Youth, and other styles that we know work awesome with our DTG printing technology. We recommend sticking with those. Please see the Custom T-Shirt Designer, Hoody Designer, or Trucker Hat Designer to see the styles we offer on hand in the store for your order.

If you do still want to use your own garments, and plan on ordering more than 50 items, please contact us to set up and appointment to test your garment for printability. We can print a sample for you to review in about 20 minutes. Single samples are $30* if you choose not to proceed with your order.

YES! We do offer graphic design assistance so you can bring your design to life. Our graphic art time rate is $60/hour with a 15 minute minimum.

Please contact us to set up an appointment to come into the store to get help one-on-one with one of our graphic artists. Or, if you’d like to get help from a remote location, please send us your design idea to info@cayucoscollective.com, and we’ll respond with a quote for your project.