Screen printing pushes ink through a stencil - one screen per color. Setup is the dominant cost, so price drops sharply as quantity climbs and rises with every additional ink color. A one-color design on two hundred shirts is inexpensive; a six-color design on twenty is not. It works best on cotton tees and hoodies, with large front and back graphics.
Embroidery stitches thread through the garment, so artwork is first digitized into a stitch file - a one-time setup charge. After that, price runs by stitch count rather than color count, so a multi-colored logo costs no more than a single-colored one. It holds up longer and reads as more premium, which is why it suits polos, caps, jackets and workwear. Fine detail and small text do not stitch cleanly, so intricate designs get simplified first.
Either way, vector artwork is preferred, and reorders of a design already on file skip the setup or digitizing fee - which is the real reason repeat customers come back to the same shop rather than starting over somewhere else.
