In a great example of a decorator combining a number of different techniques, the Pacific Northwest’s Emerald City Decoration employed a combination of direct-to-garment (DTG) and direct-to-film (DTF) to produce this image for a Seattle Space Needle tee, based on a...
Quality Punch, the winner in our Embroidery Design of the Year Category, actually sent in three separate designs, each one better than the last! According to Quality Punch’s Ria Habib, the work shown here was originally the customer’s idea: “We had fun working on this...
“How do we do make our booth more inclusive, fun and just plain cool?” That question in turn prompted, Deric Hoch, CEO of custom heat-transfer specialist 613 Originals, to jokingly pitch the idea of a taco stand, in a nod to Long Beach, California (site of one...
The poet Emily Dickinson is purported to have said, “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves.” With this in mind, what better example of the decorated apparel industry’s commitment to sustainability than Madeira USA’s Polyneon...
Hard to believe it’s only been a little over two years since Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based custom direct-to-transfer (DTF) specialist Ninja Transfers burst onto the custom decorated-apparel scene. Talk about impact! Suffice it so say, it didn’t take long for the...
An offshoot of custom direct-to-film (DTF) provider Ninja Transfers, the newly launched custom decorator Ninja Printhouse is dedicated to making it possible for its customers to say, “yes,” to every order. The result? Over $7,000,000 in sales in the space of a single...
Terms like “game changing” and “groundbreaking” tend to get thrown around a lot when it comes to new product introductions. However, when it comes to Gildan’s new Plasma Printing Technology, which debuted at the 2025 Impressions Expo in Long Beach, California, this...
Fast-growing Branded Threads and its founder Sam Lapcevic are in many ways the quintessential home-grown decorated-apparel company. An English major in college, Lapcevic eventually found his way to screen printing, which in turn led to the creation of Branded Threads...
According to Nebraska-based Relentless Merch, “You can be serious without a suit.” And when it comes to this, dare we say, “relentlessly” hardworking outfit, they clearly mean it. Founded by brothers Matt and Nathan Richardson in the basement of their “college party...
A seemingly never-ending stream of technical advances is fast propelling this cutting-edge apparel decorating technique into the mainstream In Part 1 of this two-part series on the growing importance of direct-to-film (DTF) printing, we looked at how DTF works and the...
The future is now for direct-to-film (DTF) printing and the decorated-apparel industry Decorators of all kinds are adopting direct-to-film (DTF) as a means of improving their bottom line. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we look at the nuts-and-bolts of DTF and the...
According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Granted, living more than two millennia before the advent of the industrial revolution, Aristotle probably didn’t have today’s mass-market...
