How to choose which decoration options are right for you and your clients

By Colleen McKenna

Keeping It In-house vs. Sending It Out

Mary Blondell, promo marketing manager for Stahls’ ID Direct, noted that Stahls’ ID Direct offers solutions for distributors who want to decorate products themselves or send them out for decoration. “We offer everything you need to start up or for an existing business’s decorating needs,” she said. “We are the manufacturer of heat presses and have a huge selection of heat-applied materials, full-color digital logos, transfers and rhinestones, just to name a few. All you need is a heat press. We have online educational videos and instructions that are simple to follow to take control of your decorating.”

If you prefer sending out for artwork, that’s an option too. “Stahls’ ID Direct’s Decorating Fulfillment Center offers contract decorating services, fulfillment and delivery options that allow you to keep selling while we decorate for you,” Blondell said.

Either way, choosing a reliable decorator makes a difference with retaining clients. “By partnering with the right decorator, you can create logos that deliver enhanced brand recognition and exposure that continually draws attention,” Blondell said. “From the initial idea to final delivery, it is key to work closely with your decorator to create the unique concept that goes beyond standard screen printing or embroidery.”

Decoration methods in the promotional industry are ever-expanding. You already know the top two decoration options for apparel and accessories—embroidery and screen printing—but rhinestones and dye sublimation both have loyal followings as well. Decorators always are exploring different ways to apply these imprint favorites, coming up with creative ways to get the most out of the item's decoration. This exploration can create a lot of choices for you and your clients, the biggest of which being indirect or direct decoration. We broke it down for you on the next few pages so you can figure out which option is best for your clients and your business.

Indirect Decorating

Indirect decoration, as its name suggests, is when a decorator works on a garment indirectly. This can be done in a number of ways. For screen printing, it means using a heat press to transfer artwork from a piece of paper to the garment, and for embroidery, it means using a debossing process to simulate the effect.

Brian Fuchs, president of Windswept Marketing, Asheville, N.C., explained the company's "indirect advantage" and what it means for distributors, end-buyers and end-users.

What Are Your Options?

"The 'indirect advantage' is a big umbrella name that covers all the ways that we brand and decorate apparel," he said. "But we do them all in a very unique way that allows us to stock the decoration and brand the apparel as needed, when needed." Fuchs mentioned that the most popular indirect decoration is embroidery, but your client can choose one of many other imprint options as well, such as dye sublimation or bedazzled rhinestones. Fuchs noted that the indirect decoration process with embroidery or any other imprint option eliminates issues that arise with direct imprinting like loose threads, an itchy backside of the imprint and puckering.

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Finding Direction

Indirect Decorating

What Are Your Options?