Due to its incredible potential, many shops have added apparel to their product lines and an assortment of equipment to their shops—everything from screen-printing setups to heat presses and embroidery machines. How have these products and processes contributed to the bottom line of their businesses? We asked several shops from across the country their views.

Gary Dyekman, Owner
Dyekman Trophies
Fort Collins, Colorado

“We used to print thousands of T-shirts every year, but the margins have dropped so much that we don’t screen print much anymore,” says Gary Dyekman.

Asked if they personalize any other sorts of apparel, Dyekman says, “We still sell some things, such as jackets and shirts.”

Many of those shirts are done for promotional purposes, says Dyekman. However, he adds, they do not use ASI or services for promotional products. The apparel they personalize is done in house.

“We buy the shirts wholesale and do the embroidery and screen printing here,” says Dyekman.

Those are not the only apparel-decorating processes they use, however. “Heat transfer and sublimation are a huge part of our business,” he adds.

As one would expect, the screen-printing equipment goes to work on the large orders, and heat transfer and sublimation are used for customers who desire only one or a few articles. Of course, “If we do a big event, we will make 500 T-shirts or so and sell them to the participants,” says Dyekman.

Personalized apparel is a frustrating topic for Dyekman, whose Dyekman Trophies once printed tens of thousands of T-shirts every year. Unfortunately, the apparel industry has changed much since then. Competition online and overseas has driven margins down to the point that they are almost not worth the work.

“It’s too competitive to make money on. People can buy T-shirts printed in China right now; they arrive in three weeks, and they just kill us on price. If the customer has time to wait, they can get shirts, hat and jackets for about one-fifth the cost of what it would be in the United States. China will sell a six-color, front and back T-shirt for three dollars. We just can’t compete with that,” says Dyekman.

Jerry Hare, Owner
Hare Designs
Riverside, California

At Hare Designs, a number of personalization processes are used to decorate apparel.

“We do screen printing, embroidery, a rhinestone machine for custom rhinestone designs and sublimation,” says Hare.

He adds that right now, screen printing generates the most revenue for Hare Designs. “Rhinestones are starting to pick up, but we just haven’t really got any advertising going for them yet,” says Hare.

In regard to the rhinestones, Hare says, “We have had the machine for a couple of years; it’s about a $40,000 machine, and we can do up to six different sizes and six different colored stones on one design, and the size can be 12”x15”.”

For customers, Hare says, “Although we do have a few wholesale clients, we concentrate on the small quantity orders. We work schools and similar organizations, booster clubs, school clubs, parent groups, sports teams, etc.”

Hare Designs personalizes all sorts of apparel, but they do T-shirts more than any other article of clothing. “We do a lot of warm-up suits, shorts, dance wear, band gear, bags and items like that.”

The economy has had an interesting impact on Hare Designs’ business. “We’ve actually seen a little uptick in our day-to-day business. It’s good for us, but unfortunately, I think a lot of that is due to the attrition of the economy. A lot of our competitors have gone out of business, and now those customers are coming to us.”

Hare continues, “We also go out and actually work shows—some high school shows and home shows—and we have seen a drastic drop in that business. We have probably lost about 50 percent of our business at the shows last year. This year—and our shows start in September—we also saw a major drop. All of that is due to attendance; people just aren’t going to those shows. We are curious to see when that will come back.”

Rodney Jumper, Owner
All Star Sporting Goods
Paragould, Arkansas

“We sell a lot of athletic clothing,” says Rodney Jumper.

Jumper adds that All Star Sporting Goods is just now getting into screen printing. “But, we use CAD cut tremendously, monogramming, and we do a lot of twill appliqué letters.”

Surprisingly, Jumper says his company does no business with schools. His customers are all “big boys.”

“We work with several of the bigger sporting goods stores,” says Jumper.

The economy has had an impact on All Star Sporting Goods, says Jumper, but perhaps not the impact one would expect.

“Our sales in volume are down, but our profit is just above where it was. We’re doing something right,” says Jumper.

Explaining, Jumper says, “We have had some really good customers who stuck with their orders. And, the work we have done for those customers has led to several new customers. Quite literally, my tack and quill business, because I can produce about 80 percent of it in-house, has grown.”

Asked how he got the word out to his new customers, Jumper says, “We are located in a small part of Arkansas, so it has mainly been word-of-mouth. A few people wore the items we were personalizing, and it just snowballed from there.”

Johnnie Montice, Owner
Captain T’s
Sequim, Washington

Johnnie Montice has been in business for 25 years, and she says it has evolved much in that time.

“We started with screen printing, but now we offer vinyl graphics, embroidery, lettering and digitizing,” says Montice.

She says that Captain T’s is in a somewhat isolated community, so it pays to be as much of a one-stop shop as possible. She adds, “We do a lot of things, but none of them in any huge way.”

Though most of Captain T’s business is with the local community, Montice says they do have some out-of-area clients. “We are here in Olympic National Park, and we ended up doing orders for Pinnacles National Monument in California. That was due to our connections here with the park.” Local schools and government agencies are also good customers of Captain T’s, adds Montice.

Commenting on which aspect of her apparel business bears the most fruit, Montice says, “It’s seasonal. The profit on screen printing T-shirts is low, but we sell a lot more of them. March through September, we do quite a bit of T-shirt business. In the winter months, the bottom dollar is much greater for embroidery. There are a lot of Christmas sales and corporate gifts and sales along those lines. There are fewer items sold than with T-shirts, but we make more money on them. We sell sweatshirts and jackets and warm clothing. That is one of the ways I have taken out the hills and valleys of our seasonal sales.”

She adds that the ability to do that comes from 25 years of experience in Sequim. “It may not work in another area, but it works here,” she laughs.

There is another ability that Montice learned as she watched others’ business come and go over the years: pricing. “I do not underbid. I have established prices. They are what they are. I know what it costs to stay in business. I may lose a client to competition for a time, but they always come back.”

That concludes this trip across the country. Get ready to join us for another road trip soon, as A&E crisscrosses the nation in pursuit of useful information for the awards industry.