Hanes is closing shop - Can't handle the heat, get outta' the kitchen

Sometimes you don't really want to go into the kitchen and see how the sausage is made. I knew a guy who designed equipment that compressed meat to the right density for making hot dogs and the description took a bit of the mystery out of what a hot dog really is. When I was a child I also got to walk through a meat packing slaughterhouse and see the equipment and process for which cows are processed to hamburger. It's not a pretty picture, but that is how things are done. Now with Hanes, a longstanding leader in t-shirt fashion and printable clothing, announcing that they are trying to sell Outer Banks, a sport shirt clothing line for golfers, and that they have exited the clothing business in Europe, I sort of wonder why? Aren't they supposed to make and sell clothes if they are going to be Hanes? The picture behind the scenes may not be as simple as that. As I child I was brought up on the Winston-Salem area, where Hanes Brands is based. This may be because in some ancient times cotton and t-shirts were manufactured in North Carolina. There were cotton mills in the area I lived and schools named after cotton Barons. These times are but a memory as all things made are made elsewhere, but what is a company like Hanes to do if it can't compete any longer. Admittedly it is their lack of taste and inability to stay up with the styles in the t-shirt fashion industry that has caused their brand to be shelved by consumers, but is that all there is? The real problem may be that they just can't make money the new way, using contractors and there is no where left to expand to, so they are lost as a company and a brand. The Hanes Beefy T is the last symbol of the brand that still exist to me. Links and more new to follow on this post. Here is the text of a letter I received via email: 1000 East Hanes Mill Road Winston-Salem, NC 27105 May 30, 2012 Dear William, Today we announced our ongoing commitment to the US decorated apparel business centered on our strongest consumer brands, Hanes® and Champion®. As part of a larger corporate Imagewear strategy, we also announced the sale of our European wholesale business and the planned divestiture of the Outer Banks® brand. Outer Banks inventory continues to be available through our wholesale partners as we actively seek a buyer for the business. Hanes, trusted for comfort, quality and value, is the #1 basic apparel brand in the US and is found in 9 of 10 American households. Hanes’ fast growing nano-T® and Cool DRI® collections address consumer mega trends, our Tagless® and Beefy-T® products offer tees with better-best value propositions and our ComfortBlend® EcoSmart® products offer sustainability at a great price. Look for our new Hanes TV commercials breaking this week featuring Michael Jordan and reinforcing Hanes’ comfort position. Champion is the #2 activewear brand in the US and has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years. Champion is anchored by authentic heritage products like Reverse Weave® sweats and cotton tees and coupled with performance products like Double Dry®. Additionally, Champion’s new core fleece has more selling stories than ever with a new Champion Eco® fabric, better make and a more consistent color story. Hanesbrands remains committed to the decorated apparel market as a branded printwear supplier. We are committed to helping you grow your business by offering great Hanes and Champion branded products your customers trust and will want to buy and strong marketing propositions to help you sell. We are confident this strategy of investing in our strongest consumer brands will generate increased customer demand and growth within the wholesale market both now and for years to come. Thank you for your continued support. Best regards, John Fryer General Manager – Hanesbrands Branded Printwear

Free T-shirt Deal approved by Ting Cell Phone service provider for cross promotion

I've been looking for a product that I could promote with a Free T-shirt deal online and I have finally found it with the Ting Mobile Phone Provider. Currently I have an affiliate relationship with the cell phone service provider and if a potential customer clicks on the link I provide, like this one here: https://ting.com/r/vtimr91 then the user will get a $50 discount coupon to be applied to their service. The details of the service can also be found at that link. In turn I would receive a credit for encouraging potential customers to check out the phone plans that Ting offers. My idea is to also provide a free t-shirt to the users who actually convert and sign up for the Ting service as an added bonus. Check out the details of this free t-shirt deal here: http://nocontractphoneservices.com/free_t_shirt_offer_with_Ting_Cell_Phone_Service.html or go here to read more about the No Contract Phone Plans that Ting offers.

List of T-shirt Design interface updates

The following is a list of links to my updated t-shirt design interface. These webpages are hosted on ekay.com and serve as a based for the designs sold by yque.com and Y-que Trading post in Los Angeles. I have been working on a T-shirt app with my son and except for the descriptions and specifications that are required by the Android App Marketplace it is ready to go, so I have been updating the design interface online so that it will match this App. The entrance page for the t-shirt designs is at Ekay.com and basically it is a grid of current designs that we have available in Los Angeles. The idea is to offer a variety of colors of shirts for customers to preview how any particular graphic t-shirt design will look on a variety of shirts.

