BELLA+CANVAS has started a youtube channel and just released videos on three of their garments being printed with specialty inks: triblend printed with adhesive and then foil applied, slub being printed with metallic ink, and black heather being printed with reflective ink. They are simple and to the point and worth checking out. Look for them…
I attend the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival annually and so do almost 500,000 other people. It is interesting to stand back and see what folks in the crowd of all ages are wearing to a casual t-shirt type event, and always interesting to see what the Jazz Fest merch looks like. On both…
Your trusty observers Tom and Rick will have more in depth reports but here is what we see and what we heard so far in the first two days of FESPA in Hamburg, Germany this week of visiting exhibitors and talking to attendees. A few observations so far: Digital/Screen-print hybrid machines are here in force.…
I say a rare fix, because 95% of the time you try and fix a misprint with some overprint, etc. you are wasting your time. It usually looks stupid or worse and takes a long time. Usually it isn’t worth it. Get the depressing misprints out of your sight asap for any price and move on…
Comfort Colors just sent out an email blast promoting their decorating tips. You can read about many different ways to make your comfort colors shirts look better. This seems to be part of a wave of garment companies looking to help their customers proactively with tips on decoration, rather than waiting for decorators to run…
I woke up to a Business Insider article about the decline of retail stores. They report that a third of malls are in danger of closing, and that visits to malls decreased 50% from 2010 to 2013. Noted at our industry shows, American Apparel will be closing their 110 retail locations and Abercrombie closing…
Gildan purchased American Apparel and for a time during integration you could not buy wholesale. They are now back in the wholesale business, most customers can order again and distributors will get product again. I know some employees are back in action, but not sure how many. For the time being 10 key styles including…
I live in Cambridge, MA and the last time I checked it was not part of the City of Boston. Some new t-shirts appearing at “our” new Target (really? in Central Square? Good luck unless they have a liquor store in there) store were designed apparently by a New York firm. How you could design…
Our buddy Garrett Kaule installed a Saati LED light in place of his UV lamp system. There is a video showing them doing it. It is worth checking out the video and also it is worth considering the SAATI exposure lamp from what I’ve seen.
Here is a simple idea that is an inexpensive way to cover your butt. Quickly take photos of your shipments before they go out. That chargeback for too many boxes on the pallet or no labels or wrong labels will disappear mighty fast when you produce a photo of the shipment from all sides and showing…
