How We Create Custom Apparel for Pine Ridge Campground

Pine Ridge Campground in Gardners, PA holds a particular kind of nostalgia for our family. Before I ever thought about creating custom apparel for their camp store, we were just campers. My husband Cory, our two daughters, and I would pack up for weekends there whenever his firefighter schedule allowed. If you know anything about first responder life, you take the openings when you get them.

That campground became one of our places. The kind of spot where your kids know exactly which path leads to the playground and which trail loops back to your site. So when the opportunity came up in 2024 to supply Pine Ridge Campground with custom branded apparel for their camp store, it felt less like a business deal and more like making something for a place I already cared about.

How the Pine Ridge Campground Apparel Partnership Started

It started the way most of my wholesale relationships start: a conversation. The campground was looking for merchandise that felt different from the generic printed tees you find at every tourist shop. They wanted something campers would actually wear after they left, not just stuff that sits in a drawer. I already had experience creating one-of-a-kind ice-dyed pieces and custom graphic tees through my boutique, and I understood their audience because I was their audience.

I pitched a mix of products: custom graphic tees with their mountain logo printed on premium Comfort Colors blanks, plus ice-dyed hoodies and crewnecks branded with their name. The graphic tees would give them consistent, recognizable merchandise. The ice dye pieces would give them something no other campground in Pennsylvania could offer: apparel that's truly one of a kind.

They went for it. And that first order became the foundation of what's now our longest-running wholesale partnership.

What We Create for the Camp Store

The Pine Ridge collection has grown well beyond that initial order. Right now, we supply t-shirts, hoodies, crewnecks, beanies, tanks, full-zip hoodies, and even toddler tees. The product range covers adults, youth, and toddler sizes because campgrounds serve entire families, not just one demographic.

The graphic tees and printed pieces use DTF (Direct-to-Film) transfers, which produce full-color, photo-quality prints that hold up wash after wash. DTF is the right method for camp store merchandise because the designs are detailed (logos, mountain graphics, text) and they need to look sharp on dark, garment-dyed blanks like Comfort Colors. A traditional screen print with one or two colors wouldn't do these designs justice.

We print on Comfort Colors for the tees and crewnecks, Bella Canvas for the fitted options, and Gildan for the hoodies. The blanks matter. A campground tee printed on a cheap, stiff blank ends up as a rag. A tee printed on Comfort Colors becomes a favorite that someone reaches for every weekend. That difference drives repeat purchases. Campers come back next season and buy another one because they wore out the first.

The ice-dyed pieces in the collection are where things get really interesting. These are hand-dyed in my York, PA studio using the same ice dye process I use for all our apparel: fiber-reactive Procion MX dyes over ice on pre-soaked blanks, cured for 24 hours, then rinsed until the water runs clear. Each piece develops its own color pattern. When a camper picks up an ice-dyed Pine Ridge hoodie from the camp store, they're getting something nobody else will ever have. That exclusivity is a selling point for the campground and a meaningful souvenir for the customer.

The Design Process Behind Camp Store Merchandise

Designing for a campground is different from designing for my own boutique. When I create pieces for Floorboard Findings, the design choices are mine. I pick the colors, the blanks, the aesthetic. When I create for Pine Ridge, the design has to serve their brand while still meeting the quality standards I hold for everything that leaves my studio.

We start each season with a conversation about what's selling, what's not, and what campers are asking for. Some seasons that means adding new colorways to the graphic tees. Other seasons it means introducing a new product type. The beanies came from campers asking about fall and winter gear when the campground runs seasonal events.

For the graphic pieces, I work with their logo and branding to create designs that feel cohesive with the campground's identity. Artwork assistance is part of my wholesale service. If they want to tweak a design or try something new, I handle the mockups and test prints before we commit to a full production run. Nothing goes into the camp store that hasn't been approved and physically tested first.

For the ice-dyed pieces, I select colorways that fit the campground aesthetic: earthy tones, forest greens, warm neutrals alongside bolder options for campers who want something that pops. The Pine Ridge branding gets applied via DTF after the dye process, so each piece is ice-dyed first, then printed with their logo. That layering of handmade dye work with professional printing is something most custom apparel suppliers can't offer because they don't do both in-house. We do.

How One Partnership Grew Into a Wholesale Operation

Working with Pine Ridge taught me how to run a wholesale program. The systems I built for their orders (inventory planning, seasonal design rotations, consistent blank sourcing, quality checkpoints) became the framework for everything I do with wholesale clients now.

Before Pine Ridge, Floorboard Findings was primarily a direct-to-consumer boutique. I sold ice-dyed pieces and crystal jewelry through my own store and at markets. The campground partnership showed me that there was real demand for a supplier who could deliver boutique-level quality at wholesale volume. Not thousands of units from an overseas factory, but small-batch, premium-blank, hand-finished apparel for businesses that care about what they put on their shelves.

That realization led to expanding into custom apparel for other organizations: fire departments needing fundraiser tees, small businesses wanting branded merchandise, other campgrounds and resorts looking at what Pine Ridge was doing and wanting something similar.

Today, wholesale is a major part of my business. And it all traces back to being a camper at Pine Ridge and thinking, "I could make something better for that camp store."

What Camp Store Merchandise Should Be

Here's what I believe about campground merchandise, and it applies to any retail space tied to an experience: the apparel should be good enough that people wear it in their regular life, not just at the campground. If a hoodie only comes out of the closet once a year for the next camping trip, that's a missed opportunity. If it becomes someone's go-to weekend sweatshirt, that's a walking advertisement for the campground fifty-two weeks a year.

That means premium blanks. Durable prints. Designs that look good outside the context of the campground. And for the ice-dyed pieces, it means creating something that stands on its own as a beautiful garment — the Pine Ridge branding is a bonus, not the only reason someone would wear it.

That's the standard I hold for every piece in the Pine Ridge collection, and it's the standard I bring to every wholesale partnership. If you run a campground, resort, or any business with a retail component and you're thinking about custom apparel that your customers will actually keep wearing, let's talk about what we can create together.