Maybe that's a little harsh but it's a blanket statement just like anyone who claims they can auto-digitize anything.  In my opinion, there will never be "auto-digitizing" for every design thus never an automatic/machine/software way to turn art into custom embroidery on a large scale.....at least with good quality ;)

Bill and I talked about this last night.  Some of our digitizers (outsourced primarily) try to take an auto-digitizing approach to creating designs which is where the real problem lies.  Folks think vector art, because it contains "blocks", can be converted into anything design oriented. But in embroidery we're actually stitching through the garment and using stitches to create the art....you can't use art to dictate stitching in every design.   there are too many variables and the primary reason is that when these 'blocks' are shrunk or expanded beyond their expected use stitch types need to change.  you can't run a 'satin stitch' wider than 5 millimeters but if a line in the design is stretched beyond 5mm wide, you need to switch to a fill stitch and software can't accommodate this in every design. In addition, we regularly change proportions of a design slightly to highlight detail sections and lower the open blank area.  This reduces stitch count which costs less and designs look better at their appropriate density AND gives us more area to stitch the detail portions of the logo which tends to be the focus of the design. 

I had the opportunity to go to a very cool event put on by Highland Capital Partners yesterday on businesses changing or starting out with new business models on selling.  The basic premise was software companies eliminating outside sales forces for inside sales or raving customer service.  The companies changing their businesses were primarily in enterprise software.  The founder at Trilogy is now acquiring companies for cents on the dollars with good technology and then firing the entire sales team.  He estimates all of the legacy sales teams are losing money on every sale.  So, he has focused on existing customers to improve their experience and renew contracts interacting only with inside sales reps that are more efficient (one location and better tools), more knowledgeable(training and expertise on site) and cost less (at the least, they save the travel and expenses!).

The companies that are starting out as Sales 2.0 organizations were FreshBooks and Constant Contact.  Their stories are well documented and copied in a lot of industries.  They offer a great simple service for small businesses, they market extremely efficiently with tons of data and have recurring revenue models (that help it all make financial sense).  Adding in a creative approach and focus on satisfaction they are both doing incredibly well.

So, lots of great stories and insight into what works for other industries but unfortunately hard to transfer to the embroidery and screen printing industry except one overriding theme......happy and even raving customers are the key success to any business.

Joe from Trilogy mentioned that with one company they bought; 90% of their customers 'hated' the company......and they only survived through contracts and basically trapping their customers.  treating a customer as an adversary or someone you trap is luckily a thing of the past.  Making customer sooo happy they refer you is the next challenge.

In that regard, starting the day after christmas we will offer $35 custom digitizing for any left chest (normal) size logo.  Some folks offer custom embroidered digitizing for Free but we'll let you download it and take it to any vendor you like.....thus eliminating forever the inherent "trap" in the embroidery business and eliminating switching costs.

Very cool design came over last night.  It really shows the extent of customization that can be achieved with our new drag-and-drop tools.

Last night I was invited to a cool panel at Babson (my alma mater) on mass-customization.  I was invited by a friend Matt Lauzon (who also went to Babson) at Paragon Lake who sponsored the event. 

Scott Kirshner, who is a famous business reporter in Boston, ran the show and there were plenty of great panalists....and folks in the crowd. Zazzle, CafePress and Spreadshirt were thrown out there along with Threadless as major players....and of course t-shirt makers.  VistaPrint's president was there (they do t-shirts now) and i was told a company that I've noticed, ThreadSmith, was there as well.  They primarily provide embroidery online......so, a lot of competitors attending and mentioned throughout the night.

It's good though.  People get weird about competition.  It's like sports at an amateur level....they hate competitors passionately and can't be civil.  At higher levels of sports competition and in some amateur sports like Rugby, people compete FIERCLY ‘on the field’ and then embrace their competitor after the match….smiling and chatting.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way in a lot of business engagements I’ve been involved with.  Maybe I need to reach a higher level to interact with competitors civilly.   

 

Anyway, back to the panel.  We had a nice chat about everyone’s business and common challenges like production scale, process engineering versus manufacturing inventions and (of course) accepting returns for high priced items.  Some of the panelists sold custom shoes, custom jewelry, custom tween outfits, custom dentures and custom printing.  One panelist, Sung Park, had sold his business years ago to Levi’s.  So, there was a lot of apparel represented as well.  We got into a few discussions that transcended mass-customization challenges but with time constraints, a lot of it was story-telling about our different businesses which was very interesting as well.  I think non-competitive meetings between companies that have similar challenges is a great idea and I wish there was a way to encourage it. 

We just launched a huge Nike sale direct from the manufacturer.  15% off every style even Closeouts.  This is an exclusive Corporate Casuals sale and we hope folks can take advantage of it even considering the slow times. 

With little fanfare, Chris launched Studio2 on Saturday. I think all would agree this new Embroidery Studio is truly revolutionary for our business.  Chris put tons of work into this project and it really shows.  Customers may now drag-and-drop embroidery elements, insert lettering inside designs and soon add icons for completely free-form digitizing.  There are plenty of desktop digitizing systems that professionals use but the beauty of Studio2 is anyone can digitize because we built in rules that make sure each design is 'embroiderable' and will come out exactly as you designed it.

Print design studios cannot always accommodate the restrictions involved in embroidery and any other basic embroidery design studios do not let you overlap elements.  For us and our customers, we can now offer 'template' (or what we call resort retail) type designs where customers just 'name drop' or personalize an integrated design.  

I will include pictures shortly to show you what i mean......but in the meantime, please check out our new embroidery design studio: http://www.corporatecasuals.com/studio/studio2.aspx

In the northeast, winter has continued well into April.  The cherry trees haven't fully bloomed yet, but this weekend the forecast is for summer-like weather (sunny and 80 degrees).  I feel like I'm back at college in upstate New York where Spring and Fall were only a couple weeks long.

As far as business thawing, it's hard to spin the impending chrysler bankruptcy, American Express's 56% reduction in net income and the next bubble of commercial real estate into positive light.  Hopefully sentiment will continue to go up and confidence alone can pull us out of this mess.  It's going to be an interesting 3 months....  It’s hard to know the timing but, as usual, scrappy small businesses will create the value that ultimately will bring back the economy.

 

I didn't even realize how long its been since I posted.  End of the year, beginning of the year, vacation, economic debacle, etc were the excuses but had to say something about Earth Hour and get back in the swing of things.

We have the great privilege of working with the WWF to sell merchandise with their logo and have been for a year or two.  As part of this relationship, we are supplying garments for Earth Hour 2009 (http://www.earthhourus.org) which is a grassroots event to turn out all your lights for one hour this Saturday night March 28th at 8:30pm.  Great idea, obviously good for the environment and a great challenge to see how many can do it. As they say, "take a stand"......and turn the ship around before its not a choice we make for one hour on a saturday night.