If you are in the world of garment decoration you are well aware of inventory issues. The pandemic has shut down factories and wreaked havoc on supply chains. Many people are angry and maybe rightfully so, but their anger is misplaced if it is directed at shirt distributors or even mills. This has hit every…
Apparel is said to make up 6-7% of household waste in the US. That’s a lot. There are many steps to the recycling process. The post-consumer apparel needs to be collected, sorted according to its fiber content, stripped of non-fabric elements like buttons or zippers, and then treated chemically or mechanically to separate the fibers.…
It’s almost Earth Day, which means it’s a great time to talk about sustainability in our industry. Almost any apparel brand you can think of likes to highlight their sustainability efforts or their CSR (corporate social responsibility), but the truth is there aren’t many ways to measure or compare these efforts, and more importantly, the…
As more people get vaccinated and begin to get back to more interactive daily routines, the effects of Covid-19 continue to rest a heavy hand on our industry. The global pandemic has disrupted global supply chains in a way no one has experienced before and we can’t realistically expect everything to bounce back to what it…
Norm Hullinger, the former CEO of garment distributor Alphabroder, has joined BELLA+CANVAS as their Chief Operating Officer. Prior to his 9 years serving as CEO of Alphabroder, Hullinger was the company’s COO. Dan Pantano, the former president of Alphabroder, will step into the CEO role there. A BELLA+CANVAS press release notes that recent global expansion…
We have a guest post today about the benefits of using more sustainable packaging for your online retail orders written by friend of the Ink Kitchen, Brandon Lennart of Inferno Screen Printing in New Orleans. Hello fellow decorators. I spent a few months thinking on how to approach this article and in the meantime I have learned…
Alright, where’s this going? A little baseball history courtesy of MLB.com, by way of Craig Calcaterra’s column “Cup of Coffee.” George Clinton the fearless leader of Parliament, Funkadelic, the P-Funk All-Stars and other variations has said, “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership”-…
We have been looking at any possible way to save time on press. One thing that I feel wastes a huge amount of time is taping pallets. Our solution was to buy an extra set of pallets and create a pallet taping station. Now we can take off all of our dirty fleecy pallets and…
Expect shirt prices to rise, as raw cotton prices are going up and shipping (NY Times article here.) is off the charts. Expect it all to go up more than warranted by cotton or shipping prices as two other forces kick in: 1. Don’t expect companies not to take advantage of a commonly understood issue…
This clip below is a pretty cool interview given by Bowie about art and how the “art world” keeps us from seeing the creativity in each of us. One of the things I have always loved about t-shirts is that creative words and images can be shared at a price that most people can afford.…
