To the end customer, a blank T-shirt may look like a simple starting point: a clean canvas waiting for a logo, graphic or embroidered design. For an apparel decorator, however, there’s nothing simple about it.
Before a garment reaches a screen-printing press, direct-to-garment (DTG) printer, direct-to-film (DTF) heat press or embroidery machine, decisions have already been made that can determine how well the decoration performs. Fiber content, fabric construction, surface smoothness, finishing treatments, stretch and shrinkage can influence everything from ink absorption and color vibrancy to adhesion and stitch stability.
In other words, great decoration begins long before the decorating starts.
That relationship has become increasingly important as shops expand the technologies they offer. Screen printing requires a reliable printing surface; DTG depends on fibers that respond well to pretreatment; DTF introduces heat-and-pressure considerations; and embroidery requires enough stability to withstand repeated needle penetration without distortion.
Meanwhile, blank apparel continues to evolve. Customers want softer fabrics, fashion-forward fits, interesting colors and retail-inspired finishes, while decorators need consistency from one order to the next. Change a fabric, finish or construction—even to improve the garment for the wearer—and decorators may need to adjust temperatures, pressure, pretreatment or other production settings.
Product development, then, becomes a balancing act between what consumers want to wear and what decorators need to successfully decorate.
For Next Level Apparel, those considerations begin during development. Samples are tested on press, fabrics are evaluated for weight, shrinkage and consistency, and decorator partners put products through real production conditions; feedback that can uncover challenges traditional laboratory testing may not.
That knowledge matters on the shop floor as well. Understanding how a blend responds to heat or when production settings need adjustment can mean the difference between a smooth run and costly reprints. As shops scale, standardized settings, documented processes and familiarity with core garments become even more valuable.
To explore what makes a garment truly decoration-ready, Impressions spoke with Michael Niemann, vice president of product at Next Level Apparel, about how fabric, construction and manufacturing decisions affect decoration, and why understanding the blank itself is essential to producing better decorated apparel.
As Niemann puts it, “The garment is part of the decoration.”
How Decoration-Ready Apparel Begins with Product Development
Impressions Magazine: When developing a new blank, how early are decorators and garment marking considerations brought into the conversation?
Michael Niemann: At Next Level Apparel, we’re always thinking about two people at once — the person wearing it and the person decorating it. By the time we’re picking fabrics, we’ve already asked ourselves how it prints, how it embroiders, and where the stress points are under heat. If we wait until late sampling to ask those questions, we’ve already made decisions that are hard and expensive to undo.
IM: What key factors—market trends, decorator feedback, or retail demand—most influence how a garment is designed from the start?
MN: All three, but not equally at every stage. Retail trends tell us where fashion is going — fit, silhouette, color. That keeps us relevant. But decorator feedback keeps us honest about whether something works in a production setting. The decorator channel is how our products reach people, so their day-to-day reality must factor into how we build.
IM: How do you balance fashion-forward updates (fit, silhouette, color) with the consistency decorators rely on for repeatable results?
MN: This is one of the harder things we manage. Decorators spend real time getting to know a garment — dialing in their screens, their press settings, and so on. When we change something, even for the better, it can throw off a workflow they’ve spent time building. So we try to keep fashion updates — new colors, seasonal fits — separate from the core construction. If a style has a strong decorator following, we don’t touch what makes it work. We add on top of it.
IM: What role does fabric innovation play in shaping how a garment performs throughout its lifecycle?
MN: Fabric is the foundation of everything — how it feels on day one, how it holds up after fifty washes, and how it takes ink. Those three things don’t always point in the same direction. Understanding those tradeoffs — and either working around them or being upfront about them—is a big part of what we do here at Next Level Apparel.
How Fabric and Garment Construction Affect Print Quality
IM: What are the most important garment characteristics—fabric, weave, finish, and construction—that directly impact print quality?
MN: People focus on what the fabric is made of, but how even that surface is across the whole print area matters just as much. Seams, fabric stretch under platen pressure, yarn variation — all of it shows up in the print. Beyond that: fiber content affects how ink absorbs; weave tightness affects how clean your edges are and finishing changes how the surface reacts to ink. Construction details matter too — seam placement, collar tape, shoulder construction — all of it can create pressure variations that affect the result.
IM: How do different fabric blends (cotton, CVC, tri-blend) affect ink absorption, color vibrancy, and durability?
