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guest3300 · January 21st, 2007

I spent all day Friday at the Long Beach Show. I went with a shopping list which helped me out quite a bit. The show was a little large to cover in one day but that was all I had available.

Things I liked: Vinyl cutters and direct to garment printers. These were the two big hits for me. These products show well although several of the printers were not working well and other than US Screen Print, no-one had a good dark color solution that looked as good. I was pleased that there were more dark color solutions out there including Anajet and maybe in the future SawGrass. I was most impressed with the SawGrass direct printer for a single portable unit.

Embroidery: These machines are getting better and better along with the software to run them. The digitizing software that comes with the machines is really getting good and will allow for more people to enter this market. Embroidered products have a much higher perceived value than a printed product and being able to move this in-house is our number one item on our to-do list. Also, there were at least 3 digitizing companies that have off-shored this function to reduce the cost of digitizing.

Time Spent at Booths: I spent a lot of time at the following: Imprintables, Digital Knight, SawGrass, Melco, Gildan, Conde, Rock Point Apparel and US Screen Print. I had a nice conversation with Aaron Kight from DK and he gave me some good tips on dye-sub with his equipment. I spent a long time at the Imprintables booth and they tried really hard to get me to buy the cutter on the floor but I just don't like impulse purchases so I decided to come home and review everything before I make a choice. Conde gave me a bunch of sample dye-sub papers and we had a long talk about their products. They are just a little too expensive compared to our current supplier. Melco has a great product and had one of their customers doing demos. He is right down the street from us so I might just drop by to take a look at what he does. He seemed like a nice guy. The Melco equipment looked pretty good for transportability to take to retail venues and it was nice looking also. The SawGrass direct to garment printer should be pretty competitive when they release their white kit. US Screen Print has their 3rd generation T-Jet 3 coming out. They had it there at the show and it looked pretty good. They were clearing out the T-Jet 2's with a 30% discount on price. I think these guys are really driving this market and right now have the best price/product for direct to garment printing. As the competition heats up this year I am sure we will see more entries into this market.

Best Products: Rock Point Apparel had some great American Flag themed clothing. The Owner was there and he was very friendly and has a great products. I can sell these things all day long so I am sure I will be purchasing from him. Roland cutters. The optical Roland cutters are great and are priced right at about $1700. I saw some great cutting going on at the show in a number of booths and your product line can only be limited by your imagination with these puppies.

Interesting Product: Inbrohas a single needle embroidery machine, RSC-1201, that changes colors and is self threading all on its own. I would like to see this in a real production environment to see how well it works. The field is a little limited but I like this product.

Poor booth people: I don't know why some companies put dead wood in the booth. They might as well put a cardboard cutout there. Several of the booths had people working in them that couldn't sell a snack to an Ethiopian. Also, some of the people working in the booths either A: just ignore you or B: don't speak enough English to make sense or C: don't know the product. Come guys, I am here to buy, are you here to sell or what? It was only the first day of the show, let's show a little spirit.

Product Brochures: I want to take home a spec on the product. Make sure those are out.

Booth Babes: Two booths had these that I saw. Actually, one had a single booth babe and the other had several. Nothing to write home about, they were all so-so. I am not sure why any of them were there.

What did anyone else think? I am sure I missed some important stuff, but then again, I had a focused mission in mind.

chriscass · January 21st, 2007

Hi Fred,

Thank you for posting your impression of the Long Beach show. I have been checking all of the threads hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on. I am going to purchase a vinyl cutter this week and am very interested in the Roland GX24. Do you remember seeing a demonstration of the Roland GX24 at the show?

Sounds like there were plenty of vendors there and that you saw and learned a lot. Glad that you had fun. I hope that the Orlando, FL show is as impressive.

Cass

lawaughn · January 21st, 2007

The news of Inbro seems exciting.

I'm hoping to make it to the Florida show.

Did anyone else have a good time?

Every show needs to have good booth babes.

chowzer2 · January 21st, 2007

someone thought i was 12 years old! lol ya you think you go ignored i was lucky to get my tag scanned

guest3300 · January 21st, 2007

The GX24 was the one that looked pretty good. I was very impressed with it.

chriscass · January 21st, 2007

That's Great!! Now I am even more excited about purchasing the Roland GX 24

I really appreciate the info! Have a Great Evening!

John S · January 21st, 2007

Thanks for the run down Fred.

I've got the GX-24 if you have any questions. It's a lot of fun.

badalou · January 22nd, 2007

Quote:


	someone thought i was 12 years old! lol ya you think you go ignored i was lucky to get my tag scanned

Gail got carded as well. I was hoping they would card me.. The show was great and I missed a few of the members there but met up with Rodney, Gail and Jim. There is a lot to see and a lot to think about before buying. I met with Deborah Stoffer from Impuse wear and they are now known as Art Brands. Lots of great new stock transfers. They have a supplement catalog. I think Fred did a great job of describing the show. There were lots of companies that do plastisol transfers there as well that I never heard of. I was impressed with a few of the apparel lines as well that I know had products that I would not use in the past. This business is getting very competitive for them so they are really trying to improve their products. If you want to get into this business there was something for everyone at every level. I agree with Fred about some of the booths. But I am also one that doesn't want someone chasing me down the isle. Some of the companies took their time in showing their products and answering my questions. If you can get to one of the shows I would totally recommend it. I was totally exhausted after my drive home and will start looking through my foot tall pile of books later. If I find something that I fell will help you I will post a link. Lou

Rodney · January 22nd, 2007

Thanks for the report back Fred. Hopefully others who went to the show will post their reports as well.

