I feel very fortunate to get to spend some time with Andy Anderson at his studio in Nashville recently. Besides being one of the best screenprinters in the world for over thirty years he also is a master at creating motorcycles that are works of art, and then as if that isn’t enough, ranging far…
The Chicago Tribune wrote last week about $180K worth of phony Blackhawks hockey being seized by law enforcement under an effort with the oh so tricky “codename” Operation Team Player. This pales when one considers that the NHL’s big crackdown “Operation Red Zone” in 2013 netted $13.6 million in fake jerseys. Bootlegging is big business and…
We often get requests to analyze shirts for manufacturers. I can tell you that some folks like Hanes and SanMar actually do care about you printers out there and try to make sure their products can be decorated. They don’t always fully succeed but they are definitely trying hard and often with great results. Other…
That shirt was made a few years ago by Georgia Tech. It is called the smart shirt, and is for use on the battlefield to diagnose where a wound occurred. It was the start of what will be coming to the marketplace sooner than we could have imagined, computerized clothing. Google is ramping up their…
If you embroider a waterproof jacket like you embroider any old thing, it won’t be waterproof any longer. Water will wick through the threads and the holes you have made. There are products you can buy to waterproof the jacket after you are done with the embroidery. We buy ours from KYS embroidery supplies but I imagine…
I just spent some time in New Orleans at the Jazz and Heritage Festival with 460,000 other music lovers, most of them wearing t-shirts. Then I was in Nashville at the ISS show with shirt vendors and fellow garment decorators. Add in a few forays into gift shops and airport stores and I have a…
This is the end of an era, or end of another chapter anyway. The New Buffalo Shirt Factory was the gold standard for shirt printing, specializing in highly detailed sports and rock images on black shirts. The owner Jon Weiss had a license plate that said “King of Black.” Jon sold to Gildan a couple…
The annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is not only a celebration of the many many types of music that mix here in the Crescent City, it also celebrates Louisiana culture from photography to blacksmiths to of course, the t-shirt. They always sell a wide range of styles and designs and it is interesting to…
Since Rick and I have been talking about reflective printing I thought I’d share a sample printed with a product made by Rutland. The product is ER0200 Reflective Gray and we have had nothing but solid results specifically with fashion prints where the subtle tone-on-tone look under ambient light was preferred. Of course under direct light you…
When we first started in business in Cambridge, MA in the late 80’s, we were near MIT the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There I meet Andy Hong of the MIT Media Lab, the first customer who brought a case of beer to us to thank us for a job well done. I digress… Being near…
