Today’s guest on the Success Stories podcast is Erich Campbell, and we’ll focus on all things embroidery. Erich is a prolific writer, content creator, and a fantastic teacher.
You may have seen him at a trade show, on the 2 Regular Guys podcast, or on his own podcast, The Takeup. But what do you actually know about Erich? How did he get into this business? What is he interested in?
We’ll dig into all that and more in this edition of the Success Stories podcast. So buckle up and get ready for an amazing episode!
Today’s guest on the Success Stories podcast is Erich Campbell, and we’ll focus on all things embroidery. Erich is a prolific writer, content creator, and a fantastic teacher.
You may have seen him at a trade show, on the 2 Regular Guys podcast, or on his own podcast, The Takeup. But what do you actually know about Erich? How did he get into this business? What is he interested in?
We’ll dig into all that and more in this edition of the Success Stories podcast. So buckle up and get ready for an amazing episode!
Marshall Atkinson
Today's guest on the Success Stories podcast is Erich Campbell, and will focus on all things embroidery, of course, right. So Eric is a prolific writer, content creator and a fantastic teacher. You may have seen him at a trade show on the two regular guys podcast, or on his own podcast, the take up, but what do you really know about Eric? How did he get into this business? What is he interested in? We'll dig into all them more in this edition of the Success Stories podcast. So buckle up and get ready for an amazing episode. So Eric, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.
Erich Campbell
Oh, thank you for having me, sir. Happy to be here.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. And I know that we'll never run out of stuff to talk about, we always kind of like, push each other a little bit. Right? And for sure. Do you remember I don't remember when I met you. It feels like unknown you like forever.
Erich Campbell
The biggest because we all be right. And we teach and we do all this stuff. What I remember was, I already knew you we had talked several times. And then I was under the impression the show. And we had this moment where people may or may not know but us we're both pretty tall. You are taller than I am, which is something to say because about six, four. So he say you're a tall human being. And I remember we were standing in front of the impressions entryway where but he was kind of piling down, and you waved your hand above the crowd and I was out there and both of us head to head and we could see each other clearly above us throng of people got impressions that first time we hung out
Marshall Atkinson
what's really great about being close, everybody is your shoulder height. And you can just see everything.
Erich Campbell
Oh, it's great at the show is it really helps out. Plus, like I said, you and I anybody's talked to one of us, you can usually find us pretty quick.
Marshall Atkinson
All right. Hey, you ready to get into some some questions? Always? Yeah. All right. So and I think this is gonna be really fascinating, because I don't even know the answer to this one. So the first question is, how did you get started in this industry? And why embroidery? Because I know that was not your college focus, though.
Erich Campbell
No, not at all.
Marshall Atkinson
How did you get sucked into this business? Eric?
Erich Campbell
Well, honestly, we all had to take jobs while we're going to school. And that's what I did. I came from fairly, you know, meager means it's not like I came from money. So I worked and had scholarships and all that. And part of what I did was I worked at a t shirt shop. And originally I was the guy in the back of a truck hucking boxes around, we were driving around doing deliveries, I was in a delivery truck. However, they asked, Hey, we need people to work on the embroidery machines. Are you cool with that? Do you want to try it and knowing me anything electronic, any kind of machinery, anything that has some technology behind it, I'm interested in and I said, I'd like to learn how to run those. Sure, why not? Plus, I needed something to do. And I would like to keep getting hours. So the first thing was I became a machine operator. It was there already. And I'll say this also wasn't afraid of this kind of machines. My mother was a soloist is the good term we use now. My mother was a soloist when she was younger. And so I knew about sewing machines and selling I wasn't particularly scared of them. It's not that I can't sew even now I can't. So like I couldn't make a shirt unless I forced myself I can make it make a poor version of one. But I wasn't afraid machines got on and they had me operating. And I started out operating a couple of machines. First, some old Milko starlets. And then the ones that I kind of really cut my teeth on were a couple of six needle 12 Head to jivas. I often ran them both by myself. They didn't have thread break sensors. So I had to run up and down the machines watching to make sure things didn't go wrong and stop the machines at a heartbeat and back into place when things went wrong. But