ANSWERS · COST
How much does conference merch printing cost?
The anchors we actually quote from — published here because “request pricing” pages with no numbers waste everyone's time.
Anchors first, variables second
A staffed station at a Southern California conference starts around $5,000. That figure is turnkey: crew, presses, artwork preparation, and a run of blanks sized to your show. Crew time bills at $250 per hour and the clock covers everything from load-in to strike — an eight-hour expo day is typically ten to eleven crew hours door to door. Outside LA, Orange County, and San Diego, a flat $900 travel fee applies; that includes every Las Vegas convention run.
From those anchors, five things move your number: floor hours (a three-hour reception costs less than a two-day expo), garment mix (Bella+Canvas 3001 tees versus hoodies versus Richardson caps), total piece count, design count (three to six is the sweet spot), and convention-center pass-throughs like drayage and mandatory power orders — which we flag inside the quote, never after it.
Two ways teams justify the spend
Exhibitors compare cost per conversation: a station's cost divided by the qualified conversations the queue produces usually beats what the same budget buys in extra booth square footage. We walk through that math in the ROI breakdown.
Organizers sell the station as a sponsorship tier. Priced between a lanyard sponsorship and a lunch sponsorship, the “official merch station” typically covers its own cost — details on the sponsor activation page. Either way, your quote from us is flat and itemized: one number, everything included, before you commit to anything.
Want your exact number?
Show, city, dates, headcount — that's all we need to quote flat.