Transfers Offer Solution For Hard-To-Decorate Items

Almost everyone is familiar with the fact that transfers are a great decorating medium for just about any type of apparel that is made of cotton, polyester, or a cotton/poly blend.

When Illinois Glove Co., Northbrook, Ill., was looking for a solution to print full-color logos on gloves for its promotional product customers, CAD-PRINTZ™ turned into a great solution for the company.

Prior to using Transfer Express, the manufacturer was screen printing one-color logos onto gloves. “Screen printing was a mess,” notes Jay Shmikler, director of sales and marketing. “Because the glove was made of a knit fabric, the print would fall into the little mesh holes. We could do only one color with screen printing, and then we lost out on orders to other products that could offer multiple color logos.”

Today, the company uses Easy Prints for one-color orders and CAD PRINTZ for full-color logos. Another reason digital transfers have been such a great match is the wide range of materials that gloves are made of.

“We offer gloves for automotive, construction, farm, ranch, trucking companies, freezer gloves for people who are stocking shelves in the grocery stores, and safety awards; you name it, we have probably done it,” says Shmikler.

So when choosing a decorating process, it’s important to match the right method to the glove material.

“We have certain types of gloves that we use Easy Prints,” says the director. “If the glove stretches, we have to make sure we get Easy Prints because that stretches. If the logo has a lot of detail, we use CAD-PRINTZ. So when someone comes to us with an eight-color logo, CAD-PRINTZ looks amazing. You can get shading that you really can’t get in a screen printed transfer.”

As a steady customer for the past four years, Shmikler has been satisfied with the product and the customer service. “They are good at returning calls, they are professional and they’re easy to deal with.”

If you have a customer come in with a hard-to-decorate item, next time, don’t turn them away. Investigate if using a digital transfer may be the perfect solution!

Switching from direct screen printing to screen printed and digital transfers solved several embellishing challenges for Illinois Glove Co. faced when decorating gloves for promotional product clientele. Photo courtesy of Illinois Glove Co., Northbrook, Ill.