Services

EMBROIDERY

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Employees that wear corporate branded clothes identify more strongly with what their organization represents. By wearing the embroidered name or logo it can have a powerful effect that not only encourages the staff, but creates a team atmosphere among the staff. Productivity increases when you have a staff feeling cohesive during the day to day operations.

Embroidery Tips:

• Simple is Better: If you can draw it with a Sharpie pen we can embroider it. Thick and bold lines work great. Text height needs to be a ¼” or taller.
• Baseball Caps: The logo size must be no larger than 4”x 2.25”.
• Thread colors: It is best to keep your design to 3-4 colors.
• The best location for your logo is on the left chest area.

Please contact our Customer Success Team for any additional questions.

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SCREEN PRINTING

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Did you know that the Smithsonian museum has the oldest printed T-shirt on record in their collection and on display? It is a campaign shirt for New York Gov. Thomas Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign. This shirt, and the majority of those you’ve seen every day were created through the process of screen printing. It’s a technique that involves a pressing ink through spaces inside a fine mesh fabric that has been treated with a special substance to only allow ink on the shirt in the desired design.

Screen Printing Tips:

• A screen printing press can print upwards to 60-100 shirts per hour. To receive the best quantity pricing, please order 72 or more shirts.
• Safety shirts and vests look the best with a 1 color black logo on the back along with safety stripes.
• Try to keep your ink colors to 1-3 colors to avoid incurring additional setups.
• The same logo size and ink colors must be used for all the shirts in the order.
• We have a graphic artist on staff to help create your design. Rates are $60.00 per hour.
• Screen Setups are based on the colors in your logo.
• If your logo has lots of colors, we recommend checking out our digital printing.

Please contact our Customer Success Team for any additional questions

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DIGITAL PRINTS

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Northwest Custom Apparel joined the digital revolution in 2011 with our first Kornit DTG (direct-to-garment) printer. Today, we have 3 of the Kornit Storm Hexa printers, which are the Lamborghinis of the digital world. Direct-to-Garment printing is growing so rapidly that Jeff Bezos of Amazon purchased over 200 Kornit Printers for their fulfillment warehouses. The great thing when working with us we have a Customer Success Department and a fantastic art staff that can walk you through your order from start to finish.

Digital Print Tips:

• Use lots of colors in your design to make it “POP”. There is no limitation on ink colors.
• 100% cotton t-shirts print the best. The more cotton in the shirt, the better.
• We can print on the front and back of shirts.
• The recommended size for a shirt front is 11” to 12” wide.
• The ink is water-based and safe for the environment.
• Setup fees are a flat fee and not based on amount of colors in the design.
• We recommend keeping the design size the same for all the shirts, so you don’t incur additional setups.
• All artwork is stored digitally so reorders and adds ons are easy.
• Minimum order size start at 12 shirts.

Please contact our Customer Success Team for any additional questions.

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PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS

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Businesses often have a difficult time deciding on a promo item or corporate giveaway. With the plethora of choices out there, it isn’t difficult to imagine companies agonizing over the perfect promotional item for their clients. Price is often the most important factor when considering a company giveaway but it shouldn’t be. When price is the main focus, the company loses out in a major way when their promo item ends up in the trash bin or pushed to the side in favor of their competitor’s more relevant and of better quality item. Think about the message you want to send out and choose an item that is relevant, timely, and hasn’t already saturated the market. People may not need another lanyard but they will always be searching in their bags or pockets for pens that work.

Here we present a few tips that should help you in your search for the perfect promotional item:

1. It should be relevant to your business
If you’re an outdoor company, it would be a good idea to choose a promo item that your customers can enjoy yet still associate with you. It doesn’t make sense to provide ceramic coffee mugs for example, if your customers aren’t the type to sit down and enjoy a cup. A travel mug or tumbler would be more appropriate. You don’t want people wondering why a company known for being environmentally-friendly is giving out notepads and desk calendars as promotional items (unless of course, they are made out of sustainable materials).

2. Choose quality over quantity every time
Here is where the price question usually comes up. Some companies don’t realize that by attaching their name and brand to lower quality promotional products they are actually hurting their image and bottom line. You definitely don’t want something you've given to end up in the trash bin. That defeats the purpose and makes all the time and money you spent on them totally useless. It is better to invest in good quality promotional items that you can give out to loyal customers and new clients instead of trying to foist cheap and low-quality items on every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes into your store.

3. Choose a good design
Simple is best when planning out the design of your promotional item. It can be very easy to go overboard with the colors, images and text that go into your promo item. You have to keep in mind that your customers will probably spend just a few seconds looking over your item so don’t overwhelm them with a smorgasbord of information. As for the company information that goes into your product, make sure that only the most relevant details make it. Your address may not be very important but your contact information and social media info might be exactly what your customer might need to find you again or recommend you to their friends.

4. Meet the needs of a specific market
When you choose a promo item, make sure you have a particular customer or market segment in mind. Specific marketing strategies often work better than broad strokes marketing. Examine your company’s current client roster or customer line-up and figure out who your target market is. Whether you want to attract new clients or give your loyal customers a promo item to show your gratitude for their patronage, it is always better to plan ahead and anticipate what your market’s response will be as opposed to going into it blind.

