Financing Your Start-Up Decorated Apparel Business
Extensive research, consultants or mentors — and a solid business plan — are the secrets to finding funds when you want to start a business.

Making Economic Sense of Sustainability
Corporate America is finding more ways to capitalize financially on the green revolution. Here’s how your shop can similarly benefit from the same types of efforts.

The CPSIA Effect: A Screen Printer’s Perspective
You may not know it, but there is an invisible 800-pound gorilla stomping around in your ink room. It's called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008, and it's crucial that you know how this regulation affects your apparel decorating shop. From the shop perspective, how do we magically transform this 800-pound invisible gorilla into an easier-to-handle, trained monkey?

10 Ways to Save Money in Your Decorated Apparel Shop
Who doesn’t want to save money? If there has been one great benefit to our industry going through a recession, it’s that we have been forced to examine and evaluate how we do things. This process has resulted in discovering that we can run our shops leaner and meaner without sacrificing quality.

Why a Sustainability Program Makes Economic Sense for Your Shop
If you haven’t already noticed, there’s tons of press about sustainability programs, focusing on the triple bottom line in corporate America. Many companies understand that they can link aspects of their lean manufacturing programs, governmental regulatory responsibilities, tax incentives and good old-fashioned marketing to make a public stance on sustainability and drive consumer spending their way. Read on to learn why you should implement a sustainability program in your shop.

Can Your Shop Survive When You Are Gone?
A principle that took me years to learn is that it’s never a good thing to have one person be so critical to the business that he or she can’t leave the shop without everything falling apart — and that includes the owner.

How to Build an Accurate Production Schedule
Hopefully, sales at your decorated apparel shop are at a point where your production schedule is crowded and full of orders. As everyone knows, it’s pretty easy to prioritize work when there are fewer jobs to sort through. However, once the schedule is full and moving toward maximum capacity, any production manager will start to feel overwhelmed. This article outlines the need to link building an accurate production schedule with the understanding that every person in the company plays a role in this effort.

Off the Cuff: 8 Ways to Beat the Cash Flow Blues
When the heat is on from suppliers and banks, the impact of cash flow pressure is by no means limited just to our industry. It affects small companies — particularly family-owned companies — in all businesses.

How to Survive a Nightmare of a Week!
Every decorated apparel business owner experiences the ups and downs of running a company that relies heavily on computers and equipment, vendor punctuality and — most importantly — its staff. While a shop may have an off day with a late T-shirt delivery or a key employee who is out sick, not many enjoy a full week — yes, five straight days — of pure frustration.

Off the Cuff: Who Really Owns Artwork, Screens and Digitizing? Part 2 of 2
If you don’t separate art, digitizing or screens as specific charges — instead incorporating them into your pricing — who owns it?

Why Your Shop Needs to Make a Buck a Minute
When it comes to time and money, efficiency is essential to running a profitable shop. You know that higher-grade products can be worth the extra money if they save you time in the long run. You also know that skilled workers often are more advantageous than “cheap labor.” But have you ever put a dollar amount on just how efficient your shop should be? Setting goals for your business and breaking down profits in an easy-to-understand model will help you determine where you’re losing money and how you can improve — ultimately increasing your profits.

Off the Cuff: Who Really Owns Artwork, Screens and Digitizing? Part 1 of 2
Let’s say a customer asks you to create graphics or digitizing, or perform some other preproduction functions for what you’ll be screen printing, embroidering, laser engraving or vinyl cutting. Should the ownership rights (read: rights of use) of intellectual work that you’ve created for a customer’s order become an issue sometime down the road, here’s what you need to know about who really owns it.

Worthwhile Projects for the Slower Months
No matter what industry you are in, every business has seasonality. One of the biggest challenges of seasonality — especially in a tough economy — is justifying staff retention and avoiding layoffs.

How to Find Good Employees
Perhaps one of the most daunting, time-consuming tasks for every business owner — and perhaps even more so for decorators — is finding good employees. It would be wonderful if there were an abundance of qualified job candidates who could perform their duties well and be a good fit in your shop’s culture, but that’s just not the case.

Off the Cuff: Who Owns What? — Part 3 of 3
In the final installment of this three-part series, we’ll look at what actually occurs in disputes over art and digitizing ownership.

Off the Cuff: Who Owns What? — Part 2 of 3
In this three-part series, we'll look at the issues of ownership regarding art and digitizing, and what you can do to assert your rights of ownership in typical industry transactions.