I was just using using those tools. I mean running shirts for a fairly large company. I had a couple of big oval automatics, so big screen printing company had a decently sized embroidery segment as well. Like I said, couple 12 has we ran reliably and some other machines were running all the time. And from there, it just came to be that as I was running those machines, I was looking over at the machinery we had a new single head we brought in at the time a brother commercial machine, which they don't even make those anymore. Sadly, they feel older and older every time I tell the story. But over there by the new single head was a computer under a desk cover. And I've been a computer guy my whole life. I've been kind of a nerd. I always wanted to make stuff. I've had a website since the late 90s When you could have one. And I'm just like, Hey, what's that computer is that something like we can use? First thing I'm thinking is I want to get online at work because hey, that's the truth. The second thing was, Hey, what is it? What does that attach to? What does that do? And I was told oh, that's the computer that makes the files the discs we call them are tapes back then because it was still back in the day where people still knew what paper tape was from the original machines that makes the tape somebody really wants to learn how to use it. And he's kind of free of the thing. It's just we had it for a while. And I'm like, can I use it? Talk to the boss. And what I always do, I put like nice square care quotes on this, when I'm talking personally, I put little finger quotes in the air, he allowed me to have all the time I wanted to off the clock to learn that I now know that was much to his advantage. But I spent late nights working on that software, it was a really old DOS based software, it could display like 16 colors, and it couldn't draw curve by itself, he had to draw little segments to your curves. But I learned how to digitize by myself. So push myself to do it was doing like 20 hour days, because I would literally do like a double shift somewhere, go back to school, come back after that. And they would let me stay in could open and close the building. And that other time was just me, you know, almost sleeping under the desk working on that software until I learned how to use it. And then when was this, this isn't a late night. I mean, I became kind of a full fledged digitizer in 99. So that was when it really kind of went down. And like I said, like teenager, so just getting there. So as a late teen as I was in college, I was doing this and digitizing and within about three months, I went from my first digitizing to doing all the digitizing for that company and taking over for everything we had outsourced.
Marshall Atkinson
Right. And for newer embroidery people like he used to have to load the file on a floppy disk and Yeah, put it over there. And actually, there's some shops are probably still around. They absolutely
Erich Campbell
do that same. We can be a little behind like that sometimes. Yeah. And it still works. But yeah, hopefully
Marshall Atkinson
nobody's got a magnet.
Erich Campbell
There are people who steal story stuff. I'm just gonna say it right here. People backup your computer somewhere else. If you have storage on a floppy disk, please download onto your computer right now. Right now get it on your computer and put that somewhere on the cloud. Don't press pause on the show right now. Literally right now. That's fine. Marshall will be okay. If you come back later. I won't even know. Yeah, seriously, he doesn't know. Only we know that you need to go fix that.
Marshall Atkinson
Alright, so you started you're doing embroidery. Right? And then you start playing around with stuff. If I know you, right, you're making as many Celtic knots as you can possibly imagine.
Erich Campbell
More Viking stuff. But yeah, I immediately people might not know my actual degree is in medieval studies, English with a focus on medieval studies. And I did a lot of like, pre Christian Scandinavia. I went I went and was in Iceland for some study as well during that period of time. So I went I kept on going back to school. I didn't just disappear out of school. I did eventually get that degree much later. But yeah, Medieval Studies. That was my thing. So yeah, I made medieval designs, I practiced on anything I could. And I just honestly, I started in production. So soon that I was just doing doing logos doing the work very quickly. Later on. People said, oh, yeah, you teach you a couple years to get good. And I'm sitting here and I've been doing production for a fairly nice shop since about three months in. I'm not gonna say I didn't make mistakes. I made tons. But yeah, it was a trial by fire. Fire. Yeah, for sure.
Marshall Atkinson
And this was Black Duck, or is this somebody else?
Erich Campbell
Somebody else there was another company previous to that, that eventually, when you guys know that I tell about kind of a harsh stories about how businesses sometimes don't make it. They were bought by Black Duck where everybody knows me from. And I be I came over as part of the purchase from that company.
