The Ink Kitchen

Good music, good beer, and good times, it’s the 4th Annual Nashville Honkytonk Hoedown!

I attend the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival annually and so do almost 500,000 other people. It is interesting to stand back and see what folks in the crowd of all ages are wearing to a casual t-shirt type event, and always interesting to see what the Jazz Fest merch looks like. On both…

Your trusty observers Tom and Rick will have more in depth reports but here is what we see and what we heard so far in the first two days of FESPA in Hamburg, Germany  this week of visiting exhibitors and talking to attendees. A few observations so far: Digital/Screen-print hybrid machines are here in force.…

When unveiled at the SGIA Expo last year MHM’s iQ Digital showed serious potential of being the first DTG solution for high-volume production in garment printing.  We couldn’t wait to get our hands on this new technology, so when MHM invited us to play I booked my flight to visit the Arioli Group, parent company of MHM and developer of the digital…

I say a rare fix, because 95% of the time you try and fix a misprint with some overprint, etc. you are wasting your time. It usually looks stupid or worse and takes a long time. Usually it isn’t worth it. Get the depressing misprints out of your sight asap for any price and move on…

Fonts In Use typography archive is a terrific resource for graphic designers (or pseudo-graphic designers such as myself).  Have fun…

Comfort Colors just sent out an email blast promoting their decorating tips. You can read about many different ways to make your comfort colors shirts look better. This seems to be part of a wave of garment companies looking to help their customers proactively with tips on decoration, rather than waiting for decorators to run…

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…

One of my favorite parts of business is meeting new people.  Throughout the several years that we have been around, there have been so many wonderful people that have come through my life.  When you can establish great relationships with people and take care of them well,  your business is bound to grow.  A couple…

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…