Eric Adler's Blog (12)

Recently the shopping center that our store is in was bought by a large grocery store chain. They want us to stay and wrote up a new lease for a new space within the center. At first glance, there were only a few questionable things within the lease. Lucikly, I have family in the real estate business and they recommended we have a lawyer familiar with real estate check it out. Best idea ever! He thought of so many things that needed to be written into the lease to help protect and grow our… Continue

I'm sure many of you have heard about the school shooting in Chardon, OH.  One of the victims killed was the grandson of my high school wrestling coach at Beachwood (both Chardon and Beachwood are suburbs of Cleveland).  To honor our coach's family, our store cad-printed a special ribbon printed and it on the singlets being worn this weekend at the Ohio High School State Tournament.  Right now, Beachwood wrestling is doing great with one guy wrestling in the finals and two other teammates…

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We do a ton of poly shirts, jerseys and shorts.  I can't stand when the cheap polyester snags, espcially before it goes out the door.  I now keep my eyes open for snag resistant items to print on.  I have found that Under Armour, San Mar and A4 are leading the way with poly sportshirts and polos that don't snag.

Besides this site, here are a few other things worth following on the web...

www.tedstahl.com, Ted Stahk from Stahls has a great blog with product updates and uses. He also has links to many other good blogs and sites

On Facebook, follow Stahls All Things Heat printing for ideas and even promo codes

Finally, you can also follow Imprintables on Facebook

I just wanted to give a shot out to Phil and Mike over at Imprintables for helping me re-establish my Versacamm connection. Before I spoke with them I spent about 5 hours on the phone with a computer tech support service that was fixing a virus. Once I had thee virus removed from the computer the guys at Imprintables got me right back into printing. They even have a feature that allows them to remotley access your computer, so you can just sit back and let them check things out.

I have looking into sublimation over the past few weeks and have not been completly convinced that it will work for me. Fact is it just can't do as much as the versacamm. When I think about it, almost all of the garments we do are colored and not white. Since sublimation cannot do white on a light color it is at a huge disadvantage. It looks like the few light colors I can sublimate on would have to be printed with dark colors. I will be exploring more options with.sublimation to see what else… Continue

Yes, basketball season is right around the corner.  The perfect time to break out the versacamm for some quick uniforms.  For anyone looking to sell basketball uniforms here are some pointers:

-Youth teams typically have 10 or less kids so the small quantities make it very suitable to use your cad cutter or versacamm

 

-Reversible uniforms are becoming more and more popular.  A reversible uniform is almost always cheaper than buying two seperate sets.  Here is a link to…

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Before we had the Versacamm we relied heavily on heat transfer producers and outside screenprinters. We have discovered that the Versacamm allows us to have greater control over our workflow. Time wise, I no longer have to wait 2 weeks for an order to be proccessed, it can be done in 2 days now. Usually, using the Versacamm is actually cheaper than outsourced screen print and transfers. The other day we took a look at the money and less ia flowing out in regards decoration suppliers (other than… Continue

It seems that everytime I open up a sporting goods magazine, all they talk about is the need for a Facebook and Twitter account.  It seems that most of our business tends to be word of mouth.  Our customers are our best salesman.  Although I place that belief above all else, I went ahead to set up a Facebook page for my store.  After buying a smart phone and realzing how easy it would be to post pictures and messages to Facebook, it gave me some incentive to get going.  Now, I don't plan on…

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You know those uniform builders our suppliers have on their websites? It would be great to integrate them with our vector art capabities we have. Imagine if a customer could walk in and say here is exactly what I want on my uniforms and we could simply access the layouts and print them on the Versacamm. Same goes for t-shirt orders. I cant tell you how many times a customer brings in a design from some t-shirt selling site and we need to start from scartch and recreate the artwork. On our end… Continue

After shying away from selling online for many years we have finally decided it was time to take action. I looked into a fewb options for setting up a web store. First, I tried creating a store through one of our apparel distributors. However, this was too time consuming between trying to load all of the images and then load the logos onto them. Next I looked at what Pay Pal had to offer. It was not bad, they are a trusted site and have reccomendations for sites where you can build your store.… Continue

My customers are always watching us print something or weed something off the Versacamm and the are always in awe of what it can do. I'm only 31 one years old but I have been fortunate to grow up working in my family's sporting goods store for around 20 years. I always find myself explaining to the customer that back in the day you had to layout each letter seperatley one at a time. Then Stahls started selling names pre-cut that could simply be printed on the shirt. This was so great we decided… Continue