Questions driving me crazy...

[JSkillz23]

Do most custom sublimation companies print in house and sew in house as well? Or what? I've been trying to figure this out for so long...

Do a lot of them send it out to be printed and sewn? Hence why the 3-4 week turn around times? Overseas?

Just looking for some insight

 

[Unleashed_19]

I do EVERYTHING in house personally! I know most companies send there stuff out to have it printed, pressed and sewn together!

 

[tbills]

Answer

Read Post #8 by Rynxprs from Red Eye Sports....very accurate

http://forums.softballfans.com/showthread.php?p=13650508#post13650508

 

[aauusa]

Most companies do not do everything in house. When you do not do everything in house you are at the mercy of your supplier and there time line. We not only do our direct customer sales but also contract to make garments for other vendors which resell them with there labels. We do all of the orders in house. Whether it is screen printed, embroidery, cut and sew, and dye sublimation. Now on occasion we will have a request for a special fabric color for pants or special trim color combination. When we do have that issue then it does come direct from a USA mill and every now and then they may be backlogged which may push the time line to 14-21 days. Our normal turnaround time is 10 days to ship time for most of the year, but during the heavy part of the year (January-March, and August-September) it will take 14 days. Now does it take weeks to do the job no, but rather the current orders which are going through actually determines the turnaround time for us. But we have been making uniforms for teams for 20+ years. We do very little advertising but those who find us it is because of word of mouth.

Dan Noel
American Athletic Uniforms, Inc

 

[Phatboy24]

I would agree with Rynxprs... Most bigger companies do everything in-house now but like he said there chances of stuff breaking. I always amazed me that how much this stuff breaks and how much the equipment cost.

 

[Phatboy24]

Also 3-4 weeks during the busy season is good. Like Rynxprs said its a long process to set up and make these shirts. The more customers you have the longer it takes.

 

[Rynxprs]

if you can fall in the 4-6 week timeframe in Jan - March....you either do not have extremely high production (does not mean you are not a successful company) or you have a mountain of employees. There are millions of jerseys being ordered in this short time frame, and honestly there are not that many companies that make cut/sew apparel. If you have the money to invest into the equipment you have a good business opportunity.

I'll just say of the 19 or 20 companies that sell on here, I only know of 6 companies that print in house. That includes Boombah which is technically done overseas. There are acouple others that I think do it, but not 100% sure.

 

[JSkillz23]

if you can fall in the 4-6 week timeframe in Jan - March....you either do not have extremely high production (does not mean you are not a successful company) or you have a mountain of employees. There are millions of jerseys being ordered in this short time frame, and honestly there are not that many companies that make cut/sew apparel. If you have the money to invest into the equipment you have a good business opportunity.

I'll just say of the 19 or 20 companies that sell on here, I only know of 6 companies that print in house. That includes Boombah which is technically done overseas. There are acouple others that I think do it, but not 100% sure.

So how do you find companies to send your stuff out to? If doing it in house, how many employees you looking at having?

Another thing after reading your post on another thread.... how do you set up for different sizes, i own a sign. vinyl business right now, and i use flexi sign pro 10 a lot and illustrator and if we do vehicle wraps we use photoshop. I have a couple designers working for me, etc. Is this close to what you guys use? I also just took over a softball complex and was thinking of taking some of the extra land and putting a jersey/ sports business inside there, since there is basically nothing in the surrounding area. Its just something i threw out their, ya know? Just curiosity getting the best of me.

 

[Rynxprs]

So how do you find companies to send your stuff out to? If doing it in house, how many employees you looking at having?

research, research, and more research...

to do it inhouse....all depends on your volume.
bare bones.
1 artist
1 person to run the printer and press (2 would be better)
1 person to cut the jerseys
1 person to sew the jerseys

Anything less then that would be pointless. And not everyone can sew polyester jerseys. Your moms home sewing machine won't cut it.

 

[JSkillz23]

research, research, and more research...

to do it inhouse....all depends on your volume.
bare bones.
1 artist
1 person to run the printer and press (2 would be better)
1 person to cut the jerseys
1 person to sew the jerseys

Anything less then that would be pointless. And not everyone can sew polyester jerseys. Your moms home sewing machine won't cut it.

I've done a lot of research, i just can't seem to find anything good that doesn't repeat on the next sight.
Now, what size printer do most companies that do it in house use? I have a older mutoh soljet 54" that i don't use anymore, and on my signs forum some one said you can possibly swap it to be a sublimation printer. Is that over doing it?

Also, what does say a 3x JERSEY width wise run? My guess is at least 26"-30" wide.

As for sewing, i could prolly find people around here with their own industrial sewing machines and possibly say they need experience in sewing dance attire, since that is pretty much polyester.

Do you have a good site with info? Know any seminars?

