Printwear Magazine June 2011 Issue

Printwear Magazine is largest and most recognized trade publication in our line of business. We are greatly pleased to have been featured in the June 2011 issue. http://printwearmag.com/article/heat-transfer-sublimation/niche-case-studies. Here is the article:

If you’ve ever been to a fencing tournament in the U.S. and bought a T-shirt, there’s a good chance it came from decorated apparel operation Proprintwear.

Owner Philip Daly has built a profitable business catering to fencing tournaments and organizations across the United States and recently was named the official merchandiser of the United States Fencing Association, a prized and difficult contract.

Daly started his business offering screen printing and embroidery in 1996 as a part-time venture and still operates it while working full time as a detective in Long Island. As a former competitive fencer and later a national referee, fencing tournaments were a natural market for him to target.

After getting his first merchandising contract in 2001, Daly started suffering from growth pains as his on-site business expanded. One challenge was having to ship screen printed and embroidered apparel to each event. As he wanted to offer more shirt styles, designs and colors, the logistics became a difficult and expensive proposition and he’d often get stuck with shirts.

Oftentimes, Proprintwear is an official merchandiser, which means owner Philip Daly can offer shirts with the event's name and logo and other related merchandise. In these cases, Daly pays a royalty to the organization. He also designs most of the graphics and is occasionally inspired by customer conversations he overhears in his booth. Images courtesy Proprintwear, East Setauket, N.Y.

“Sometimes I’d end up with several hundred shirts that were event-specific so I was unable to sell them later,” says Daly. “They ended up as donations.”

Daly solved this problem by switching the bulk of his production to custom transfers. “At the level I am at now, I couldn’t function without transfers,” he says. “Not preprinting shirts saves me a tremendous amount of money on shipping and increases customer satisfaction because buyers choose exactly what they want. If I were to bring all the possible combinations, there wouldn’t be room in my booth. I’d run out of space.”

The degree and amount of merchandise varies by event as Daly travels to everything from regional tournaments all the way up to national competitions that last for 10 days. But, in general, he offers a wide range of merchandise for infants up to grandparents. Top sellers include long- and short-sleeve T-shirts, sweatshirts, and women’s wear. He also offers commemorative merchandise such as stickers, patches and lanyards.

Set up in a 30-foot booth, the company offers a full shopping experience. Attendees choose from garments hanging on racks—smaller events may have up to six racks and larger events up to 15 racks. At the back of the pop-up tent is a wall that contains the 300-plus designs available. For single-color designs, customers can choose from one of three colors. And there are plenty of multicolor design options as well ranging up to nine colors in some instances.

One of Proprintwear’s most popular designs features the name of every single participant in the tournament, and Daly credits the continual improving quality of transfers to his ability to offer this. “There’s been a three-hundred-percent improvement in the ability to put individual names on the shirts,” he says.

He has found that he can get 1,500 individual names on an 11" X 14" transfer, which will fit on a youth small T-shirt. When tournaments have more than 1,500 participants, he splits the alphabet into two or even three sections. Often he’ll have these shirts on display not only in his booth, but also at registration and where participants check their equipment so they get maximum exposure.

Individuals’ names also are available as part of Proprintwear’s á la carte, design-your-own T-shirt services. Designs range from ½" X 2" to 11" X 14" so often, a customer may want a design on the back, a left-chest design on the front and their name. Employees heat print the shirts while the customer waits.

To keep track of the 300 designs in multiple colors and sizes, Daly uses plastic totes that store designs alphabetically. Although it would be less expensive for Daly to purchase the multicolor designs as digital transfers, all event transfers are the screen printed type. “We may have thirty to fourty customers in our booth at one time,” he notes. “We need to maintain the simplicity of applying only one type of transfer so we don’t have to keep changing the time and temperature.”

Sales have continued to climb each year, and Daly is anticipating a 25 percent increase for 2011. He attributes part of that increase to his understanding of his market. “I think we are tapping into what the market can afford. We are gearing our product line to that level,” he says.