It looks innocuous enough sitting there with a pallet jack next to it, but that dryer (oven) does not fit in my shop, at least without extraordinary means like taking down a cement block wall that is weight bearing. I rented a full size 26′ Penske truck and went to pick up my purchase and…
Hanes bought Alternative Apparel as the garment industry continues to consolidate. It makes sense for Hanes to buy a straight ahead top fashion brand in the decoration world giving them a wider range of products. I find it encouraging that they actually mention social responsibility, a term not bandied about so much lately. Rachel Newman:…
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…
