Are You Leaving Money on the Table?

Boost your company’s bottom line by adding sublimation services. April 16, 2010
By Jimmy Lamb, Contributing Writer

If your shop is currently working with a local sports team in embellishing their uniforms, consider adding sublimation capabilities to garner additional business for team awards, events, and coaches’ gifts. Photo courtesy of Sawgrass Technologies

Which is easier: adding a new customer or servicing an existing one? The answer is quite obvious — ­servicing an existing one. Like it or not, it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to bring in new customers, yet most of us are always looking to continually build our roster rather than take full advantage of the customers we currently have. Why is that? In most cases, it’s a simple fact that we have maxed out on what we are offering to our current customer base, so therefore it becomes an absolute necessity to continuously look for new clients in order to expand our business and increase our profits.

But wouldn’t it be nice if every existing customer suddenly decided to spend twice as much money with your company? Think of how much more efficient it would be to spend your time filling orders rather than knocking on doors begging for new business.

In all likelihood there is a good chance that your current customers have plenty of needs that you simply aren’t meeting with your shop’s current decoration capabilities. The truth of the matter is that most shops only offer one or two forms of decoration, whereas the average customer has much greater needs. The bottom line is that you might just be leaving money on the table.

Assess Clients' Needs
Let’s say that you are an embroiderer and you do a lot of work for local schools. If so, there is a good chance that you produce caps, plackets, sweats and maybe a handful of other garment items with small embroidered logos. That may seem like enough potential work, but what else are your customers buying from other sources? Schools all have a need for plaques, awards, identity products, spirit items, athletic uniforms and a bunch of other stuff. But chances are if you are just an embroiderer, screen printer or even both, you aren’t getting that business because you don’t have the capabilities to produce it.

Now you might be thinking that that’s OK, because you are quite happy with the portion of business that you are getting. But there is another danger to consider here. If your customer goes looking elsewhere for, let’s say promotional items, and finds a source that can do those things plus whatever it is that you do offer, he may never come back. Now that is scary!

But this situation isn’t limited to the school market, nor to embroiderers. If you are an embellisher of any kind, you need to pay close attention to the full spectrum of needs that each customer has and try your best to get all of their business rather than just a portion.

I know what you are thinking…this sounds like an expensive proposition, doesn’t it? After all, your existing equipment may have required quite an investment, so you aren’t ready to spend any more big money. Well never fear, as there is a simple, inexpensive process that will allow any garment decorator to significantly expand his product offerings without investing very much money—sublimation.

The Basic Process
What the heck is sublimation? It’s a digital printing process that allows anyone to quickly and easily apply high-resolution, full-color graphics to a wide variety of hard and soft goods such as plaques, awards, signs, photo panels, clocks, tiles, coasters, mouse pads, mugs, polyester performance apparel and a whole lot more. Sublimation production is a simple three-step process that works something like this: create-print-press.

You start off by setting up (or creating) a design using a standard graphics program such as Photoshop or CorelDraw. You then print it out onto transfer paper using sublimation inks and a standard desktop printer that supports sublimation ink. Finally, you apply the transfer paper to the item being decorated and place both together under a heat press.

Sounds simple enough. The combination of pressure and heat will cause the graphic image to turn into a gas and transfer over to the substrate, with the result being a high-quality, permanent image. To complete the process, simply remove and discard the transfer paper and you are done.

One of the neat things about sublimation that differentiates it from pretty much any other process is that you are actually dyeing the material rather than printing on the surface. What this means is that the image is permanently embedded into the surface of the item being sublimated, which in turn means no scratchy surface or peeling or cracking of the design. And in the case of apparel, that means no fading either, despite repeated launderings.

As you can see, the process is pretty straightforward and reasonable in cost. In most cases, the cost of ink and paper is less than a dollar. And equipment startup costs run on average between $1,500 to $2,500, depending on which printer and heat press you choose to buy. It should be noted that while sublimation printing can be done with well-known brands of desktop printers such as Ricoh and Epson, you can’t just choose any printer. In reality, sublimation inks are only compatible with certain models of printers, so you need to research before you buy.

