Garments and Apparel

All about the difference…

7 January 2024 Stuart Nimmo

Anyone with any common sense knows it’s not what you do, but how you do it. With a wide variety of print service providers out there, some purely online shifting products without any relationship. To us print is an art form when done well, it adds value, understanding what you want to achieve is at the heart of how we do it. So distinguishing what matters and why, makes a real difference to the result. With over 70 years of combined experience within HAD-Print, the small differences are what make the difference, so here are a few examples.

What makes us different?
“More than box shifters” at the very heart of what we do – is understanding your needs as our customer. Easy words, but here’s one example.
It’s not just understanding you, but the needs of your end users. The work we’ve done with Simon Ferris at Flat Stan First Aid is about maximising the learning of the children partaking in the programme and after the learning. We’ve helped Simon to evolve his resources into something more dynamic which is engaging on many levels. Simon doesn’t just use us for the print, but as a sounding board to help his develop ideas – it is a pleasure to be valued in this way.

What makes us different?
“More than box shifters” at the very heart of what we do – is understanding your needs as our customer. Easy words, but here’s another example.
When you meet a business person regularly you get to understand them and their business. Ben at Phoenix Heating and Plumbing was one of these customers. Seeing, talking, understanding, and knowing his “pain points” really helped auto meet his aspirations of where he wanted to take his business. Introducing a brand identity for Phoenix Heating and Plumbing, was probably the first significant thing we did, we amazed Ben when after a few words, we were able to hit the brief on the nose for him. Workwear for his team provided the opportunity to raise the level and put pride in the business. We’ve since helped get marketing collateral to hit the mark as well. Quick response due to circumstances, favours pulled from some of our contacts, and leaflets with the right professional high-end images he required to help them pitch for the work they knew they could achieve.

What makes us different?
“More than box shifters” at the very heart of what we do – is understanding your needs as our customer. Easy words, but here’s another example.
A very recent example. And a very sweet one at that. Mrs H, whose husband had recently passed, wished to ensure his legacy was a positive one. He had extensively researched the mills in 2 local valleys and the documents whilst useable, they were in no format to be shared or passed on. We took the documents, and a wallet of photos, and worked our way through and artwork up the book professionally, after a round of proofreading, the 2 volumes (books) were printed on a limited edition basis, enough for the family, placing in local libraries and history centres.

What makes us different?
“More than box shifters” at the very heart of what we do – is understanding your needs as our customer. Easy words, but here’s another example.
Over the last 2 years, we’ve produced all sorts of card decks. A lovely item to work on, as they are usually so diverse in content. At the end of last year, we had a referral enquiry which said… “Can you…” well, the answer is yes, as ever. It was a different size, a different number of cards. Gareth had in his mind’s eye exactly what he wanted. Getting to know, and understand is the usual key to creating a specification which works. It was nice that it was 2 decks of the same specification, different designs running in parallel, which makes things easier in production. Gareth in asking the right questions to us, enabled us to tweak and develop what he was looking for from an existing reference point. Here’s why it works with us, we are truly bespoke, unlike your online portal funnel web-based printers, we use, knowledge, and experience to devise the right solution for you.

Need your print to work smarter for you? Why not start a conversation with us?

No hiding… honesty is one of our values

6 August 2023 Stuart Nimmo

We often get asked to competitively pitch on projects. And occasionally we say no, we’re not going to quote when we see what we’re against. We don’t do race to the bottom. However recently we’ve had feedback from an end user who showed us what was advertised and what they got. The original specification sheet and the supplied polo shirt were nowhere near a match.

What we do…

Our garment proposal sheets, feature clear positionals and photos of the proposed garments.
We only specify garments we know and trust.
We provide honest advice on what will work in different print and embellishment methods – some are better than others at different things.
Honest charging and can suggest the right breakpoints to achieve cost performance points.
We provide options to enhance the end-user experience – tagging and bagging or packing.

So, with the case study above, we’d ensure that a heavier-weight garment was specified to match the end user’s environment. It also takes a detailed print better. The proposed garment had opportunities for further trimming or embellishment to add value to the merchandise proposition. We would offer an option for branded tagging, if you wanted an end-user experience to be delivered more “branded” we can recommend easily branded pain packaging to deliver within a cost budget. This packaging can also be nearly plastic-free for better environmental credentials.

If you are in a specific sector, we understand that your market audience has expectations. A good example of this is motorsport, where attention to detail, and specification of the performance vehicles is matched by the specification and detail of the apparel used. Whether two-tone garments, garments with colour panels, or piped trim, detail in print and embroidery is absolutely critical.

Part of our service is the fact we spend considerable time getting to know the products we use. Whether this is getting touchy-feely at trade shows and roadshows, getting samples in and putting them to the physical test.

Talking of physical tests… in the last year, we’ve rejected 2 items on our testing programme. These include workwear boots, which were inconsistently manufactured and the product support through wholesale and distribution didn’t match our expectations. The other was a Hoodie, which bobbled on after the second wash.

The crux is, if you value your brand, doing the right thing sometimes takes a bit of a bottle. If you are doing merchandise, think about the sales journey, reviews, product evaluations, and user-generated content is now major selling points. If you go on a race to the bottom and don’t have honest sales collateral you will get adverse responses from your valued customers, audience, followers or the better description for them – stakeholders.

King of the hoodies!

20 April 2023 Stuart Nimmo Marketing, Physical marketing

Probably the most requested item in any apparel range is the Hoodie. They’ve evolved so much over the last few decades, styling comes and goes, and equally “trend” colours shift on an annual basis too. But they’re well and truly a staple of the apparel mix. Corporates now adopt them for team wear, they appear as an easy means for work-from-home branding, and above all there functional.

Where did they stem from? Well if you go back far enough it’s the monks, that were the first adopters of the hood in everyday apparel. More for functional purposes than style. Hoods keep the warmth in and are so relevant to today’s cost of living issues. Yes, hoodies have had it rough, the 1990s associated them with yob culture. As we said, the flavour has changed.

So with the plethora of options now available how do you start?

With the likes of Just Hoods by AWDis with over 75 colours, the choice is massive. The generic college is the starting point. Also, AWDis have an excellent choice of varsity hoods, with the 2 colour combinations. So the sky is the limit when it comes to colour options.

The next option people ask for is something more weighty. The standard hoodie weight is 260-280gms material, so the next level is 300-310gms weight. In our opinion there are two options AWDis have a heavyweight option, note not with the same range of colours. Also, the other option is Anthem’s heavyweight – we seriously like these, the trim and finishing level on these. Yes, we can get other options around this, however, the finish or quality doesn’t match the two options.

If you’re running an event and need hoodies on a budget, we’d recommend Ultimate Clothing Co, a 260-270gms weight garment, with a limited colour range, but it prints great and delivers a product you can be proud of within a budget.

All of the above can be found in our showroom, so pop in if you want to get your hands on them and decided for yourself!

So if you are planning to style up a hoodie for a merchandise project, here’s the low down on how to manage this from stock to something different;

• consider the cords, yes you can often upgrade these to match your print colour or other styling facet
• hood prints, you really need to get the garment and work out what can appear where, as hood panels do vary from garment to garment style.
• if zipped, you can look at zip pullers, there are options to trim these to make them look funkier.

If in doubt, ask, between us here at HAD-Print we live our hoodies, we’ve tried many different options, and we know what we like. We listen to our customers and pick up what works, even when it is family members who are envious at people’s hoodies!