MN: Cotton absorbs well, holds ink reliably, and is forgiving across most print methods. CVC blends give you most of what cotton offers with better shape retention and a lighter feel. Tri-blends are where it gets interesting — the drape and texture are great, but the polyester content can cause dye migration with heat, and the heathered surface means you’re printing on something that’s not perfectly uniform. That’s not a problem; it’s just a different set of considerations. Know your blend, know what you’re working with.
IM: How do finishing processes like washing, dyeing, or sueding influence decoration outcomes?
MN: It all matters. Garment dyeing creates texture and color variation that looks great but means you’re not printing on a flat, even surface — you have to adjust for that. Sueding softens the hand but can also affect how well the ink grips. Enzyme washing changes how the garment behaves before and after decoration. None of that is a reason to avoid those finishes — it’s just a reason to understand them. What we try to control on our end is making sure our finishing is consistent run to run.
From Manufacturing to Decoration-Ready Apparel
IM: Can you us walk through how a garment moves from concept to “decoration-ready” from a manufacturing standpoint?
MN: It starts with the fabric — sourcing or building the construction, setting tolerances for weight, shrinkage, consistency. Then patterns, grading across sizes, fit decisions. From there, sample development — and for us, that always includes putting samples on press. We want to find problems before they hit a production run. Once samples are approved, we set production standards at the mill level that every run is held to.
IM: How does Next Level design garments to perform consistently across screen printing, DTG, DTF, and embroidery?
MN: We’re trying to build a surface that works well enough across all four rather than being perfect for one and a problem for another. Screen printing wants a surface that absorbs cleanly. DTG needs fiber that bonds with pre-treatment. DTF needs a surface that holds up to heat. Embroidery needs structural stability, so the needle doesn’t pull the fabric around. Making the right choices around yarn weight, weave, and finishing keeps you in a workable range for all of them.
IM: What internal testing or quality control processes ensure consistent print performance across production runs?
MN: Fabric gets tested at the mill before anything is cut — weight, shrinkage, color fastness. Finished goods are checked against approved standards. On the decoration side, we run press tests with standard artwork. We also work with a group of decorator partners who put our stuff through real production – that tells us things a lab test won’t.
IM: How does surface smoothness and fabric prep impact results for newer technologies like DTF and hybrid printing?
MN: DTF is more forgiving of texture than DTG — but a smooth, consistent surface still gives you cleaner edges and better adhesion. The thing that trips people up most with DTF is heat and pressure, especially on poly blends, where you have to keep temperatures lower to avoid color bleed. Hybrid printing adds another layer because now you’re managing the garment surface and the transfer surface at the same time. The only way to keep that consistent is to prep the garment the same way every time.
How Decorators Can Improve Print Quality and Reduce Waste
IM: What are the most common mistakes decorators make when marking premium blanks—and how can they avoid them?
MN: A lightweight ring-spun tee or a tri-blend behaves differently under heat and pressure than a standard blank. Decorators who don’t adjust their settings are either getting worse results than they should or damaging garments and blaming the product when it’s actually the process. Second thing: skipping the press test. Running a few units before a full job isn’t extra work — it’s how you protect the job. Third: not thinking about print placement on a fashion fit. Where a design sits flat on a table is not always where it should sit on a body.
IM: How can decorators better align their processes with garment construction to improve efficiency and reduce waste?
MN: Know the garment before you print on it. Look at the fabric content and finishing. Build settings that are specific to the style rather than using the same settings for everything. The shops that run the tightest operations have done that upfront work — and it pays off over time.
IM: What advice would you give shops trying to scale while maintaining consistent decoration quality across different blanks?
MN: The more blanks you’re working with, the more variables you’re managing. The shops doing the best work at high volume have built around a core set of styles they know really well — and they grow from there. Document everything: press settings, temperature, pre-treatment rates. That knowledge can’t live only in one person’s head if you want to scale. And train people on specific styles, not just methods.
Why the Garment Is Part of the Decoration
IM: If decorators could better understand one thing about the relationship between garment construction and decoration, what would it be?
MN: The garment is part of the decoration. The fabric, the weight, the finish — all of it affects how ink sits. When those things aren’t working together, the decoration suffers. When they are, everything gets easier — better results, less waste, fewer reprints. Start with understanding what you’re decorating, not just how you’re decorating it.
