Gildan just announced purchase of socks company Peds for $55 million (American not Canadian dollars…) This comes on the heels of their acquisitions in the past few years of Anvil, Comfort Colors, New Buffalo Shirt Company, and most recently Alstyle Apparel. Peds was in the news recently for “reshoring” some of their knitting. They brought…
Hanes and Champion have a new site at hanesink.com for ordering a shirt, focused on all high schools and colleges. I guess it might cut into the businesses of a few people, but mostly it seems like it might lead to less aggravation and more business for most of us. If somebody wants a single shirt for…
Occasionally we make bad calls on the production floor. Recently we had an order and the pantones were all specified. When we printed the blue that the design called for, it looked nothing like the mockup. Someone made the call to print the job anyway… Of course when the customer received the shirts, they didn’t…
Happy Earth Day! April 22nd has been the annual day since some folks started it in 1970. After witnessing the terrible Santa Barbara oil spill Senator Gaylord Nelson announced the idea for a “national teach-in on the environment” to the national media. He persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair; and recruited…
The above Facebook page is the official page of the band (and very good band at that) The Shins. The GAP was selling The Shins shirts and another band without permission. I think that is called stealing. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Gap removed the items, I should hope so. You can buy the…
This month I wrote an article for the very good trade journal called Printwear. I’ve done that for many many years, through a host of good editors starting with Mark Buchanan right through my pal Emily Thompson and to the current talented Carly Hollman-Long. When you go to China, you can just speak English and…
This is a first of maybe some more posts about dealing with the “social” elements of your business. When I jumped into this social media role at The Ink Kitchen a couple years ago I wasn’t really aware of what I was getting myself into. Take some photos and post them somewhere “online”, right? Yeah, something…
Atlantic City show is coming up this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Come by the Hanes/Champion booth or the Hirsch booth and say hello. We will have a bunch of our Know-It-Alls armed with years of experience and one of those Magic 8 balls and we can thereby answer any or all or your questions about…
This shop tour is by our brother-in-arms Brett Bowden El Capitan of Printed Threads in Texas. I have known Stephen Till for years through music. It is to my delight that he has become a brother in the screen printing world as well. While spending some time in the mountains of Colorado, I took the…
If you hang out with any emulsion company, you will hear them talk about the importance of each step of the reclaim process. EVERY STEP. I have seen so many forum posts about how degreasing is a waste of time. C’mon people! The screen is the most important part of screen printing, let’s treat it…