Marshall Atkinson
Oh, you're you're like, when would they buy a sports team? You're like that you're the the that's an asset. Oh, you get here?
Erich Campbell
Oh, and it turned out the other way around? I'll tell you this for everybody who wonders about you know, does it make a difference? You creative digitizing work, since people kind of argue whether it's worthwhile to put that in. I was originally provisionally at my company. And it was the quality of my digitizing and the ability that I showed in it. I supplanted the original digitizer that was there. And they said they literally said we didn't know this is the what was said to me after about a year and a half and we didn't know what we were going to do with you. Now we don't know we will do without you. And I've heard that since I left to Now admittedly, I also did a bunch of E commerce and other stuff they didn't they didn't know that I've been doing that for my entire career as well. So it's that mixture of skills and also Yeah, creative work is what kept me in a job.
Marshall Atkinson
Now I taught myself Photoshop right and you taught yourself embroidery digitizing, right? And so kind of how I did it were I would do something simple. Draw Red Square and print it Okay, draw a red square, make a letter printed. Okay, now separate now. And just I kept adding complexity to teach myself the new thing, which is what I'm doing with this whole crazy mid journey thing right now. I just keep teaching myself things. So is that how you learn digitizer or Did you like take a class? Or what? How did you how did you learn initially
Erich Campbell
trial and error, but this is something and something we may we kind of have on the docket to talk about as far as creativity, I really analyze designs that were already there was the first thing because embroidery is not just, it's more like CAD, if you guys know like computer assisted drafting or computers is a manufacturing, it's a tool pass, because we're controlling this xy axis. And we have to know our materials and how they respond. So it was not just draw square printed, it's like alright, draw square printed, stitch it on several different materials and see how they pull, push and distort, and then see what I have to change about my square for it to come out as a square again and have full coverage. So it was both the material reactions I was testing, and how to literally draw the shape I wanted. So both of those things were going on at the same time. And while I'm doing that I had this wealth of designs, because the company I went to had already been around for some time. And a lot of them were done from back in the day, when people used to punch every stitch in it was called punching, where you you literally drew every single stitch one at a time. And they did all these wonderful techniques, I brought them into my software, I realized, hey, this software has a measuring tool in it, I can measure the stitch length, I can measure how the distance between rows of stitching, which is the density, I can look how it's built, I would replay them slowly, they have the digital replay where you watch all the stitches run on the on the screen. And I would just watch them run over and over. And because I was already an operator, I had watched designs run I had watched how when a design runs, okay, here's a nice white satin stitch on a soft material, the stabilizers a little weak, it's going to pinch and pull and distort. And I knew how that worked already. So I kind of had a sense for the material. And now I was watching how masters had built these designs. And I took notes. Literally I sat and took notes on those designs and figured about I took them apart piece by piece, and then replicated new designs out of what I had learned.
Marshall Atkinson
So here's the thing, you're connecting the dots by you ran stuff before. So you're an operator, so you know what happens, you're just watching the needle moves, you see it sewing, and then now you're watching the replay of the design up on the computer screen. And you're connecting the similarities between the two. And that's where it dawns on you. Oh, yeah, if I do that, I get this.
Erich Campbell
Yeah. And also you just look at designer like Wow, I love this jacket back design we did it has this beautiful vintage airplane art. And we're like, boy, it has a real smooth fill in this red section here. Go back to that file and say alright, stitch length is four millimeters density was 4.2 millimeters. The stitch angle is about 15 degrees off the horizontal. And now I can take those settings and I also what kind of underlay Did it have, what direction wasn't moving in relation to the other pieces, take all those notes. And then when I want that fill, I replicate it by getting those same measurements into the new design on creating. And that's how a lot of my original designs came about. I mean, I made my own techniques and my own stitch types and things down the road or my own settings for them at the very least. But as I started I'm like man, my fills look junky and choppy. Why do they look junky? I'm a stitch lengths are too, too short, and I want some smoother and longer and shinier. And it turns out, I just had to measure some of the stuff that's already there. If you're we're always standing on the shoulders of giants. I mean, there's nothing to be ashamed of in that. And honestly, I always encourage people to analyze my designs.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah. And so did you make like a cheat sheet as probably like, you actually sewed some things as test patterns, and made it like a little flip book. Okay, I want this type of thing. flip to page four. There it is. And I could use it for that design.