 

[Unleashed_19]

research, research, and more research...

to do it inhouse....all depends on your volume.
bare bones.
1 artist
1 person to run the printer and press (2 would be better)
1 person to cut the jerseys
1 person to sew the jerseys

Anything less then that would be pointless. And not everyone can sew polyester jerseys. Your moms home sewing machine won't cut it.

We only have 2 people working, my wife and myself. I do all the graphics, designs, printing, pressing and cutting of the jerseys, where my wife does all the sewing. We have a commercial grade server sewing machine and a professional cover stitch sewing machine. I have spent over $20,000 on my equipment, and I only wish I could get more work to clear up the ONE tag I got earlier this year before I bought everything. Now we are able to get the shirts out VERY quickly. As it has been said, the more jobs you have, the longer it takes. We can turn out a set right now within a few days of artwork approval.

 

[Rynxprs]

We only have 2 people working, my wife and myself. I do all the graphics, designs, printing, pressing and cutting of the jerseys, where my wife does all the sewing. We have a commercial grade server sewing machine and a professional cover stitch sewing machine. I have spent over $20,000 on my equipment, and I only wish I could get more work to clear up the ONE tag I got earlier this year before I bought everything. Now we are able to get the shirts out VERY quickly. As it has been said, the more jobs you have, the longer it takes. We can turn out a set right now within a few days of artwork approval.

I would be driven crazy if thats how i was set up. No offense to you at all, if that works for you then great.

You don't have the sales to justify more help, and thats fine. I'd rather keep profits to myself to then hire someone and have to pay them, it has its' drawbacks.

Every company has to make a decision, do i want to be a small company with $100K-200k in sales...and stay small....or do I want to grow, hire employees to run things, grow sales to millions plus and have higher overhead. That's a decision that only you can make. It doesn't make any company less successful. Just because company A is 2 employees and make $100k...and company B has 30 employees and makes $10million. Doesn't make company A any less successful if that's where they want to be.

I'm happy with where i am, i'm fine with outsourcing my full subs and doing in house premade shirts sublimation. I bring in part time help when needed and do the rest myself. I would love to bring full subs in house, but I don't want the overhead at this time with extra employees.

My point in all this is....just because a company does not do their full subs in house, does not mean they are not a reputable company.
Artwork
Delivering when promised
Fixing issues that arise

Those factors are what makes a company reputable.

Just because a company does stuff inhouse, does not make them any better then a company that outsources their work. I think everyone can name a certain company that proves this point.

 

[Hwick6]

^^^ well said

 

[Los]

We here at Elite do everything in house. We have 15 head, 6 head and 8 head embroidery machines for hats, 24 sewing machines, 8 sublimation machines, 4 heat press and two dual full sub heat press 64" capability on each side. We buy all our garments from US companies and we stock the fabric.

During busy season, there will be hick ups but most of the time art is the biggest delay. Machines print out about 15 jerseys in half hour roughly. If you do the math, the hours in the day don't add up. We use people like Red-Eye Sports to help reach markets we don't have man power to reach and he does a great job. If it was as simple as guys saying approved, we could turn stuff faster. However, guys come on here complaining about how long their stuff took, but they fail to mention a few things:

1) I waited until I had my team to put my order
2) I wanted to put my deposit, but I didn't have my guys yet
3) Why should I pay in Dec to receive my order February?
4) I wanted the Mona Lisa on my shirt but I settled for King Kong on the Empire State Building Fighting Godzilla and I revised my art 10 times before I was happy.

We buy about 5000 yards of material every 2 months to keep up with demand. During busy season we go through 10,000 per month. If guys would put your deposits in sooner we can save money on material bring it in house so there are no delays and pass the savings on to consumers.

These are some of the observations, as an owner, I am passing on to you... The expense of running my crew is about $80,000 per month from California. This doesn't include any other overhead....

This doesn't include the SNAKES that have started Companies off my business and or money they have ripped off from me. I can mention at least 10 companies that have Spun off Elite...

It's you the consumers that support us that keeps us going. That which doesn't break you, makes you stronger. Thank you all for continued support...

Carlos Vega AKA Los
Elite Sports
*** Sports

 

[Mikaka]

photoshop to do vehicle wraps? that's crazy talk. why would you want to use a raster-based program to do vector-based work? maybe i'm missing the final step in the process that requires that - like how our production house has to convert/save our AI files to CDR files into HUGE TIFF files (which also boggles my mind, maybe it has to do with the inks and color books, and yadda yadda yadda, but a [roughly] 36x84 TIFF file HAS to be a huge file size) - but that seems stupid to mix programs.

in regards to equipment, depending on what you want to do, if you're just doing regular subs, you can probably get away with small 18" wide mini plotter (a printer with a roll for paper is called a plotter, not a printer; technically speaking, at least in the architecture world), and you can get you a like 16x24 heat press. if you want to do full dye subs, you're going to need a 36" wide plotter to print one whole jersey at a time.