Please contact our Customer Success Team for any additional questions.

GALLERY CONTACT

DIGITAL PATCHES

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Northwest Custom Apparel created their first embroidered patch back in 1977 using archaic embroidery machines and programming tapes. Creating your patch design would take 8-12 hours by increasing your artwork 6 times scale and using a digitizing board that created the paper jacquard tape to run the embroidery machines. Yes, it took a long time and was VERY expensive. Today, 95% of the embroidered patches are created overseas in China or Cambodia where their labor rate is cost effective.

The Digital Revolution

Digital printed patches are printed locally using our Kornit Storm Hexa direct-to-garment printers. Digital patches can have full color logos with no limitation on ink colors. The patches are produced locally in Milton, WA which reduces the turn time from 60 days to 14-18 days. We still have our die cutting equipment and merrow machines that we used to create embroidered patches 40 years ago. The only change is that the fabric is digitally printed. The rest of the process is still the same as it was in 1977.

Tips to Digital Patches:

• Use lots of colors in your logo.
• The die sizes available are squares, rectangles and circles.
• It is very popular to sew the patch on the front of a trucker mesh style cap.
• We love clean artwork in high resolution tiffs, .psd and .eps files.
• At this time, we can’t provide custom shapes.
• We can create custom artwork at $60.00 an hour.

Please contact our Customer Success Team for any additional questions.

GALLERY CONTACT

CUSTOM ARTWORK

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One of the most important factors in producing great looking embroidery, screen printing or printed apparel is having good quality artwork. Clean artwork will save time and money on your order, since extra charges for redrawing it will be reduced or eliminated. If you have a digital file of your logo, please email it to our Customer Success Team. Our artist, Steve, has a been creating custom artwork for over 30 years. Steve enjoys working one-on-one with clients to brainstorm ideas and work with your vision. Believe it or not, Steve can actually draw with a pencil and paper unlike many graphic artists that can only work on the computer. Steve enjoys illustrating, sketching and computer graphic programs such as Photoshop and Corel Draw.

Custom Art Tips:

• Relax and be creative. Bounce your ideas off friends, family and co-workers. Ludicrous ideas are better than NO ideas. It only takes 1 idea to make it a million-dollar idea.
• Bounce your ideas off Steve and he can create you a preliminary sketch.
• When working in a group, please have only have one person that can make the final decision. You will go insane when you let the group start making changes to the artwork.
• Collect any artwork you have done in the past and show Steve.
• Search for ideas on the internet, so Steve can have a starting point.
• Work with Steve in person to brain storm ideas. It’s difficult to convey ideas when working over email only.
• Steve's rates are $60.00 per hour.

Please contact our Customer Success Team to schedule an appointment with Steve.

GALLERY CONTACT

WEB STORES

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Web Stores are perfect for the Human Resource Manager that doesn’t have enough time in the day to put together an employee apparel program.

• Employees can select pre-approved products.
• Order products on demand instead of carrying stock.
• No more spreadsheets trying to keep track of employee’s orders.
• No more collecting money or payroll deductions.
• Orders are bagged with the employee's name and order.
• Easy to distribute to employees.

Uses of the Store:

• New Hire Packs: Send your new hire to the store to get their company gear. Most packs consist of 5 shirts and 1 jacket.
• Pre-paid Gift Cards: Pre-paid gift cards to tell your employee “thanks” for a job well done. You can purchase gift cards that will allow your employees to use for merchandise on the site. I.e. Tell us your budget and how much you want to spend on each employee. We will distribute the gift card codes accordingly
• Holidays/Events: Christmas Ugly Sweaters with your company’s logo or apparel as holiday gifts.

Details:

• The simpler the store is, the easier it is for employees to purchase.
• We recommend 1 logo (embroidered or DTG) and 4-6 garment styles. (1-3 garment colors per style. Keep in mind your logo colors and what it will look like on certain colors and styles. To eliminate production and sorting issues, your logo color, size and location on garment must be kept the same for all the items in the store.
• Store Setup Time: please allow 5-7 business days to setup your store depending on the complexity.

Open/Close vs. On-Demand Stores:

• Open/Close: The store is opened for two weeks to receive orders. The store then closes for production which generally runs 2 weeks. Once the initial order is delivered, we can open the store for another 1-2 weeks to collect additional orders. The pricing is based on an estimate of how many pieces the store will sell. Each item has a $2.00 surcharge which covers processing and handling. We can bill Net 10 with one company check to pay for all the orders. Credit Application must be on file with us.
• On-Demand: The store is kept open year-round and you can order 1 item at a time. The items for on-demand will be limited to Port Authority product only. There is a $10.00 per piece surcharge for each item placed. Please ask your rep for details and pricing. All orders must be paid online via credit card. No net-terms.

Please contact our Customer Success Team to schedule an appointment with Steve.

GALLERY CONTACT