From our pal Brett Bowden of Printed Threads: As the leader of a growing company, I feel like it is necessary to be around other business owners at my level as well as mentors that can help me get to the next. Whenever I meet with a new “mentor” I always hear the question, “What…
In the last several months we have been printing with discharge inks at a higher level than ever before. This is partially a trend and partially driven internally. This trend also corresponds with a trend toward specialty substrates, i.e.: tri-blends, fashion fleece, etc. Obviously, this complicates things. You can be reasonably sure of the results you…
I talked to my good friend and great sports mind Mike Manning this morning. He said he loved that the Royals won the wild card play-off game in a walk-off 12th inning comeback. “Even with all those ex-Sox guys on the A’s?” I asked. “We’ve got tons of inventory in Royal and we had nothing…
We’re very cautious to avoid “bleeding” and “dye-migration” when it comes to printing 100% poly and poly-blend fabrics. We use poly white plus a barrier gray when under-basing 100% poly and we use poly white plus a standard low-bleed white when under-basing blends. We drop our oven temp and cure time, and we are careful not…
Someone was asking me this week about the use of a discharge ink as an underbase. Discharge ink is an ink that basically neutralizes the dye in a shirt instead of printing over the dye. So with discharge ink you don’t need two prints (usually white and then the color) and so it gets a…
One good thing about owning a t-shirt printing company is that once in awhile you can just print something you just feel like printing. (Some days it seems like the only good thing…) I saw these shirts online in a photo when the Replacements played last year after a long hiatus. I didn’t see the…
With the proliferation of fashionable garments, more and more customers that would have manufactured their own garments merely relabel an existing garment. I got a call today from an old friend in the business today and he said, “I figured my cost is $.70, but I know they won’t pay that!” Little tiny print unfortunately…
My review of the music video “Don’t You Start:” Glad to see ear protection while reclaiming, but in the printing scene maybe I would have had the screen a little more off contact using a couple cardboard tabs… I remember an old Letterman bit where he had an actual welder come on the show and…
I recently met with a perspective customer. He was questioning the quality he was receiving from his current print provider and brought a couple of samples to get my take. His issue was with the heavy “hand” on the white discharge ink in his printed designs. “It looks great but it feels like shit, until you…
Alternative Apparel recently conducted a t-shirt contest to highlight their printed fabric products. “Prints on prints”, it’s a good concept. But, when you consider what you typically see in the established t-shirt competitions (mostly bad designs and mostly mediocre printing), the concept of showcasing clever and tasteful design, decent printing, and great blanks for a t-shirt contest is actually brilliant.…
