Off the Cuff: The ‘Blingification’ of Decorated Apparel

DECORATING DIVERSIFICATION

Off the Cuff: The ‘Blingification’ of Decorated Apparel

December 05, 2011
By Mark L. Venit, MBA, Contributing Writer

I met Joan Weber, a San Antonio-based decorated apparel entrepreneur, at a marketing workshop I conducted at the recent Ft. Worth Imprinted Sportswear Shows (ISS) event. After a discussion about the critical nature of choosing (or changing or adding) a company name and positioning a business to better reflect its core mission to customers and prospects, Joan handed me her business card.

Her company name is Bling Concepts, her company’s tagline is “Enhancing Your Brilliance!” and the first word listed in her product offerings is “Rhinestones.” If this were a college course and I were still in the world of being a professor, I’d award her an “A” for her mastery of business nomenclature and positioning fundamentals — though she came to the course already “schooled” on these principles. But the fact that her card sported a sparkling rhinestone to dot the “i” in the word “bling,” thus thoroughly reinforcing her company’s position, would earn her a fast A-plus.

While Joan is a relative newcomer to our craft, she has advanced her niche in it. Many veterans could learn a few things from this newbie.

Bling Bigger Than Ever
I’ve been pushing rhinestones to my consulting clients for more than 20 years. Through the 1980s, 1990s and into the 21st century, there was one main source for rhinestone transfers in our industry: Miami-based ZBSL, by any standard the pioneer of bling in the decorated apparel world. ZBSL only offered buyers Swarovski crystals, as well as nailhead designs (Today, a successor firm to ZBSL, Crystal Trends in Pembroke Pines, Fla., still provides high-end stones in their offerings). During the past decade, cut-glass rhinestones have been the standard of our trade and are considerably less costly than Swarovski stones.

Bling is bigger than ever and still growing in popularity on shirts, caps, higher-end wearables, jeans, bags, and fashion accessories. But you already know this and see the bling phenomenon as a staple today for women and younger (or younger-at-heart) audiences. The fact of the matter is that bling isn’t new; it has been around for millennia. When archaeologists dig up preserved bodies and skeletons all over the planet, their findings indicate jewelry was a common element in prehistoric and ancient times throughout diverse populations in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. While Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon adornments were fashioned from stones, bones, animal teeth and wood, it seems that folks were so attached to their personal charms, amulets and talismans that they took them to their next lives — whether by circumstance or due to indigenous custom.

Today, almost everyone — especially members of the fairer sex — has oodles of jewelry, from the more inexpensive costume genre to precious metals and gemstones. Though I cannot claim any authority in the field of human genomics, I believe women are actually hard-wired to love jewelry, as are a relatively healthy percentage of men (including me) who are psychologically attached to their favorite rings, neck chains, watches and other 21st century talismans, status symbols and cultural imperatives (e.g., wedding bands, fraternal jewelry, etc.).

Yet when I ask students at my trade events programs, “How many of you frontline rhinestones to your customers?” the answer is telling and uninspiring. Most embroiderers are quite familiar with it, but few push it. Most screen printers are aware of it, yet even fewer ever suggest it to buyers, much less advance it as a profit center for their enterprises.

If you haven’t attended a trade show in a while, here’s what you’re missing, as well as what you should know to get up to speed about rhinestones and other blingification trends.

1. Rhinestoning and Metallics: There are scores of providers of rhinestone transfers (custom and stock), rhinestones and rhinestone application technologies, as well as the related materials and systems for applying metallics. The stones and nailheads cost pennies, while heat transfer designs will cost you anywhere from $1 to $2, or an average of $5 to $12 for large, full-size designs. You can buy heat press-ready transfers or make your own using CAD-cut template systems. For more sophisticated direct applications, you can investigate purchasing a rhinestone setting machine for $20,000 and up. However you accomplish it, bling lets you triple, quadruple, or quintuple your hard costs — and with little price resistance from the buyer.

It’s the same with metallics. And in case you didn’t know it, nailhead designs can be screen printed! Talk to your ink supplier about how it’s done using high-density, chrome and doming inks.

2. Puff Embroidery (also called 3-D embroidery): Watch folks perusing licensed caps emblazoned with 3-D embroidery, usually done on a big letter on the front of the cap. They just have to touch it, as if hard-wired to do so. Hey, they can’t help themselves! Their brains say, “This is cool. It probably costs more, but I really like the look and feel and will probably buy it if I can get it, regardless of price.” Indeed they will buy it if given that option by their supplier (in this case, you). Embroiderers typically get $1 to $2 additional per cap. Where else can you invest pennies for some foam — as well as extra digitizing, stitching, labor and machine time — and get that kind of return. Actual out-of-pocket costs, depending on order particulars, amount to less than $0.10 to $0.15 per unit. (Yes, other items beyond headwear can be embroidered with the effect, though there are inherent limits using this application.) And, of course, you always can outsource production to a qualified contract embroiderer.

3. Specialty Inks: By my own estimate, less than one in 50 screen printing companies is skilled in printing high-density, suede, gel and other specialty inks. The prototypical answer I get when asking about whether they offer it is, “We don’t get much demand for it.” The chicken-and-egg issue here is finite: Buyers will rarely ask for it because they don’t know you can do it, and few know it can be done by any screen printer that wants to learn the technical processes involved.

Is it worth the effort to learn how to screen print using specialty inks? With the opportunity to charge an extra $0.40 to $0.75 per unit, I’ll leave the answer to your own judgment. Your investment? Most ink vendors will provide free sample ink for you to experiment and play with, along with technical specs on imaging, mesh count, squeegee type/angle/hardness and other particulars. All you really need to invest in learning the technology are time to gain command of the technologies and allocation of press time for learning the ropes. You also can avail yourself of the services of a technical sales rep (usually at no cost) or engage a technical consultant to teach you how to do it from A to Z.

4. Other Profit-Making Special Effects Technologies: Sequins can be applied by hand or sewn using accessories for your embroidery machines. Foils can be heat-applied. These, and other multimedia effects, are add-on techniques that earn high-margin profits. Why? Because your competitors don’t offer them.

If you’ve read this far and have yet to move into some of these money-making technologies, what are you waiting for? For those who might ask whether they can afford to do so, I’ll suggest you frame the question better as “Can I afford not to?” Investing some time and perhaps some money will likely yield healthy dividends. And if your initial foray is to engage contractors to provide your entry into these decorating realms, your risk is minimal.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute LLC, Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. His newest book, “The Business of T-Shirts: A Textbook for Success in Marketing and Selling Decorated Apparel,” debuted in March. To learn more about the book, visit thebusinessofTshirts.com. It costs $40 and is available from GroupeSTAHL, or from Venit. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

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