I proudly printed the Farm Aid 2017 shirts this year, most of them organic cotton and some also union made and nearly all USA made. So it is extremely disturbing to see a host of companies selling designs stolen from Farm Aid printed and embroidered on a bunch of crappy shirts. Repeated emails and filings…
Recently I wrote some thoughts here about rampant copyright and trademark violation, which is aided and abetted by lax policies of on-line services. It is easier to put up some BS product blatantly stealing the artwork and design of others than it is to get them to stop. This week I’m in the middle of…
On boards related to screenprinting and shirts and in discussions on Facebook I run into lots of people that shop around for the “best price.” As one person said today, $.10 on 50K shirts is a big deal. However, more often I see people going across the road for two cents on 100 shirts. Even…
At the end of January 2017 there was a major fire in the Huntsman plant in Pori in Finland. Despite the dramatic photos of this clearly very large fire, luckily there were no reported injuries or deaths. This plant produces a large portion of the titanium dioxide in the world used in white printing inks.…
PolyOne Corporation, the company that owns Wilflex Inks, recently bought Rutland Plastic Technologies. This gives PolyOne ownership of the companies supplying ink to a majority of garment printers in the USA. Last week I had a chat with the General Manager of Wilflex and now also of Rutland. Our chat reinforced some of the obvious…
We recently mocked up a job on lime green shirts with white ink. Not super high contrast but it looked ok. The customer approved the mock up, and the customer had seen the blank shirts in this color before. We printed the job and the customer was unhappy at the lack of contrast. We could…
If you’ve engaged in “hot market” printing, specifically for MLB or NBA in which championships are determined by the winner of a best of seven series, you understand the anxiety and significant effort which goes into preparing your print shop for each potential series clinching game; adjusting your regular production schedule, setting up multiple presses,…
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…
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…
