Custom Apparel

This year, we've gone deep on a variety of topics related to the promotional products industry. Some of them have been heavy, some have been more optimistic, and some have been attempts at the predicting the future based on what we know about the present. Here are all the PM Longform stories we ran in 2020...

Amazon is moving further into custom apparel and personalization in some subtle but interesting ways. The company's “Made For You” platform allows users to create a custom-fitted shirt (using a “virtual body double”) with the option to personalize the tag...

Overture Promotions’ in-house capabilities allowed the company to quickly produce a face mask order in less than a week—a feat not possible without internal decorating—for a local law firm at the onset of the pandemic. But that task didn’t come without a minor setback...

We saw some pretty interesting promotional products campaigns this week, most notably the Pepsi spa kit. Pepsi aside, we have five more promo products that are worthy of praise, like a skateboard/boombox, well-timed onesies and more...

Apparel orders can be messy—but they don't have to be. From decorating to customizing to kitting, promo suppliers are offering one-stop-shop apparel solutions for distributors that can simplify orders, add value and save on costs. Here’s how...

Jamie S. Young of Jamie Young Swag & Strategy tells us how an embroidery project almost went south after switching contract decorators for a reorder. Young vowed to stick to her original source going forward for this particular project, but here’s how she stepped in to keep her client happy...

Aside from one recurring project, PromoShop Inc. doesn't do apparel decoration internally and doesn’t have any future plans to do so. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t seen substantial success in decorated apparel promotions, though. PromoShop takes the reins in another way—by offering specialized attention to what its clients need...

RJ Hagel, manager of global marketing for Goldstar; Tom Davenport, co-founder of Ink Kitchen; and Mike Wilson, vice president of operations for Overture Promotions, joined our own Sean Norris for a panel discussion on how promo businesses can take their decoration capabilities to the next level, and how that can attract more business even when times are tough for customers...

“Moneyball” screen printing is a method used to improve productivity and profitability through data collection. The following outlines an example in which we implemented the method presented to improve a factory without further capital investment...

Following up on its moves to give TikTok and YouTube creators ways to sell merchandise directly in-app, Teespring is now giving online content creators the option of selling “digital merchandise.” It’s an interesting twist for a company that built itself on T-shirts to now deal with digital products like filters, digital planners and other social-media ready “items"...