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 production processes in mind. Nonetheless, better words to live by would be hard to find, whether your job is tutoring the likes of Alexander the Great or custom decorating hundreds or even thousands of pieces of blank apparel per day.
True, if you’re in the business of decorating the kind of low-budget swag no one really expects to be worn more than a couple of times anyway, quality control may not be that much of a concern. But let’s not kid ourselves. The reason most embroiderers, screen printers and heat pressers decided to get into this crazy business in the first place was as a result of an innate love of the craft. Case in point, decorators like Dennis Condusta, the production manager at Axelrad Screen Printing, author of our recent article on custom decorating for the music industry.
Quality is Central Decorated Apparel Industry
Talk to any decorator worth their salt, and it doesn’t take long to discover what makes them tick isn’t profit-and-loss statements. Pride in the work they do each day is just as important, if not more so, whether they be a decorator working out of their basement or running a shop with clients from around the globe.
By way of example, the veteran decorators writer Nicole Rollender spoke with as part of her recent two-part series on quality control are as hard-nosed a bunch of professionals as you could ever hope to find. Nonetheless, their satisfaction in a job well done is evident throughout—a hallmark of decorators everywhere.
