Diversity is not normally a word used with customer but we're excited to have such a diverse group of customers.  From every part of the country, every type of small business, consumer or large business.  I review orders through the day (and night) and am always astonished by the different customers.  Most businesses praise the large public companies they serve.  We're just as proud to embroider an order for "Jacob's Magical 8th Birthday" (a real order we sent out friday) as we are to be running thousands of garments for well known companies like YellowBook and GNC (two orders we were embroidering friday).

Traditionally the contract embroidery world in the northeast is dead in late winter because its only local business.  Our seasons haven't changed in 4-5 months and there are very few company events in March!  March in boston is a depressing month because we are all waiting for spring, the snow is gone yet its still cold out which prevents even the hardiest from enjoying outside activities. So, March has always been the month when we question the coming year, invent marketing ploys (free digitizing for orders over a 100 and free pick-up from NES...for contract embroidery) that inevitably fail because there is no business to be had, and we suspend production shifts which is the worst.  This year is different though.  With a heavy marketing push and our design center online, we're as busy as the middle of may fulfilling orders around the country.  Most of our new customers are from california, the mid-atlantic and florida where their Spring is in full swing! 

Such is the life of a small business trying to push the envelope with better (and more defensable) technology then any larger competitor and/or VC financed upstarts. CafePress was spawned because of the new direct garment printer that Brother and T-Jet invented.  leverage the technology for screenprinting someone else invented and hype it until they go public, then fade away on the backs of small retail investors.  such is the game of Venture Capital.

Anyway, i'm getting off the subject, cafePress, Zazzle, customink and spreadshirt are 'hot' right now in the screenprint world because they have gobs of money to spend on being hot.  There should be 200 of these businesses in the next year with better design studios and stores with great features because of the direct garment printers.  unfortunately....but fortunate for us, no one will break the embroidery barrier because its not a direct art-to-art transfer.  We've (really chris) developed a direct embroidery studio (so folks can design the final product) and I don't imagine anyone will catch up fast.  We'll have our hot run soon when the leads from distributor/content partners and the orders will pour in.  Also, folks will soon realize that embroidering 300k hats overseas is a waste and they seek just-in-time production state-side..

OK, I've blabbed on and on about our business in a marketing and development sense but haven't added insight into how we actually produce and ship orders. this really is the fun part eventhough i don't mention it much. Once an order is placed the real experts take over! line items for all orders are compiled electronically for mark to review and order. Mark is operations-central. he places all orders (sometimes with dozens of vendors) and splits them for production. with just a little technology help (and more on its way) he can process this intense detail work for what could be a hundred orders a day plus dozens of high unit offline orders. He also takes care of all stock logo orders start-to-finish.

For custom digitized logos, Bill now manages (instead of digitizes these days) all designs through the manual process of getting each design digitized to perfection. He's been digitizing for more than 25 years and can spot, fix, repair any logo in minutes. In the old days he worked for ed carey (sp?...sorry ed) as a digitizer when digitizing was in it's heyday. We were actually reminiscing about this the other day: they used to charge $25-35 per thousand stitches (a lot!) and turn designs around in 3 weeks (forever!...in anyone’s book). Incredible to think about these days. Anyway, bill manages, fixes and runs a few dozen custom designs a day, reviews a stock designs and then gets them out into production (a lot).

He’s got some pretty cool custom technology too.  For the stock designs, he reviews the compiled design (automatically done with technology) and can edit the lettering and designs. The interesting part is that once he edits the lettering or design once, it saves the change permanently for that letter in that size. Most embroiderers use “keyboard” lettering for text. These fonts are based on vector art in blocks and then stitched out once the size is determined. Thus, these blocks need to accommodate letters from ¼” to 3” but these should be digitized differently because density and curning changes with each size change. It’s hard to explain…sorry. Anyway, the benefit is we offer custom digitized letters (that look much better) instead of just keyboard lettering for all our designs. This technology thrills even bill! He can now make a system-wide change to letters and he never has to make the change again. Great quality lettering that will always be great….a production person’s dream. Now on to production……which will need to be continued……