Screen printing product and technical news from Stanley's, Canada.

Cleaning and reorganizing makes good business sense.

The busy season will be so much more tolerable  and productive if you give the shop a morale-boosting cleanup before things become hectic. I know that there’s never a good time to do this kind of thing but making time is really not all that difficult. One way to do it is to down tools for a day while things are still a bit slow and have everyone do nothing but clean up and reorganize. Reward them with coffee and donuts in the morning, pizza at lunch time and perhaps a beer or two when the job is done. Friday would be a good day because that will mean that paint (floors, shelves etc) will have the weekend to dry properly.

Imagine a busy season when you can lay your hands on materials and tools without having to look for them. Ink, emulsions etc. properly labeled and shelved. Clear walkways and work spaces. Clean equipment. Annoying minor equipment malfunctions fixed. Planned workflow.

A clean, organized shop is a happy, productive shop, especially in the busy summer season when there’s enough pressure without also wasting time because of filth, disorganization, and malfunctioning equipment.

I finally found a great freelance designer!

It may be an ongoing issue for your shop or it may be a need that arises from time-to-time—we’re talking about finding designers. For many smaller shops a full-time designer might even be out of the question, in which case a freelancer would make sense. A few places worth visiting to find freelancers are Dribbble, Freelancer, and Upwork. Dribbble in particular is for designers (yes, the extra “b” is intentional) . One of these could be the answer to your designing dilemmas. But, as you know, it’s important to make sure that the designer understands designing for screen printing.

With a phone answering service your customers will always get to talk to a real live person!

We’ve had a lot to say about the necessity for a real live person to answer your shop’s phone when it rings. I’m sure we don’t have to discuss again how much you risk losing a potential customer by sending them to voicemail. You can’t build your business around what’s convenient for you, it has to be what’s convenient for the customer and, most of the the time, voicemail is not convenient for an impatient customer.

Well, if you can’t give your customers and potential customers the experience of reaching a real live person every time they call, there are services that will do it for you. Expect to pay about $150 a month for an answering service but weigh that up against peace of mind and possible lost business when people phone your competition because you’re not answering immediately. Here is one such service worth exploring: www.smiledog.ca —check them out.

This month’s excerpt in Images . . . Lawyer

If you’re not yet receiving the Images monthly online magazine, you should be. It’s a fun read right on your monitor and is crammed with interesting articles and technical information. Excerpts from Characters Who Can Make Or Break Your Business is being featured each month this year so a good way to start is by clicking here for the April 2019 edition and then paging through the rest of Europe’s premier magazine for our industry. You’re bound to find something useful or interesting, not only this month, but every month.

Now you can read summaries of exceptional business books.

So you don’t like to read or you don’t have time to read complete business books. I get it. But what if there was an easy way to access at least some of the useful information that business books offer without reading the entire books? Well, there is! Soundview offers summaries of many of the better business books. This is a resource too valuable to overlook, especially when you can pick up tips and ideas to greatly benefit your shop and also make you a better-informed business owner. Check them out by clicking here.

Doug Presisniuk is celebrating his 40th anniversary with the company his dad, Stanley, started 40 years ago. Congratulations to Doug and congratulations to Stanley. It’s a rare achievement.

Mixing the exact quantity of ink required for a job.

Back in the 1980’s Wilflex was the first manufacturer to offer textile printers the ability to match and mix their own plastisol colours accurately and only in the quantities they needed. The PC mixing system provided bases for all types of inks (multi-purpose, special effects, nylon, etc.) and over 30 pigments. Precise formulas enabled printers to make exactly the right colours consistently and repeatedly. Today the system is still in use but has been refined. It only needs 15 pigments now and the matching and formula aspects are computerized. Clean, sharp colours are now at your fingertips. And, importantly, it makes economic sense in many ways.

Ask Wendy at Stanley’s Calgary (403 243 7722) or Craig at Stanley’s Cambridge (519 620 7342) about the benefits of the Wilflex PC mixing system.

You’re curing your tees with what??

