SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016 - 22

Syd Northup: I'm Syd Northup. I work
for Gans Ink and Supply Company. I'm
a sublimation guy. I've been doing this
for 16 years. I started with Sawgrass.
Prior to that, a little bit of software, but I
had my own printing business for about
three years. I learned the hardships of
both solvent and mainly sublimation. I've
also been a distributor. My main goal is
to set up production environments for
sublimation from start to finish, from files
to product, whether it's snowboards or
fabric or T-shirts, and profiling falls into
that category. Also supplying products for
the sublimation industry.
Charlie Taublieb: My name is Charlie
Taublieb. I've been at this for 40 years. I
started out bootlegging black T-shirts at
rock concerts. That's how I learned how to
print. I owned a print shop supply house
and been doing consulting for about 38
years. I do workshops for SGIA and I speak
all over the world and conduct workshops
and seminars all over the world.
Shell: All the time. What are you guys
looking for from this session?

list. We're real big into documentation,
making sure everything is written down
so everybody can be accountable, and so
that the downtime is minimized as much
as possible.
Shell: What about you, Josh? You get into
a lot of shops. What do you see out there
as far as production challenges a lot of
shops face?
Ellsworth: In heat printing, it's really scale
with the price of the heat press and what
somebody can get into business with being
a home-based business or being on their
own. It's how do I get to the next level?
Typically, when shops that we work with
start up they start relatively small. You
have a small collection of people, typically
five employees or less, sometimes even two
employees that are having to function in
many different disciplines from finance to
sales to marketing to actual production.
It's just making the decision at that level
to spend your time wisely and then really
how to get to the next level. Of course,
there's a ton of production woes, details
like scorching shirts and ruined prints
and letters coming off. You guys have
probably never seen any of that before. I
see a little bit of chuckles there. There's
those challenges in just overall quality of
your finished graphic.

Audience Member: I want to hear about
production and how to get past when
you're a small shop and you got five, six
people working for you and you don't
have the people to fit all the little niches. I
just wanted to hear what you guys talked Shell: That was a question I forgot. How
about and maybe try to find something I many of you have scorched a shirt? Be
could learn.
honest. What about you, Lon? Production
woes you see in shops today and or in your
Shell: Anybody else? What are you guys own shop?
here for?
Winters: We are an awful lot like a
Audience Member: Basically, learn how lot of people in that we try to offer too
to streamline efficiency without losing many things to too many folks. I guess
quality, just how to do things faster and probably the challenge is balancing what
better.
I would consider we're really, really good
at with maybe some value-add types of
Shell: Tiffany, what are some of the things. We're trying to add small-format
common production challenges your sublimation or even adding trinkets and
shop faces?
trying to handle the promotional products
along with contract work, big orders, small
Rader: Downtime, that's our worst enemy. orders. It's the add-ons that you really
It's the downtime between jobs, making almost have to be able to provide or run the
sure everybody is doing what they're risk of losing a client that can get all-in-one
supposed to be doing so that when one shopping, one-stop shop kind of thing.
job ends the next job is going up and that
That's probably where we struggle
there's not that much time in between the the most. Like Tiffany mentioned, the
jobs. We make money when the press is documentation is probably the biggest place
running. We don't make money when the that we can make those improvements.
press isn't running.
The bad news in our industry is we don't
We worked on that by scheduling have an awful lot of standardization. The
everything out. We hold each individual good news is there are tools out there that
accountable for what they're supposed to we can build standardization internally,
be doing. There's a job list. There's a task not necessarily templates that work for
20 | SGIA Journal ■ Spring 2016

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SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016

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