Erich Campbell
Absolutely, I did what I called swatch testing. And I still do it today, where I will not only will I do that, I'll make small alterations to one variable, like the density, and then make a swatch of say 18 squares, changing the density by a small increment each time. And then I sell out this big set of swatches and I can tell you exactly I can dial in on exactly the coverage I want with that color combination with that threat on that fabric. Now it sounds like a lot to do. But when you're developing a new technique, it's like you do that once and it just teaches you a lot. You now have a frame of reference. And usually you can look at materials you look at something new, and you're like it's similar to this thing I've already done. The setting should be about like this and once I run my first sample, I know where my changes have to be. But you start from these like panels of variations or you do things that are wild or like very the patterns vary. Stitch length vary, you know angles on the material and see how it runs.
Marshall Atkinson
And really this is about teaching yourself the vocabulary of the medium.
Erich Campbell
Absolutely. It's all about knowing the medium and how the medium works. And I think that people don't think of the physical medium of embroidery enough. They treat it like it's a thread printer, and they think it's going to be like ink. If I can make something look like it's supposed to look like on the screen, it will be okay on the machine. And it's absolutely not the case, if it's perfect on screen, it will be distorted on the machine and vice versa.
Marshall Atkinson
And that's because it's a loose substrate that you're sewing with thread. And it's always going to be different. And that's why there's all these different combinations you got to think of,
Erich Campbell
when people think that you're selling on a garment, they say that, Oh, yes, embroider this on this garment. You're sewing through the garment, I'm putting 1000s of little threads that are now through the garment and the stabilizer. And they're taking up space, and they're pushing and pulling, they're under tension. If they're, depending on if they're rayon or polyester, polyester springy, it has stretched to it. So it's going to have more lash, the physical nature of the material and US jamming 1000s of needles, needle points through and leaving those stitches behind. It's changing the landscape of that fabric that we're working on. And if we forget for a minute that it's a physical thing that we are altering through that we are literally physically making it integrate building new fabric out of this thread that we're putting down when we forget that that's when we have issues, it's when we think that we're printing on the surface, we forget that what we're really doing is 1000s of stabs through the material that leave behind a thread that goes through every single layer that's in it. When you start thinking that way, you get more of the technicality of
Marshall Atkinson
I guarantee. The people that sell embroidery don't give that a pause. And there's just okay, it's three bucks on the left chest for this polo. That's all they're thinking. They're not thinking about any of that.
Erich Campbell
Right? And here's the thing you can get by and do things that are technically proficient by doing what you've been told to do and doing what makes sense from people like me who teach you. But if you're going to go from good digitizing to great digitizing, or from technically proficient digitizing to creatively proficient digitizing, it takes understanding the medium you're working in. That's the that's the first part of that step.
Marshall Atkinson
Yep. And that brings up my second question here is, is one of the most fascinating things I think about embroidery is how you can digitize to use the thread. So it appears differently how white hits it. So talk about some techniques that shops can use to dial in those results for a better crafted outcome, because that's what we're after here.
