Shirt Kong, St Peters, MO
Hot market printing is one of those things that sounds cool on paper and then hits you hard in real life. World Series. Super Bowl. Big moments where fans want merch immediately. Not next week. Not after a reprint. The next morning.
That kind of turnaround is wild, and it’s something screen printing is uniquely good at — when the planning is right.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience hot market printing firsthand. Being in Missouri, I was part of the overnight Super Bowl print runs for the Kansas City Chiefs three years in a row. Well… two print runs. The third year didn’t quite work out for obvious reasons. But when it did happen, it was intense in the best way.
Weeks before the game, the groundwork was already being laid. We received blanks and boxes about one to two weeks out. During that same window, inks were mixed, samples were printed, and everything had to get photo approval. Once that approval came through, the real work started — planning how to knock out an insane amount of shirts in just a few hours.
Before game day, we ran a trial run. That part was huge. Everyone needed to know their role, the flow, and what “good” looked like before the clock was actually ticking. When you’re printing against a championship clock, there’s no room for confusion.
Game day itself was surreal. We got to the shop early, set up two presses with the approved design, and watched the game right there on the shop floor. Presses staged. Ink ready. Garments stacked. Everyone just waiting.
Once the game ended and the Chiefs won, it was go time.
Printing started immediately. From that moment on, a box truck showed up every two hours to grab whatever we had finished. No slowing down. No catching up later. Just print, sticker, box, pallet, wrap, repeat.
The checklist was no joke:
- Stage garments
- Print around 8,000 shirts
- Apply an official NFL sticker to every single one
- Box by destination
- Palletize and wrap
- Add a GPS tracker to each skid
At the start, morale was sky high. The team had just won the Super Bowl, adrenaline was pumping, and everyone knew they were part of something massive. But as the night dragged on — late night turning into early morning — reality set in.
Printing from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. will humble you real quick.
Energy dips. Feet hurt. Focus gets harder. But the jobs were assigned for a reason. Press ops stayed printing. Sticker guy stayed sticking. Boxing stayed boxing. Staging stayed staging. We just kept moving.
And then… it was done.
Mission accomplished. Shirts out the door. No work for production on Monday. That feeling at the end — exhausted, proud, and slightly delirious — is hard to beat.
Being part of something as iconic as the Super Bowl was incredible, and honestly, we got better at it each year. The hardest part was always the planning and figuring things out as we went. We definitely had to entice the crew with time-and-a-half to make it happen, but it was profitable, memorable, and worth it.
If you have the capability, the team, and the planning discipline to pull off hot market printing, I’d say try it at least once. It’s not easy, it’s not comfortable — but it’s one hell of an experience.
And yeah… it really does happen overnight.
