Hope Others Are As Busy

[alan802]

It's been a big start to the year for us and every other year besides last year and this year it has been slow in Jan and Feb.  The first two weeks in January I was already worried that we wouldn't reach our goals for 2014 because it was slow, and then boom, here comes the work.  My printer missed the last week and a few days so I've been out printing and trying to keep up with everything.  We had to print 2,000 pieces last Monday from lunch to closing, then yesterday we had to do a little over 3K to finish up a 4200 piece job.  And being short one guy right now is really tough because the busier we get out back, the more time I spend out there to keep us on schedule, but since I was the one running the press and there was no support person we were struggling.  These pics are of the work we need to get done by Friday.  A few of those will bleed into Monday I'm sure but this is what we're dealing with right now.  24 jobs due by Monday of next week and there isn't a cupcake in the bunch.  All 3-6 color jobs on darks, hoodies, performance poly, and just about every difficult material you can think of is in those boxes.  Last week we had one job, ONE, that was just a normal 3 color on 100% black cotton shirts that didn't require some weird thing to slow us down.  2K of those shirts from last week were the strange organic/Egyptian cotton that doesn't like to stick to even the tackiest of pallets nor would they load worth a crap so we had to run the press much slower than usual just to keep from having misprints.  You guys know the stuff I'm talking about, just one pain in the rear after another and it's clear that nobody wants a plain jane 100% cotton shirt.  And what about white shirts?  Do they even exist?  Out of the 7K or so shirts we did last week, not a single one was white.

I know a lot of you guys have this many cases of shirts hanging around all the time, but we do not.  We do a fair amount of work here for a one auto shop but it's usually one or two cases per order and most of the jobs stay in receiving until a day or two before we need to print them.




Do any of you guys print on the Hanes Nano T on a regular basis?  That shirt cost us several hours of production due to difficulty in picking them and loading them on the pallet, and then getting them to stick on the pallet almost drove me to a rampage.  Anybody else have issues with those shirts?

[ZooCity]

Good to see Alan, we're way busier than expected here too.  I thought Feb might be a little dead so we could have an easy move, no dice. 

All ringspuns are a bear to pick and load compared to a G2000 or the like.  We primarily run ringspun so we're used to it but def takes more time effort and patience than a carded, open ended cotton T. 

[DannyGruninger]

Nice Alan, always nice to be busy..... I'd say for us we are slightly busier then normal but not by ton.... Our month of Jan was pretty slow but about the same as usual. We have tons of quotes out for some sizeable projects but nothing in the bank for those yet.

Just a few months back we did two different runs of 10,000 pcs per order and both jobs were printed on hanes nano blanks. Looking at my notes we printed roughly 32,000 hanes nano shirts is 2013 and I don't recall any issues. We were printing around 2,000-2,500 shirts on those orders before having to glue so I'd be curious to know what glue your using.

[GraphicDisorder]

Slammed, best January ever nearly our best month ever.  Feb is off to similar including having one of our largest orders ever. 

[Screened Gear]

I also had my best January ever. Beat GraphicDisorders sales by at least 20%. 

2014 was 25% better than our best January.
2014 was 55% better than 2013

January is my worse month of the year.

[Sbrem]

Yes, we're pretty busy for January, maybe the busiest I've seen, for a January. It's not like we're working overtime, and we are in New England, so it's winter and to be expected, but this is different.

Steve

[alan802]

Tex Tac.  We print them occasionally but it's been a while since I've ran the auto for an extended period.  The first job was an alternative apparel, special cotton tee and with fresh pallet tack, meaning you put your hand on the pallet and it takes some strength to get your hand off, they were pulling up on the UB screen.  I put a test print shirt on, regular 100% cotton and it sticks like it should.  We don't water down our adhesive and I haven't changed anything in our adhesive procedure or product.  The shirts have a certain feel to them, almost like they have a layer of chemical on them.  There would be batches of 60-100 that would stick to the pallet like the should, then another run of 100-200 that wouldn't stick.  It was a 2K piece run and about 600 shirts into it I could tell which shirts were going to stay down and which ones weren't when I would load them.  The majority of them were of the non sticking variety of course and it took way too long to print the job.  When I got to the non sticking shirts we'd stop, grab the can of spray tack and start spraying.  The pallets had excessive waterbased glue on them and the additional spray tack held them down enough to print the base and then the top color.  When we got to the Hanes Nano job, they were all consistent, consistently bad at staying on the pallet and we had to re-apply the tex tac every 200 shirts or so instead of 600-800.  We don't get 2000 shirts out of a single glue session but have gotten to around 1000 before on a 12 station press.

