Custom T-shirts

Specialty screen printing inks are becoming more and more popular every day. There’s a variety of specialty inks to choose from. Gel, Suede, High Density, Puff, Foil, Glitter, Glow, Metallic Inks and many more. When used correctly they add to the WOW factor of a design. Many retail shirts have some form of specialty ink printed on them these days. Foil prints are very popular for the adult market and gel, puff and suede inks are popular on youth clothing. While glitter inks add pizzazz to woman’s apparel. The trick to achieving a nice looking design with specialty ink lies in the art. If a design has too much specialty ink the effect can be ruined.

Most specialty inks don’t require too much modification to the standard screen printing process. Lower mesh counts and thick capillary film will do the trick for a number of these inks. High detail is not recommended as the screen will not expose properly on lower mesh counts. My personal favorites are glow in the dark and high density. High density is somewhat of a tricky ink to use. It’s very thick and must be worked in before printing by using a power drill with a mixer attached. This ink can be printed in different thicknesses’ depending on the desired effect. I like the effect of a 400 micron print. Gel ink is used to give the design a wet look. When touched it has a sticky feel to it. It’s great for kids shirts. While specialty inks cost more than standard inks, in the end it’s really worth it to have a shirt that sticks out from the rest.

Broken Arrow offers a wide variety of specialty inks to choose from and artist that know how to incorporate them into your design properly. Check them out at brokenarrowwear.com. Don’t be shy, next time you place an order for custom shirts ask about specialty inks.

Embroidery is a terrific way to professionally launch your design or logo out into the world. When done correctly, embroidered designs are not only wonderful works of art, but also effective marketing and branding pieces. People will see your design on any hat, shirt, or jacket you wear that has your embroidered logo on it. Since everyone who sees you will also see your logo, it makes sense that your logo is easily and quickly viewed. The following are a few tips that will help you make a more effective (and attractive!) embroidery design:

1. Keep the amount of text used in your design to a minimum. Too much text can make your design appear busy and jumbled. Additionally, if there is a lot of text in your design, people may not take the time to read all of it - ultimately rendering your design useless. “Short and sweet” is a good rule to follow!
2. Most text needs to be a minimum of 1/4″ tall to be readable. Any text smaller than 1/4″ tall is not only hard to read, it also doesn’t sew out at a high quality. Again, text should be easily read from a comfortable distance. You wouldn’t want someone six inches away from your chest trying to read what your logo says!
3. Wider, single borders are more effective than multiple thin borders. It’s fairly simple - solid, single borders are more visible. Multiple borders on a small design may be to thin to see clearly or they make take valuable space away from the design they are trying to frame. Again, try to avoid over complicating your design.
4. Detail is achievable when done correctly. Keep in mind embroidery designs are made with stitches, not with fine brush strokes or computer printers. Understand the embroidery company wants to make your design the way you want it, but some elements of your design may have to be slightly reworked for embroidery.

Hopefully these tips can help you make a embroidery design that is both attractive and effective. One particular company, Broken Arrow, excels at high quality embroidery and has customer service representatives that are both easy to work with and knowledgeable. Broken Arrow has been in the custom garment industry since 1989 and has been an industry leader in high quality custom embroidery and screen printing.

Custom T-Shirt Retailer Improves Customer Service and Sales Capabilities with Avaya Communications Solution

1. Broken Arrow Wear chooses Avaya IP Office for more effective customer communications
2. Improves customer sales 15 percent over previous year due to Avaya system

Basking Ridge, NJ – Broken Arrow Wear, a custom t-shirt printing company and online retailer, recently deployed an Avaya small business communications solution to improve employee communications, customer service and sales capabilities. With increased competition in the online retail space – and a busy peak summer season just around the corner – Broken Arrow Wear required a communications system that was not only simple to deploy, but also enabled employees to be more responsive to customers for an improved customer experience.

To achieve this, Des Moines, IA-based Broken Arrow Wear implemented Avaya IP Office, which in addition to delivering a more effective call handling system, provided Broken Arrow Wear with advanced capabilities that allowed them to incorporate new practices such as telecommuting and work-at-home capabilities. This enabled Broken Arrow Wear to more effectively handle the growing influx of orders – and ensure they are always prepared for the rising volume of customer inquiries that occur in the summer.

Printing an average of over 2,500 shirts a day, Broken Arrow Wear last year brought in Avaya IP Office so that their small number of representatives could more efficiently handle hundreds of calls daily. Broken Arrow Wear provides custom designs for its clients – a process that involves multiple steps, urgent requests and tight deadlines. Avaya IP Office’s effective call routing capabilities improved the process by first eliminating the need for Broken Arrow Wear employees to manually take messages, which could easily get lost or delayed, and implementing an ‘always on’ communications system.

With Avaya IP Office, customers now call one number that will route inquiries to the appropriate department, whether it is sales, art, IT or marketing. This increases customer satisfaction, while enabling employees to focus on their assigned tasks instead of putting time towards taking messages or routing calls to someone else. Calls now get to the right place, so that sales people do not get calls that are meant for artists or billing.

“With Avaya IP Office, we have been able to entirely eliminate customer complaints about unreturned calls due to lost or delayed messages,” said Kortni, Customer Service Manager, of Broken Arrow Wear. “This improvement, along with other Avaya IP office capabilities that boosted customer satisfaction and employee productivity, have helped Broken Arrow Wear see a 15 percent increase in sales just over the last year.”

The Avaya solution also allows all employees to communicate more effectively using three-digit dialing across the company’s two offices and remote locations. This enables better collaboration between its Des Moines and Polk City, IA locations, while cutting costs by combining two phone lines into one IP phone system.

A Seamless Customer Service Experience

With a more efficient system in place, Broken Arrow Wear can now take advantage of a more seamless, responsive customer service operation. For instance, Broken Arrow Wear can easily have any employee serve as a customer agent during peak calling periods by simply moving them into the sales function. And with Avaya monitoring software, the company can see who is on the phone and how many calls are being handled to gauge the effectiveness of its service. This enables Broken Arrow Wear to maximize their small amount of resources for more efficient customer service.

An investment in Avaya IP phones also allows the company to provide employees with telecommuting options, allowing staff to work at home on an as-needed basis. No longer limited to its office space, Broken Arrow Wear can add highly-skilled home-based workers or extend communications capabilities to employees who need to work from home temporarily. Telecommuting options help ensure sales leads and orders aren’t missed, while offering a top-notch customer experience regardless of where representatives are physically located.

As is the case with many small businesses, Broken Arrow Wear was particularly attracted to Avaya IP Office because of its ability to expand with the company as it grows. With Avaya IP Office, management can easily add phone lines as the company expands and build a network of representatives that can operate within the company’s network or outside of its four walls.

“T-shirts may seem low-tech, but investing in technology is actually our top priority,” added Kortni. “Avaya IP Office gives us the communications technology we need to use our people and budgets in the most efficient way we can. With the right solutions in place, we have options to do what we need to do to best service customers and employees now and into the future.”

Broken Arrow Wear’s system was configured by ITC Communications, an authorized member of Avaya’s BusinessPartner program. The installation includes Avaya IP Office and phones at Broken Arrow Wear’s production site in Polk City and its headquarters in Des Moines.

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

When looking for great advertising custom printed t shirts are a great value.