Impressions - Digital Decorator - Summer 2014 - 12

STEP 4 : The ﬁnished product

STEP

STE P

has a digital impression
(DTG), embroidery and
some shine.

Once a garment has been decorated
with vinyl or plastisol ink, it is difﬁcult
to add any other elements that require
heat. Another limitation is with raised
applications like embroidery threads
or sequins. These types of surfaces
may make it difﬁcult or impossible to
add screen printing, direct-to-garment
printing and dye-sublimation methods,
which work best with a ﬂat surface.

WHICH PRODUCTS
MAKE SENSE?
Who is a likely customer of multimedia and where is the biggest bang for the
buck? The default answer: Whatever the
market demands. It's not always possible
to predict what your retail or wholesale
customers will buy, and it is best to test
concepts with a few samples.
Be sure to price accordingly, factoring in your additional materials and
production time, as well as the same
margin percentage you expect for standard pieces. Wells and her team wholesale their ﬁ nished goods at high prices
- $20 or more each.
Because of the extra attention to
detail, the higher cost basis and time,
you most likely will produce multimedia
garments in individual or small runs for
known customers. Strong customers for
multimedia include retailers and other
garment decorators.
12 § SUMMER 2014

In addition to having a unique and
high-margin offering for your retail customers, multimedia decorated apparel
is attractive for boutique clothing shops,
gift and souvenir shops, craft fairs and
corporate promotional products.
You may ﬁ nd that your local business
partners come to you simply to add a
method to their core competency. "We

"TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF MORE THAN
ONE DECORATING
APPLICATION
BY COMBINING
COMPLEMENTARY
METHODS."
sell a lot to embroiderers, retailers and
screen printers," Wells says. "They can
bring the print to us or we can do the
whole thing from start to ﬁ nish." With
practice, you will be able to quickly
discern whether a mixed-media piece
makes sense for your customer.

MULTIMEDIA
REQUIREMENTS
If you own a heat press, you already
have the favorite low-cost production
tool for many different applications. It is
best (and safest) to experiment with adding other techniques by taking work-inprogress - items to which you already
have applied one technique - to your
favorite embroiderer or other decorator
in order to apply their core methods.
As you gain practice, confidence
and customers, evaluate complementary decoration equipment. The business case will vary by technique. When
you're routinely producing perhaps
500 custom pieces per month, you'll
have enough data points to measure
your profit per piece and hour. You may
discover that it's time to stop outsourcing, buy the requisite equipment, get
trained and capture that extra margin.

THINGS TO AVOID
A good printed multimedia piece
requires a solid backing or dense substrate. As with embroidery, in order
to support multiple types of embellishments, you should have a strong
and dense foundation. For example, a
6-ounce T-shirt or a heavy jersey knit can
support both a digital print and stitches.
A word to the wise: As Wells points
out, ﬁ ne mesh items won't work with

Impressions - Digital Decorator - Summer 2014

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