Erich Campbell
I think a big part of it is the stuff we've already talked about. Stitch frames of reference, understand what the same width of stitching and stitch angle will do on different materials with different stabilizers do that certainly. And the big thing is, don't think of the art as the end result that you've been given. I mean, when you're given a digital, original, you don't want to replicate it, what you want to do is make the best embroidered result that represents it. That's the first step. And a part of that is knowing how embroidery works. If you know the physicality of the thing, if you imagine each stitch as a physical piece of thread and know that light reflects differently depending on the angles and thread, depending on the length of the stitches and how they're put together. If you start to know that by developing the strange references by stitching out those swatches of patterns, you get that put together with this concept that just because something looks a certain way in the art isn't the way that I'll draw the physical shapes for embroidery, you're halfway there. If there's a continuous area of color, in a print or a digital original, it doesn't mean it's one object and embroidery and it often should not be we interpret into the best thing we can do for embroidery. And that means making changes and alterations during that interpretation. It's not just a replication of the art, it's there. It's us looking at that art, using it as our guideline for at least for the first step, which is replication. We'll talk about more of this as we get into creative creativity and why I think there's yet another step beyond this. But then we say alright, what can I do with the scale, the way it space, the way the amount of detail that's in it, that makes the most sense for the size of decoration I'm trying to achieve to get the right effect out of threat thread, which is like I said, you can only ever make one real stitch. Here's the first thing I'm gonna say to understand that there is only one stitch. These machines are essentially interlock sewing machines with a big xy axis gantry on them. What does this mean the pantograph moving, every stitch is one line of a single thickness from point A to point B. It's the only thing we can make and every other stitch type is us combining those in different ways. That's how the original puncher is made. Everything is one stitch at a time and everything we make every fill stitch every satin is just the direction and how close to the last stitch you placed the next one. So understanding the basic element of that which is the thread the stitch that the angle of it matters that the length of it matters and that how They are layered matters to the way that they look. As far as creating dimension as far as communicating color, if you start to get that, through that annal, analyzing designs, through creating these frames of organs and stitching out the different stitch types and the different angles and the different settings and densities, you'll start to get it. But it's when you don't think of the thread that you lose it, it's, I often call it like being stitch conscious, understand things on a stitch level, and then understand things on the collections and stitches, the satins. The Phil's, what have you, as far as your software is telling you these collections stitches are called, and then know what that looks like in the real world. And the last part of this is, you're never going to get it till it's on a machine. And the final step is always an embroidery. And if I have another word to say it, it's just like the solid phrase to remember, the produce of the digitizer is embroidery, not the file. The file is an intermediate step, it is part of the process. But it is not the produce, you don't know what it is, until it is stitched out on the machine, using the materials that most closely match the actual environmental, the stitching. But what I mean by that is the garment that is actually going to go on and that it's intended for one file can of course sometimes be used for multiple garments, multiple types. But there are differences depending on what garment what color the garment is the texture and the thickness of that material, and the service quality the material as well. So ultimately, you really don't know the final outcome, until you're stitching on the right materials. Really on the machine that it's intended to run on. That's the final absolute answer to did I do this? Well, and how's it gonna look?
Marshall Atkinson
And let me say, I've seen some amazing embroidery pieces over the years just with a single color. Yeah, because they're actually not just doing a fill stitch everywhere, they're actually making the petals of the flower or they're the, the, you know, pushing some things back and making things a little higher in some areas to give the sense the depth. Absolutely, they're using the idea of the angle, right? Because they know that the the lights going to hit a different way. And then you'll be able to see that that is a you know, whatever the object is, and it'll give it a little better dimension. I think these are always done by people who really have some skill isn't just hey, I can get it for four bucks and 1000s
Erich Campbell
Oh, yeah, absolutely. But don't get me wrong. You're gonna find people every time somebody says that, oh, well, that just means overseas guys are all bad. And people who talk to you in the states are all good. Absolutely not. They're the thing is that you don't always know what you're going to get. If you're going to a big company that has many digitizers, you don't know who you're going to get you to can't communicate with them necessarily individually. And so you might have a better or worse outcomes. It's not, it's just not just that everybody has a certain skill depending on what price you pay. It's that if you can get somebody who knows this stuff, and who will talk to you like I'm talking now about stitch angles, about the contrast between stitch types on Congress elements, elements that are next to each other. That kind of stuff, if someone is in that mode, and can talk to you about those things, or how underlay or support materials can raise certain elements. Multimedia, if they're talking to you about the design side of it, if they ask you about the material you're using and make adjustments for that material, that's going to be a better a better chance that you're getting that creative touch every time, then sometimes, you know, we see people just going on Fiverr or going to Etsy or something and finding whoever is cheapest. It's not to say that the cheap digitizer can't be good. It is to say that you aren't going to be able to control that outcome and be sure of it unless you have somebody who is speaking the language. Like as you said, you learn the language of the medium. And there are lots of people out there not speaking language. And frankly, there's lots of people out there who have digitizing software in which may or may not be pirated. People complain about that a lot too, but often don't have machines and haven't spent any time on them. And in that case, they're often using kind of cheap automation and doing it fast and getting it out the door because that's that's the main goal for them.
