Our pal Brett Bowden lays some wisdom on us to start the new year. Two hearty thumbs up from the Ink Kitchen on his main points: 1. Stay close to your vendors, good ones like SPSI are incredibly important to your business 2. Don’t forget to have fun, otherwise what the hell are we doing…
It is kind of amazing that people get so riled up over protest shirts, but they surely do. The shirt in question today is Andrew Hawkins of the Cleveland Browns wore a shirt calling for justice for Tamir Rice, a 12 y.o. child shot by Cleveland police officers. Hard to believe, but the officers in…
I’m not sure it is mentioned in Business School, but the “visions of sugarplums” effect is a real thing during the holiday season. Expect from many employees: – Increased absences – More mistakes – Not listening to you – Just not getting as much work done With visions of sugarplums dancing in your head, it…
Warning! Rant coming. People get their panties in a bunch over being told Merry Christmas when they are not Christian, or Happy Holidays when they are Christian. I’m not much about caring regarding either of those things (though I can see the insult inherent in wishing non-Christians a happy Christian holiday.) It being a Capitalist…
I always say that we can design in, on, and above the shirt. Your design canvas is not a computer screen. It is the fabric of tote bags, shirts and other garments. We are lucky to be able to design with depth. Thinned based inks go into the fabric, regular inks stay on top, and…
Customers ask all the time, how big should the image be? What is the ideal location? I have looked at hundreds of thousands of pieces of art going on shirts and even more shirts. I still need to see what it is going to look like. Does that mean I want to print the shirt…
My pal Jon just had a fire at his shop Pop Tops this past weekend. The cause is still being investigated, but it appears to have started while nobody was there in the screen room. A few good things: – Nobody was hurt, no firefighters or employees – Sprinklers kept the fire from spreading –…
Alphabroder just announced today what has been rumored for months, that they have merged with Bodek and Rhodes. Nobody cares about a little billion dollar merger I guess if Bud can buy Miller for $106,000,000,000 (that’s right billions.) This merger makes Alphabroder/Bodek the undisputed biggest shirt distributor as Alphabroder, Bodek and SanMar were previously the…
If you get a spot of ink on a shirt you can sometimes get rid of it. Screenprinters have different names for it, you blast it out, you shoot it out, you use spot remover, you use dry cleaning fluid… See the label of many of your shirts, “Do Not Dry Clean.” That’s because dry…
This is an American Apparel idea for a shirt for employees to wear on Black Friday in their retail stores. It was meant to be funny and for people to ask for an extra discount they are offering. Several commentators including The Cut call them out and say the new regime at American Apparel is…