These images lead to the design interface where the background shirt can be changed. If someone clicks the text under the graphic of the design then it will take them to the shopping cart online where they can purchase the t-shirt. Production time is still an issue because our normal turnaround time for blank t-shirt orders is 3-4 days, but since these shirts have to be made to order it is typically 1-2 weeks. I will work on this as the traffic picks up and if the designs seem to be selling more, but for now it is faster if the stock color, the one shown on the shopping cart, is the color that is ordered. Still 1-2 weeks for a made-to-order tshirt seems pretty good to me. Here is the list of active designs: Pluto Never Forget in black ink for light t-shirts Powered by Pancakes t-shirt Generic Turntable Record Player t-shirt Moog Keyboard t-shirt Platypus T-shirt design Available for Filming t-shirt Guitar Amplifier t-shirt on black and so on. I'll add more links later, but this should give you the idea. The t-shirt app we are making is basically a phone version of the shirt color changing mechanism and it will allow the user to flip through the colors quickly by tapping and change the design by swiping the screen.

T-shirts without tags - Is there such a thing?

A common request I get is for t-shirts without tags. Although I sell several styles of shirts that have tear-away tags, removable labels inside the collar, some of the shirts on the market that are called "tagless" in fact have tags that are laminated inside the collar. These transfer printed tags in the collar cannot be removed and although they are tagless there is no way to get rid of the company name that identifies the garment. I am very sorry, but when I get request for shirts with absolutely no tags, I have taken to asking the potential customer, "How will you know what you have?" Most customers haven't considered this problem, but today I had a customer respond with, "I'll just compare them to each other and figure out what size they are". Good idea if you want to waste all your time sorting shirts. I do sympathize with the customer in this situation because even tags that are removable they require some work and effort to cleanly remove the label. Any label can be cut out of a shirt, but yes, there is going to be some remnant of the tag in the shirt. Unless you have a seamstress that is willing to cut the threads inside the collar cleanly this would be way more trouble than it is worth. My opinion is that you just have to be crafty in this situation and it is nearly impossible to imitate a large company product effect by removing and sewing in your own labels. May people cut or remove the tags and then print inside the collar the size and the name they want to represent. This works, but it is the same work and cost of doing a one-color print on the front or back of a shirt. Economically this doesn't seem like a good idea, but for style reasons some people will spend the money to do this. Keep in mind you have to have a layout for each size of the shirts you are printing, so you need a design for the small, medium, large, xlarge...

Y-Que adds Bandito image and redesigns Ekay t-shirt design interface

This new image is an example of the simple printing that Y-Que does, but if you go to Ekay.com you can see the modified t-shirt design interface and see how this design looks on a wide range of t-shirt colors.

Gildan buys Anvil - How does this affect you?

Gildan buys Anvil for approximately 90 million. Sounds like chump change for a major brand, but what do I know. Things may have been tougher for Anvil than we realized. Although I like and promote many of their shirts, I didn't think they were a takeover target. If anything I considered Anvil to be a bit of an upstart with innovative lines attempting to do for t-shirts what American Apparel has done for marketing. The construction is always missing something with Anvil, but the same can be said for Gildan t-shirts. I sell more Gildan t-shirts than I do Anvil, but that is mostly a price issue. I just hope that some of the new lines of organic t-shirts are not discontinued. Also, I am hopeful that the new USA made Anvil shirt gets off the ground with more production so there can be more inventory in the pipeline. Better Gildan did this than anyone else.

The new T-shirt Swatch Catalogs are here - Yipeee!

I now have the complete selection of color swatches for the following brands of t-shirts: Anvil, Hanes, Gildan, Fruit of the Loom, Bella Canvas, Jerzee and my new favorite Next Level Apparel. I will be posting these colors with references and links to allow a broader selection and choice for t-shirt colors from these brands. Colors are everything when it comes to t-shirts, even with Organic t-shirts the colors are getting better. Anvil is attempting to be a leader in Organic t-shirts and let's hope they pull it off because it has not been easy getting exactly what people want when it comes to an environmentally sensitive garment. Next up, Swatches, everyone.