I recently saw this simplistic explanation of screen printing:

1. Place design on top of the desired position.
2. Add a thick layer of ink on top of the artwork.
3. Spread across evenly using the squeegee.
4. Remove screen.
5. Set the ink on the fabric by using some sort of dryer.

It’s not a generally helpful or detailed enough explanation but what is really troubling about it is: “Set the ink on the fabric by using some sort of dryer.” Some sort of!? No! Use a proper conveyor dryer! This type of explanation only reinforces the wrong idea for new printers in particular that a heat gun is fine for “curing” plastisol. It’s not. Period!

Small gestures — big benefits.

It’s not the value or nature of the gesture that matters, it’s the thought behind it. And remember that people like doing business with people they like. Show some generosity of spirit toward your customers and employees and you’ll be well on your way to being likable. It just makes business sense. Here’s a link to a case in point.

It’s true! Textile screen printers are rigid, stubborn, and sometimes hostile when it involves discussions about switching products, even when it involves the whole shop’s health. I bet you’re still using spray adhesive even though you know that there are perfectly good water-based, non-spray pallet adhesives available! Roni Henning was right when she wrote that: “Printers are a rigid breed and once they have developed a system of printing that works well, they are reluctant to change. I myself had felt this reluctance. I didn’t realize that if something is poisoning you and the environment it can hardly be working well, even though the product looks good.” She’s a print maker, but she could just as easily have been writing about textile screen printers. Is your reluctance to change products harming the health of your shop?

Not just de-clutterers and cleaners, but productivity tools.

Many books have been written about improving one’s life by tidying up (also sometimes called de-cluttering). The NY Times best seller by Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, is one example. It applies to textile screen printing shops as well. The tidier and less cluttered your shop, the more likely it is to maximize productivity. Think about it . . . never tripping over stuff, finding things quickly, space to put work in progress, and never contaminating product or materials. Then there’s also the impression a clean, uncluttered shop has on existing and potential customers. It just makes good business sense on so many levels.

Featured in March edition of Images . . . They Should Have Behaved Better — families in business.

There are a number of good reasons to log onto Europe’s premier magazine for the textile decorating industry. First, it’s crammed with a lot of useful technical and industry information and, second, for each month in 2019 it’s featuring excerpts from your editor’s book, Characters Who Can Make Or Break Your Small Business. Take a look, you’ll like it:  https://images-magazine.com/

Turning sour to sweet!

So Don Cherry doesn’t like the way the Hurricanes celebrate victories at home; he called them “jerks.” The Hurricanes immediately printed a T-shirt with a “bunch of jerks” design and have it available for U.S.$32. That’s $42 Canadian dollars for a gimmick Tee. And the fans don’t seem to mind being gouged—they’re paying it! Way to turn a sour cherry into a sweet Tee!

Here’s more from that Stockholm University study we’ve mentioned in two recent posts. Again, this is not to suggest that there is a quick and easy answer or that we should stop handling garments, but we should be aware of these issues as they affect our industry. An excerpt from Jasmin Malik Chua’s article: “. . . researchers measured chemical levels after running the clothes through a washing machine. ‘Quick release’ compounds are discharged into household wastewater and then the environment. ‘Slow release’ ones cling to clothes, where, depending on type, they are either metabolized by skin bacteria or absorbed by the body, where they can pose local or systemic effects.”

Now THAT is a good idea!

This could be a good tip, especially if you’re relatively new to the industry . . . Don’t throw away your films once the screens have been burned. Save them because if you’re running your business well and have return customers they may want the same designs re-printed. If you’ve saved and indexed them, you’ll be able to retrieve them quickly and not have to produce new films.

As technologies such as direct-to-garment slowly improve and expand, you hear people predicting, at worst, the demise of textile screen printing or, at best, drastic changes in the technique. Printsome in the U.K. has an interesting perspective on this: “Like crocodiles or sharks that have barely evolved over millions of years, textile screen printing hasn’t changed very much throughout its long history because it doesn’t have to—it already works.”

So you tell your customers (maybe you even attach tags to their printed tees) to care for their T-shirts by: turning them inside out before putting them in the washing machine; washing in cold water; not putting them in the tumble dryer; drying them in the shade; and not ironing them.

