Sustainability is more than a corporate buzzword. At least it should be. Corporations may have big budgets for dedicated CSR (corporate social responsibility) programs and cool infographics, but even without a big budget, there are plenty of things you can do to reduce waste, recycle resources and make your shop a more sustainable enterprise. Rick…
In this Shop Talk video Ed Levy of Hirsch Solutions talks with Rick about automating embroidery and other decorating processes for shops of all sizes. Automation used to be too expensive for smaller operations, but now it has become accessible to all. Rick shares how it went when Mirror Image integrated embroidery automation and Ed…
One of the most fascinating Shop Talks from the Atlantic City Impressions Expo was this panel discussing what it takes to start and run a small, medium or large decorating business. Stan Banks of T-Shirt Side Hustle, Lon Winters of Graphic Elephants and Dennis Tam of Ampersand Print Co joined moderator Rick Roth and walked…
Print Hustlers 2021, produced by Printavo and MADE Lab, was held last weekend (October 22-23) at the Ace Hotel in Chicago. Speakers from music, sports, and food and beverage backgrounds, as well as some exceptional folks from our own industry, spoke about creativity, design, sales, manufacturing and business, sharing knowledge about the mindsets and approaches that have been the foundation…
Ready for a repeat of the 2020 holiday season shipping logistics madness? Ready or not, it’s coming. Yesterday the USPS put its holiday surge pricing into effect. The increases most likely to effect your t-shirt fulfillment business are the $0.30 to $0.75 increases for first-class packages, Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express. If the past…
Seems like just last week that we were at Impressions Atlantic City! (It was two weeks ago.) And now it’s time for Impressions Fort Worth, running from Friday, Sept. 10 to Sunday, Sept 12. Make sure to register for the launch party of MADE Laboratory, a new venture by our own Tom Davenport and Brett…
Apparel is said to make up 6-7% of household waste in the US. That’s a lot. There are many steps to the recycling process. The post-consumer apparel needs to be collected, sorted according to its fiber content, stripped of non-fabric elements like buttons or zippers, and then treated chemically or mechanically to separate the fibers.…
It’s almost Earth Day, which means it’s a great time to talk about sustainability in our industry. Almost any apparel brand you can think of likes to highlight their sustainability efforts or their CSR (corporate social responsibility), but the truth is there aren’t many ways to measure or compare these efforts, and more importantly, the…
As more people get vaccinated and begin to get back to more interactive daily routines, the effects of Covid-19 continue to rest a heavy hand on our industry. The global pandemic has disrupted global supply chains in a way no one has experienced before and we can’t realistically expect everything to bounce back to what it…
Norm Hullinger, the former CEO of garment distributor Alphabroder, has joined BELLA+CANVAS as their Chief Operating Officer. Prior to his 9 years serving as CEO of Alphabroder, Hullinger was the company’s COO. Dan Pantano, the former president of Alphabroder, will step into the CEO role there. A BELLA+CANVAS press release notes that recent global expansion…