I'm working on mine once I get "caught up"

guest3300 · January 22nd, 2007

Yeah, I have all of the stuff we collected in boxes and need to go through them. I didn't want to make an impulse buy. We have a number of the manufacturers or distributors of the products in Southern California so I will probably make a few more trips before we spend $20,000-$50,000 on equipment and new supplies.

One thing I don't care for is the starter kits that have a lot of stuff that I may never use. Give me the tools but keep the consumables unless I order them unless you are giving me a few samples to pratice with.

guest3300 · January 24th, 2007

One other thing. The only person that I saw that I recognized was a guy we sub our screen printing out to. Funny, he came up to me when I was looking at some equipement and told the vendor not to sell to me. Heh.

I didn't see a single person from here except Josh from Imprintables and he was busy. About mid day I was dragging and I was only looking at products and not so much people.

Hopefully, next week I can get to the product information I picked up. We did get our first sales call yesterday from someone at the show that we scanned our badges at. I am sure more will come.

Did anyone buy anything at the show? Floor units? Were there any good deals? I know Vtec bought at T-Jet2, anyone else?

badalou · January 24th, 2007

Quote:


	Did anyone buy anything at the show?

I bought vinyl from Josh. I have been going to these type of shows for 30 years and stopped making buys at the shows long ago. You really need to check the information when you are relaxed and have the facts. I have seen too many people make impulse buys for equipment without doing a proforma report about how this equipment will earn its keep. (If you do not know what a proforma report is it is a report where you figure what the equipment will produce over a period of time. Will it earn it's keep. When will you get your return on investment. What is the operating cost on the equipment. ) I think a lot of people set themselves up for high cost for repairs, maintenance and other factors with out doing a good proforma study. It is the least thing done in buying equipment but it is the one tool you should do.

Vtec44 · January 24th, 2007

We need to sell between 1000-3000 shirts to get back the investment, that's including annual operating cost & consummables in addition to upfront investment cost. On the high end of the spectrum, that will come out to about 8.3 shirts a day. The initial cost usually throw people off, but it's relatively small IF you're able to recoup it within a defined time line (usually in a period of 3 - 5 years). Crap, I haven't even setup the printer yet! I definitely need to do that soon!!!!

One interesting item I saw at the show: linear automatic screen printing press. That is just too cool

guest3300 · January 29th, 2007

Well I finally had time to go through all the products and brochures I accumulated, tossed the junk and kept the best.

#1 on my list is embroidery I have 2 manufacturers on the hook and am working on getting live demos and contacts with their customers for real world experience. The 2 keys are ease of use and portability. We feel that we can take a commercial machine to a show/convention and out-sew the competition that only comes with 'home embroidery' machines. At under $20K this will pay for itself faster than any other investment we can make.

#2 on my list is vinyl I would love to print on vinyl which would solve our dark shirt problem and produce a product at least as good as screen printing without the hassle. The price tag is $14K for the Roland VersaCamm. Time to close the eyes, hold the breath, and jump!

#3 on my list is DTG printing This is by far the hottest item at the shows and the most problematic. The worst showing was from Brother who gave us a flawed sample. The best was from SawGrass who does not yet do black. Others that did black had various problems and most had some good white samples but all had their problems with black. If I had to choose between the 2 I would select the printed vinyl in #2.

The most interesting product was the ball cap with headlights. At $7+ a blank it is expensive but I may be able to work with that and still get a good margin.

The best catalogs were the ones that had sample colors on fabric. I got several of these, some were in the shape of t-shirts and some were just squares but these are better selling points for us than a printed page which really doesn't show the colors well.

I always enjoy these shows because it opens our eyes to new products and vendors. We found another cap vendor in the same city as our current one so we can now compare blank prices and get the best deal for the same product. It is always nice to be able to touch the products before we buy them.

Most needed booth: A beginners booth for each type of technology. Not everyone wants to pay for a seminar and they want an unbiased report on the 'how-to' for screen printing/dye-sub/transfer printing/etc. without a sales pitch.

chowzer2 · January 29th, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by binki


	The best catalogs were the ones that had sample colors on fabric. I got several of these, some were in the shape of t-shirts and some were just squares but these are better selling points for us than a printed page which really doesn't show the colors well. I always enjoy these shows because it opens our eyes to new products and vendors. We found another cap vendor in the same city as our current one so we can now compare blank prices and get the best deal for the same product. It is always nice to be able to touch the products before we buy them. Most needed booth: A beginners booth for each type of technology. Not everyone wants to pay for a seminar and they want an unbiased report on the 'how-to' for screen printing/dye-sub/transfer printing/etc. without a sales pitch.

I agree, I liked the catalogs with the sample colors on fabric. Also, I strongly agree with the idea of a beginners' booth. I took a friend who is interested in heat press and was overwhelmed with all the information and he was quickly confused. Luckily we met a nice lady who has done business with people in the same industry as him (motocross). But yes everything is a sales pitch even if it does include helpful information on how things are done.

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My impressions of the ISS Long Beach show

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