We often struggle working with clients that want a generic human figure on their shirts without depicting one particular gender, race, or age. Often these attempts are well-intentioned but miss the mark or just plain look terrible. We just finished working with Farm Aid on the 2021 merch and designer Matthew Fleming had a great…
We manage the merch for Farm Aid at their big benefit concert once a year. With great anticipation we’ll see how we do today. We get some of the anxiety that has us relating to the tough job farmers have, will it rain and ruin sales, will it be sunny and we sell more cowboy…
We purchased a Brother GTX machine and it is awesome. It is a DTG machine, what is called “Direct to Garment.” For those of you not in the industry, it prints a shirt with a special textile ink in full color. The Brother GTX is one of the first DTG machines that really can handle…
Let’s start with the conclusion, which is that simple prints done well sell best. I coordinate the merchandise for Farm Aid (farmaid.org) every year, Farm Aid works to support family farmers and they put on a yearly concert that features Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp and other artists who this year included…
Recently I wrote some thoughts here about rampant copyright and trademark violation, which is aided and abetted by lax policies of on-line services. It is easier to put up some BS product blatantly stealing the artwork and design of others than it is to get them to stop. This week I’m in the middle of…
Hey found two of our shirts had big public showings and even better, the displays were for good causes. It feels good to get something positive happening with some fabric and some ink slinging. There are a couple of great charities that my company Mirror Image works closely with: We print shirts for the Armenian…
Most of you reading this post are like me, you make your living selling and/or printing t-shirts. It is nice to remember that besides money we make people very happy with our work sometimes. I saw my old friend Matt Gauland yesterday and he talked about how he loves his piles of t-shirts. He recently…
In retail we hear about the fact that on-line selling is replacing brick & mortar stores. Now that dynamic is even hitting rock concerts only lon-line sales are replacing canvas & folding table merch operations. Ten percent of the sales at the 2016 Farm Aid concert were done on-line. Wait in lines of up to 30…
We are on the eve of attending our industry’s big show, ISS in Long Beach, CA this week. However, I was reminded this week that if you keep your eyes open, you can learn things from outside your industry almost as well as within. My pals at Iggy’s Bread always give me inspiration on how…
It isn’t often that you know your shirts will be in the hands of folks like legends Willie Nelson and Neil Young. We saw Willie wearing his, which I’m sure would be a thrill to any t-shirt printer. I’ve had some folks ask where they can buy the shirts featured in the Monday post on…
