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Customer Highlight: Sugar Zombies

Does your apparel business fill a specific niche? Recently, we had the pleasure of talking with Tami Quinn, the owner of Sugar Zombies^®; which as the name implies, sells zombie apparel!

Tami originates from the coal mining town of Shamokin, PA and currently lives and runs her business in Albuquerque, NM. She was inspired to create the Sugar Zombies brand in late 2010 when she was searching for unique baby apparel for her newborn granddaughter.

“After trying to find cool, quirky, clothes for [my granddaughter]; that were outrageously priced,” Tami explains, “I decided to start making [my own].”

Sugar Zombies sells shirts for all ages, with sizes ranging from new born all the way to 4XL. Tami’s business started as just a logo, primarily for children and has since grown to become primarily for adults and teens with a comic book that will soon accompany the brand. The most popular Sugar Zombies apparel includes T-shirts, hoodies, and bandanas.

As a way to promote Sugar Zombies; Tami’s daughter and co-owner, Didi, along with her friends, dress up as characters from the soon-to-be-released post zombie apocalypse Sugar Zombies comic book series and attend ComicCons, SciFi Conventions, Horror Expos, Roller Derby Events, Zombie Crawls, Car Shows, and more. Tami says that they usually break even on the price of attending the shows.

“By the time I pay food, travel expenses, [and] rooms for 6 models, booth space, cost of new costumes and wigs… It’s a labor of love. We have fun though!” explains Tami on the cost of attending shows. Tami is currently considering adding extra customization options at shows to help raise sales and make up for show expenses.

Tami and her business contribute to local charities as well; mainly a few local children’s charities in the area that hold good reputation.

Tami says that she currently designs T-shirts for all of her local elementary schools. She even uses the Transfer Express free flyer generator to create flyers for apparel sales. This year, she created t-shirt and tote bags for her granddaughter’s kindergarten class and teachers.

Creating Custom Art

Tami explains how she used to send her art to screen printers and would get a significantly different result from design changes made at these companies. Since then, she has been using Easy Prints® art in the Easy View® online design tool to recreate her custom designs herself and get a final result that she is proud of! She even recreated her signature “Sugar Zombie” logo in the Easy View designer.

“With Easy View, I try to use every millimeter of space,” explains Tami. “I design with a few sizes on one [screen printed transfer sheet].”

Tami takes full advantage of her 11.25” x 14” transfer sheet to make sure that she gets the full value from it! She even wears her own apparel before releasing the designs and gets great feedback with people actually stopping her to ask where they can purchase a t-shirt. Below is a great example of one of the designs that Tami created from scratch in Easy View along with characters from the Sugar Zombies comic book story that the design was inspired by.

“I think my strength lies in the design process,” says Tami.

Though she is not familiar with vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw; the Easy View online designer helps her to express her creativity by creating her own art. She often starts from scratch to get the specific look that she wants to create. Below are a couple more examples of apparel art that she created in Easy View.

Tami really enjoys creating t-shirt art and says that she would love to design t-shirts for a living, helping companies that do not have an artistic eye.

We enjoyed learning more about Tami and her company, Sugar Zombies, and look forward to seeing even more of Tami’s custom t-shirt designs in the future! Below is a picture of Tami with Addy Miller, who portrayed a young zombie in “The Walking Dead” television series.