On this date in 1851, This Guy Started the Modern Garment Industry: Isaac Merritt Singer was granted U.S. Patent No. 8,294 for his “Improvement in Sewing Machines” and the garment industry as we know it was born. As with many famous inventors (Edison, for example), Singer didn’t really invent what we think he did. He…
Oliver “Power” Grant, co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, has died at 52. If you were around for the rise of Wu-Tang in the early ’90s, you already know: Power wasn’t just in the room, he helped build the room. And if you work in decorated apparel, you definitely know this: Wu Wear changed the fashion…
And an AI Company Just Said No This week, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, drew a line against the Pentagon. Their position: we will not allow our AI to be used for mass surveillance of American citizens or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon’s response? Drop those guardrails or lose your $200 million contract, get…
Creating art with AI is not the same thing as AI art. AI art is when you type a prompt and something spits out an image. You might refine the prompt, you might iterate, but the creative act is largely outsourced. The AI is the artist. You’re the client. That has its place, I use…
Custom screen printing in the U.S. alone is a $12.8 billion industry. Business is good, but growth doesn’t mean we’ve solved our fundamental problems. Here are some Hard-Won Wisdoms for Garment Decorators worth remembering. The Lies “You can save $5 a gallon on cheaper emulsion.” Evaluate emulsion by your production numbers and ease of use,…
You can read the fourth quarter results that Gildan posted here. However, in plain English, here’s what they’re actually saying — and what it might mean for printers, decorators, and promo folks. What Happened? Gildan bought Hanes. That makes them a much bigger company. No surprise there. The fourth-quarter numbers look huge because Hanes was…
Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth about 1992 to be exact, we printed a very difficult print for the times. It was a full color CMYK process print of the clock tower in Lawrence. It is the kind of print that made us develop simulated process seps as process printing is very…
The Noise Problem America has a gift for taking anything with mass-market potential and marketing it until it’s unrecognizable. Something real gets buried under so much hype that people stop listening. AI is deep in that cycle right now. Every product is “AI-powered.” Every ad promises transformation. Most of it is noise making AI workflow…
For this Throwback Thursday: Made in the U.S. A., Let’s take a look back and a look forward at Apparel Made in the U.S. A.: Unionwear: Thriving in a New Manufacturing Landscape Unionwear, located in Newark, NJ, remains the real deal in union-made, USA-made hats, bags, and accessories. Their president Mitch Cahn continues to be…
We print mostly on material made from plants, and it is sewn and printed by living, breathing human beings. All of that means our work includes some diversity and is absolutely full of imperfections. On the other hand, we are faced with customers operating with their perfect (actually not perfect) Pantone books, icy close stares,…
