You just wrapped up a solid season. Your car looks great, your sponsors are dialed, and fans are asking where they can buy a shirt. The obvious move is to order a few hundred tees and sell them at the track. But there's a problem: that bulk order costs $2,000 to $5,000 before you sell a single shirt.
Most grassroots racers can't afford that gamble. Between entry fees, tires, fuel, and parts, there's not a lot of cash left over for a bet on apparel that may or may not sell. So the shirts never get made, and the fans who wanted to support you never get the chance.
That's the gap we built BuyRaceShirts to fill.
The Traditional Model Is Broken
Here's what most apparel companies expect from a racing team. You pay a $300+ art fee up front, then place a minimum bulk order of 72 to 144 shirts. The total comes in somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000 depending on decoration method and garment quality. You receive a pile of boxes. Now you need to sell them — at the track, on Facebook, out of your trailer. Whatever you don't sell sits in your garage.
For a national touring driver with a massive fan base, that model works fine. For the WISSOTA late model driver in Montevideo or the IMCA modified guy in Watertown, it's a financial risk that doesn't make sense. You're essentially betting thousands of dollars that you can move enough inventory to break even.
How the Online Store Model Works
The concept is simple: instead of you buying shirts and hoping to sell them, your fans order first and we print after. There's no inventory risk because there's no inventory. Every shirt is pre-sold before it's printed.
Here's the process from start to finish. You fill out a form and put down a $200 refundable deposit to start the artwork. Our artist creates a custom illustration of your actual car — your paint scheme, your number, your sponsors. Once you approve the design, we build your personal online store. Your fans visit the store, pick their sizes, and pay directly. After the ordering window closes (usually about two weeks), we screen print every order in-house and ship directly to each buyer. You never touch a box.
The $200 deposit comes back to you as credit once you hit your minimum order quantity. Logo shirt stores need 50 pieces minimum. Premium illustration stores need 75 pieces. Most drivers hit these numbers without much effort — racing fans want to support their guy.
You Actually Make Money
This isn't just about avoiding risk. You earn credit on every piece sold. The more you sell, the higher your per-piece credit goes. At the top tiers, you're earning a cash rebate — we literally send you a check.
For example, a driver who sells 100 logo race shirts through their online store earns $12 per piece in credit. That's $1,200 toward additional apparel for yourself, your crew, or your sponsors. Or sell 150+ and get paid cash back.
Compare that to the traditional model where you've spent $3,000 up front and are still hoping to break even at the track.
What Makes This Different From Other "No Cost" Programs
A few companies offer variations on the online store concept for racing teams. Here's what separates BuyRaceShirts from the rest:
Custom illustration, not clip art. Our artist draws your actual car from photos you provide. Your specific paint scheme, your specific sponsors, your specific number. Not a generic race car template with your name slapped on it.
Screen printed in-house. We run three automatic screen printing presses at our 10,000 square foot facility in Montevideo, Minnesota. Your shirts are produced on real production equipment, not farmed out to a third party.
Embroidery available. For $35 more, we add embroidered hats, jackets, and stocking caps to your store. We run 15 heads of embroidery in-house. Your fans get a full merch line, not just t-shirts.
500+ stores built. This isn't a concept we're testing. We've built online merch stores for over 500 racing teams across dirt late models, modifieds, sprint cars, stock cars, go-karts, snowmobiles, motocross, and more. We know what works.
Who This Works Best For
The online store model works for any racer with a fan base, but it's especially powerful for grassroots and regional racers who race WISSOTA, IMCA, USRA, or similar local and regional sanctioning bodies. These are the drivers whose fans are most engaged — they follow you on Facebook, they show up every Saturday night, and they'll absolutely buy a shirt if you make it easy for them.
All you have to do is share the link. Post it on Facebook, text it to your crew, hang a QR code on your trailer. The store does the rest.
Ready to Get Started?
If you've been putting off race shirts because of the cost, this is the solution. No financial risk, no leftover inventory, no distribution headaches. Just your car, on a shirt, in the hands of your fans.