Off the Cuff: Who Owns What? — Part 1 of 3
Should the question of intellectual property ownership become an issue, here’s what you need to know about who really owns it.

Preparing Your Exit Strategy
Nobody likes to think about the unthinkable: You die suddenly, leaving the ownership of your business in flux. You’re injured or seriously ill and no longer can work. Or perhaps you just grow increasingly tired of being involved in your business, and one day you decide it’s finally time to call it quits.

Off the Cuff: The Top 6 Reasons Why Start-Up Apparel Decorators Fail
It’s true that beginner’s luck has its place in the apparel graphics industry. Veterans can tell great stories about beginners who landed on our shores and made a big pile of money — sometimes very quickly. But for every such tale, there are scores of others where entrepreneurs’ dreams of success were dashed upon the rocks of conventional wisdom, ill-founded assumptions, poorly researched solutions and weak execution. So, for the rookies out there who are reading this, this column is a not-so-happy look at the top six reasons why so many beginners fail in our business.

Off the Cuff: Government Scrutiny of Your Business: Part 2 of 2
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we discussed some of the reasons the government — local, state, provincial and federal — might want to have a chat with you. We’ll now turn to looking at some of the things they want to talk about with you — questions regarding the taxation of outside sales representatives, what happens when an employee who’s not on the books gets injured on the job and few other issues that could cost you a fortune — or worse.

Off the Cuff: Government Scrutiny of Your Business: Part 1 of 2
With enough things to deal with when running a business in a challenging economy, most industry firms are nonetheless looking forward to the coming season. About the last thing you need is “the gummint” (read: the government, any government) looking over your shoulder any more than “they” already do.

Off the Cuff: External Quality-Control Mechanisms — 3 Quick Fixes
Maintaining quality control usually is thought of as being a concern that’s addressed internally. And it should be. But in-house oversight of quality isn’t bulletproof, nor is it as comprehensive as most companies would like it to be.

Improve Profits with an In-House Shop Tune-Up
When there’s a one-time problem in a particular area of your shop, you probably don’t need to worry about it too much. For instance, if a customer service representative forgets once to get a customer’s written approval on artwork, chalk it up to a memory slip.

Which Exit Strategy Is Best For You?
Whether you’re approaching retirement or you simply no longer get a kick out of running your own business and are ready to let someone else take the helm, at some point in the future you will have to consider an exit strategy.

Off the Cuff: Issues in Industry Specific Accounting – Part 2 of 2
In Part One, the author, a veteran industry business consultant,looked at accounting philosophies, types of accountants, software and general ledger issues. Part 2 gets into constructing general ledger categories to better allow monitoring costs and performance levels, and understanding how key components determine your bottom line.

Off the Cuff: Issues in Industry Specific Accounting – Part 1 of 2
The author, a veteran industry business consultant, has concluded there are two major types of accountants when it comes to counseling the owners of apparel decorating firms — “mechanics” and “consultants.” Which type of accountant do you have?

Off The Cuff: The Five Biggest Mistakes New Apparel Decorators Make
Beginner's luck has its place in the apparel graphics industry. Veterans can tell great stories about beginners who happened on our shores and made a big pile of money — fast. But for every such tale, there are scores of others where entrepreneurs' dreams of success were dashed upon the rocks of conventional wisdom, wrong assumptions, poorly researched solutions, shopworn strategies and poor execution.

Off the Cuff: Avoid Errors with Order Acknowledgments
Veteran decorated apparel industry consultant estimates that more than 95% of embroiderers and screen printers don’t acknowledge or confirm orders — especially orders received by phone and where there’s no paper trail -- which can be a major cause of confusion, frustration, ill will and screw-ups.

Off the Cuff: How Freelancers Can Contribute to Your Bottom Line — Part 2 of 2
Follow these tips and tricks to find and hire the right freelancers. In Part I of this column, we discussed some of the challenges in finding free lance artist. Now we’ll explore where to focus your search.

Off the Cuff: How Freelancers Can Contribute to Your Bottom Line — Part 1 of 2
Whether your quest is for artists who can execute custom graphics for local accounts or to design work for preprint lines, where to find artists isn't rocket science, but it does entail a proactive regimen that rewards initiative and follow-up. There’s more than a few tricks to finding and hiring the right freelancers, and building trust and loyalty so they’ll be available when you need them.