Another thing you need to know about the sublimation process is that it only works with polymer-based materials. Thus, you can’t just sublimate everything. In the case of hard substrates such as plaques and awards, they must have a polymer surface in order for the sublimation process to work.

Get Creative
With sublimation, you are suddenly in a position to offer a lot more to each and every customer. But having the ability and making the sale are two different things. Thus, you will need to do some creative marketing to fully utilize your newfound technology.

For example, a pizza delivery restaurant owner can print the establishment’s menu, phone, fax and email address onto mouse pads to give to his customers. Think how cool that would be! The restaurant’s customer has a complete menu right at her fingertips (literally) all day long, meaning it’s a fantastic promotional item. That’s something you can’t do with an embroidery machine.

With sports, many uniforms are made of polyester performance fabrics that are ideal for sublimation. Embroidery can be done, but it’s tricky to hoop and impossible (cost-wise) to do large designs like mascots, letters and numbers. Sublimation handles that with no problem. Considering that you can print out a full-front image in less than 30 seconds, then press it in another 60 seconds, you can definitely turn out a decent number of shirts per hour. Sure you can do it via screen printing, but with all the setup time required for that process, you can probably finish a short-run production job (typical team) in the same amount of time or less with sublimation.

Even digital direct-to-garment printing is not as effective as sublimation because most machines use cotton inks that adhere just fine to 100% cotton and 50/50 shirts, but may not work as well on 100% polyester performance materials. True, some direct-to-garment equipment suppliers offer poly-specific inks, but you first need to flush out all of the cotton ink from the printer. It may not make sense to go all that trouble, especially when you look at the cost of adding sublimation to your business. (Check with the manufacturer for the specific ink sets available for any given machine.)

So you might not be sure that you even want to spend the relatively small amount of money required to get into sublimation. Just remember that diversification is the key to profitability. Your customers might be spending less money with you simply because they are spreading it around for different purchases of different products. If you aren’t in a position to capitalize on it, then you may just be losing out on a daily basis.

Award-winning author and international speaker Jimmy Lamb has more than 20 years of apparel decoration business expertise. Currently, he is the manager of communication for Sawgrass Technologies, Charleston, S.C. For more information or to comment on this article, e-mail Jimmy at jlamb@sawgrassink.com.



Sublimation Solutions
Any form of decoration comes with its challenges; it’s simply a natural part of the learning process. You didn’t jump into the driver’s seat of a car and instantly start driving. The process required training, time, patience and probably included a lot of close calls before you became proficient behind the wheel. The same can be said about decoration production.
January 03, 2012

How to Choose a DTG Printer, Part 1
When digital direct-to-substrate equipment first entered this industry, there was a lot of talk about its viability and where it fit in. Today, there’s no question that digital printing has a place in the decorated apparel industry. This is evident by the explosion of players in the equipment and ink sectors, as well as countless success stories of big and small companies making money with this print-on-demand technology.
January 01, 2012

It Pays to Take Shirt Design Online
One of the biggest trends in the decorated apparel industry is online apparel design. When set up correctly, it can function as a 24-hour salesperson for your business. It’s a great way to capture the small-order market and satisfy customers who otherwise would not be profitable.
October 13, 2011

How to Maximize Digital Direct-to-Garment Production
To be profitable at any apparel-decorating process, your shop must be set up so the layout and workflow are as efficient and productive as possible, and this certainly holds true for digital direct-to-garment production.
August 29, 2011

Pressing for Profit
Everyone is looking for the latest and greatest when it comes to making a buck and surviving a challenging economic environment. Our industry’s headlines routinely captivate and motivate us by focusing on new, cutting-edge developments in apparel decoration technology. Direct-to-garment printers, textile lasers, white ink, poly-performance apparel, shuttle-hook bobbins, digital transfers and more all challenge us to ask, “What if?” We engage our peers, attend webinars and walk trade shows looking for that new “thing” that will catapult our businesses to higher levels of success and profitability.
June 09, 2011