What type of numbers are the rest of you getting on a single glue?  My guy used to put so much tack on the pallets that you could hardly get the shirt off the pallet and we've actually ripped shirts before they were so stuck on.  Now he's a little better with the glue and less is more to an extent with pallet adhesive.  The more you put on, the more lint and fuzz comes off of the shirts and renders the adhesive less affective at a faster rate, that's my theory and it seems to be right more often than not.

[ebscreen]

About a thousand here too, depends on garments and flashing of course.

The shirts that weren't playing nice, did they have that "siliconized" feel to them?

[Doug S]

Our January was slow but better than usual because of a few freak orders out of nowhere.  Feb. has been fairly busy so far.  Last year for us was pretty incredible so I don't know if we'll beat it but we will definitely try.

As far as pallet tack we mainly use waterbase and can usually get 350 to 400 shirts in before re-tacking.  If we aren't too swamped, I'll take the time to use a scrub pad and windex to get them pretty sticky again to keep from having too much build up on the tables.  The only time we use any aerosol tack is when we print hoodies and I'm re-tacking every 12 or so prints.  Gotta Luv it.   

[alan802]

About a thousand here too, depends on garments and flashing of course.

The shirts that weren't playing nice, did they have that "siliconized" feel to them?

I guess you could characterize the feeling as siliconized.  It felt like what I imagine what a shirt would feel like if you sprayed it with some sort of waterproofing chemical so silicone isn't far off from how I would describe the feeling.

[tancehughes]

Alan that is good news! As far as impressions go, we are ahead this year, but it still sucks when you're not super busy.

We are getting 500-600 prints per glue on average but we push 1000 at times if it's a big run and the boards stay hot


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[alan802]

I really enjoyed running the press and doing things that the other two guys haven't seen.  I showed them how to properly do a lot of things that I give our printer freedom to do differently as long as the jobs get done and quality is above average.  Seeing the differences now that our printer is back has me thinking it may be time to get tough and start making the changes we need to make so that we run even more efficiently and take our quality up another notch.  I have stopped micro-managing a lot of things at the press but now things are starting to digress and I need to get that straightened up.  My printer does not take healthy criticism or even friendly advice well but I think we are going to have one of those years that puts us in a different level and we need to stop thinking that since we are good at what we do, we don't need to get any better. 

[JBLUE]

I really enjoyed running the press and doing things that the other two guys haven't seen.  I showed them how to properly do a lot of things that I give our printer freedom to do differently as long as the jobs get done and quality is above average.  Seeing the differences now that our printer is back has me thinking it may be time to get tough and start making the changes we need to make so that we run even more efficiently and take our quality up another notch.  I have stopped micro-managing a lot of things at the press but now things are starting to digress and I need to get that straightened up.  My printer does not take healthy criticism or even friendly advice well but I think we are going to have one of those years that puts us in a different level and we need to stop thinking that since we are good at what we do, we don't need to get any better.

Should have fired him six months ago when you had the last issue. Someone that cant take criticism positive or negative should be shown the door. Buck up and send him packing. I bet a lot of things get better than what you already know.
 

[Inkworks]

January was decent, but February is shaping up to be a block-buster! Our favorite customer is going through a major expansion, and is ordering masses of everything from pens, to clothing, to signage, to promotional products, every time I look at my e-mail they want 2000 of something else. On top of them we're generally pretty steady for an off month too!

[tonypep]

Finalizing a 50K piece frnt/bk 100,000 imp order for fall. Those orders are out there. Dead winter is slow for Resort but goes from zero to sixty like a Ferrari.