and then you'll need everything/everybody else like steve (and jeff) have mentioned. while i don't do the back end work on full dyes (the cutting/sewing/shipping), i do the front end, and since i'd like to think i know how the entire process works, i think that all sounds about right. correct me if i'm wrong (which has been known to happen from time to time).

but like steve said, research. you've gotta pick a plotter brand, ink brand, material type, figure out where to get said ink and material, whether you want to buy or rent the plotter and who from, then who/where are you going to get it cut/sewn, and then will they ship to the customer for you, or are they going to ship it back to you so they you can ship it out yourself. and in all this, you're going to need to quality check. just because it made it to the production house and they got it all put together and sent to you, it doesn't mean something didn't get ****ed up along the way. THEN you need to start all over again. that 3-6 weeks process now turns into a 6-12 week process.

if you REALLY want to see how it works and what it takes, since you basically live on the top of WI, drive on down to Shirts and Logos (Milwaukee) and see what they do. if you want to see what the production house that the majority of the companies that outsource for their production, head into Canuckland to Mississauga, ON.

 

[Unleashed_19]

I would be driven crazy if thats how i was set up. No offense to you at all, if that works for you then great.

You don't have the sales to justify more help, and thats fine. I'd rather keep profits to myself to then hire someone and have to pay them, it has its' drawbacks.

Every company has to make a decision, do i want to be a small company with $100K-200k in sales...and stay small....or do I want to grow, hire employees to run things, grow sales to millions plus and have higher overhead. That's a decision that only you can make. It doesn't make any company less successful. Just because company A is 2 employees and make $100k...and company B has 30 employees and makes $10million. Doesn't make company A any less successful if that's where they want to be.

I'm happy with where i am, i'm fine with outsourcing my full subs and doing in house premade shirts sublimation. I bring in part time help when needed and do the rest myself. I would love to bring full subs in house, but I don't want the overhead at this time with extra employees.

My point in all this is....just because a company does not do their full subs in house, does not mean they are not a reputable company.
Artwork
Delivering when promised
Fixing issues that arise

Those factors are what makes a company reputable.

Just because a company does stuff inhouse, does not make them any better then a company that outsources their work. I think everyone can name a certain company that proves this point.

This is VERY true. Even as a small "company" we still make mistakes, and sometimes things take a little longer than we expected, things happen that we cannot control, like getting sick, equipment going down and so on...I love doing the artwork and everything that goes with it, so does my wife. That's why we are OK with doing everything the way we do it, but to some people this is crazy. Some days we put in 16 hour days, and some days we don't have anything to do. I think if I didn't have a couple issues earlier this year with my Semi-Sub and Pant manufacture, I wouldn't be in the mess that I am (the OBD tag). But now that I do not make these, though we are starting to gather the information and equipment we need to start making pants in house, and offer the pants thru TYJA or another company like that, I am hoping I can rebuild what I had before. What killed me is when the manufacture took the money for the orders, then was asked for a refund, he never refunded it, and with the bad feedback, people went elsewhere so I couldn't repay the refund. So like I said, I am just hoping that I can rebuild what I had before. Everyone that has ordered from us since September, has been 100% satisfied with our product and time tables.

 

[rat bastard]

Definately some good info here, sounds like some hard ass work and a lot of headaches for you guys

 

[Rynxprs]

Definately some good info here, sounds like some hard ass work and a lot of headaches for you guys

it is...now if only the customers realized it and would pay accordingly, lol

 

[Unleashed_19]

LOL if only...LOL

 

[Phatboy24]

I would suggest buy the biggest and fastest printer you can find! If you can afford it get a oil roll press or the biggest flat press you can find. Our biggest problem when we started was the printer was to slow and we couldnt keep up. It's not cheap the right equipment cost us over 100g. Find good sewers and use the best thread you can find. Don't be cheap in thread cause you will have problems if you are.

 

[All The WayLive]

All the Way Live Designs

We are in house from start to finish, have multiple printers and staff, Have in house sew team as well as outside sew team for overflow during busy season.

Have in house people to cut fabric, and employees for semi sub jerseys

Our pants our made fully custom and locally, We are in the range of mid size company, over 300g's but not the level of ELITE/*** SPORTS as they are a strong company that has been around in the softball market for multiple years with many niches, (good Job Carlos/Greg)

We ourselves at ATWL pride our company on happy and satisified customers with the industries fastest turn around time even with volume and busy season.

Is this business easy to start up? sure if you have 100k laying around for equipment and then 100K for the first year mistakes and mishaps.....

But overall in house i can understand why people out source overall costs may be lower, with the downsides of mistakes and length of time of orders being the draw backs.

Since we pride ourselves on customer service and speedy delivery the overseas cant be an option for us....

 

[TYJA Sports]

We here at TYJA do ALL in house! Just sayin....