Come on, let’s not kid ourselves and everyone else. Tees are not delicate high fashion. We throw them in the regular warm water wash, dry them in the dryer, and some of us (much to the amusement of others) even iron them (but not on the plastisol print of course).

It might be refreshing to see a printer actually attach an honest tag to their t-shirts. It could be a great marketing ploy.

In January we posted an item about toxicity in cotton garments. That same report has some serious information on Polyester garments . . . “found that Polyester harboured the highest concentrations of quinolines, a potential human carcinogen that has been linked to liver damage and aromatic amines, which are found in tobacco smoke and diesel exhaust.” What can you do about it as a screen printer handling these garments if you want to stay in business? Realistically, probably not much, but at the same time we should know as much as we can about our industry.

Stop battling and trying to innovate . . . You can get pallets to accommodate special needs such as hoodie zippers and small sleeves. The Stanley’s staff at all four branches can help you. And if they don’t know the answer to your precise challenge, they’ll find the answer and get back to you. Just give them a call with your specialty pallet challenge.

Here is plenty of advanced notice of the the Western Canada Imprint show in Calgary on Friday September 20th and Saturday September 21st, 2019. It’s time to book your exhibit booth or, if you’re not going exhibit but just attend, mark your calendar.

As posted earlier, Roland (of graphics and digital printer fame) has entered your textile world with a new “desktop” D2G printer. You should check it out by logging on to their webinar tomorrow (Wednesday, 30th January). The times are: 10.00 am to 10.30 am Pacific; 11.00 am to 11.30 am Mountain; 1.00 pm to 1.30 pm Eastern; and 2.00 pm to 2.30 pm Atlantic. Check on Roland’s website for the logon details.

It seems that some garment manufacturers and investors are actually taking action in light of the reports of worker abuse in garment factories around the world, particularly in low-cost off-shore jurisdictions. Recent examples are North Carolina-based, Badger Sportswear, who have reportedly severed ties with Hetian Taida Apparel Co. of China due to alleged forced labour. The Norwegian investor, Norway Pension Fund Global, stopped investing in Texwinca Holdings of Hong Kong because of alleged human rights abuses at Vietnamese apparel factories. Who’s next?

No? Well some of your Canadian competitors were! They saw a new water based ink at the Wilflex booth and Roland’s new digital-to-garment “desk top” machine. But that was just scratching the surface. They also picked up tips and ideas from the hundreds of displays. And, the break from the Canadian winter didn’t hurt either. Make a note now to attend next year from the 17th to the 19th of January.

The Guardian recently revealed that the Spice Girls pop group had shirts made to support a female empowerment-focused charity initiative. Here’s where the sad irony comes in . . . The garments were produced by women factory workers in Bangladesh labouring in abusive conditions for an unlivable wage. Another black eye for our industry. The take away lesson? Source smartly!

Sometimes it takes an incident like a hacker trying to get into the admin section of your online store to make you revisit your online security. If, like many screen printers, you have your online store hosted by Shopify, not only will they let you know that an unusual source has tried to get into your site, but they can offer you a two-step authentication process to vastly increase your security. If you’re not using the free two-step authentication on your Shopify store, you should be!

Big business Chairmen and CEOs say things that appear to make sense and are taken to be great business wisdom. But “wisdom” doled out by big business doesn’t necessarily always apply to small business. For instance, take this attributed to Sam Walton: “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” For a small business owner on the front lines, like many Canadian screen printers, encouraging a difficult customer to go spend their money at a competitor, can be a great idea. You don’t have to allow a customer to make your life miserable just because some big business guy has forgotten what it’s like on the front line with some customers.

Do you know that a few years ago already in 2015, Jasmin Malik Chua wrote an article about the levels of toxicity found in garments textile screen printers handle every day? Even organic cotton garments tested positive for benzothiazoles—substances that can cause respiratory and skin issues. Some “eco-label”-branded organic garments contained 7 to 30 times more benzothiazoles than so-called “conventional” cotton garments.