Marshall Atkinson
Well, I know a lot of shops that have their own hand and a house guy yeah woman right just because they want to control what's on their machines and they don't want to be responsible for somebody else's crappy DST file, right? And yeah, they'll redo it and the customer will never know. And that's why you know, their tiny type looks great or their whatever, and the other people can't match it and nobody knows how they did it. Right. It's some secret because they care enough to make sure it's right.
Erich Campbell
And beyond that there's there's good and bad reasons to decide to date digitizing in house and I'll make it as quick and as clear as I can. The worst reason to take digitizing and houses because you don't want to pay somebody out. outsource to do it. For the worst reason, because you're probably going to end up paying more especially an opportunity cost if you take it in yourself, especially at first. So if your first thing is I'm tired of giving, you know, the fiver Guy 10, up 10 bucks to get this done. That's a terrible reason to bring it in house digitizing. Good reasons are quick, creative input to be able to deal with the creative side of it, you want to develop new techniques, things like that, that often takes a lot of back and forth, even with the best digitizers. And you might want to do that in house. You want them to know exactly your equipment and the mix of equipment and styles that you like to use and develop things specifically for your market and your specific equipment or tool chain or your workflow, great to have them in house because then they know exactly how to manipulate production for your equipment and the way you like to work efficiency, because often efficiency can be improved if you make small changes per job that a digitizer can do very quickly if they're on site and know what's going on. So there's production efficiency, there's also production control, like I said, with your equipment. And then there's that other thing, the Genesee quoi that makes it important, which is that that creative side where you get to do different kinds of implementations, both creative problem solving, when it's not necessarily about the creativity of the art, it's just about how to get something stitched, and you might want to do something different in the digitizing side. And the artistic creativity, which often requires some experimentation and talking with customers, and having somebody in house means you've got kind of a built in consultant. Those are great reasons. Not paying fiver guy, that's a very poor reason to take it on. Well, plus,
Marshall Atkinson
you know, you know, we can know that. If we do it ourselves. We know how our machines run, we have less red brakes, which means we produce more per day.
Erich Campbell
Oh, yeah. Quality digitizing no matter where you get it is going to also increase efficiency. Because that whole stitch consciousness thing I talked about, part of that is also using every stitch you need, but no stitch you don't. You get your coverage by making sure you've got good underlay good construction, as well as just packing in stitches. And it needs you just literally get back time. Some of those swatch tests I talked about, it sounded like all I was doing was doing this kind of creative faffing about to see how the stitch types looked. But one of the biggest wash tests I do is to look at contrast, and specific thread combinations. And I check densities, because I have regularly managed to get anywhere from 10 to 18% Less stitching to cover like less stitching that you think people think of a standard covering film is about a point four millimeter or four embroidery point density if you know what I'm talking about just how close together those roses stitches are. But depending on the color combination, in the end, the machine you're running on with the materials you're running on, and the the kind of threads of thread has little fuzz to it, let's say you're using like a spun polyester, you can back that down sometimes 20%. And what that means is 20% More runtime in your day. I mean, we can talk about how nice it feels, it makes the hand of the garment better too. But it also means getting back a tremendous amount of time on those machines or just getting your stuff out faster. Any way you slice that that's a that's a business decision to not just creative as much as I do plenty of creative faffing about
Marshall Atkinson
like once you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zach shortly with the SMS spotlight
Commercial
on our blog, the press, we've worked hard to bring you info on the latest fashion trends, business advice from your industry, peers and inspiration help you think outside the box. Because SNS we believe your success is our success. It's a priority for us to find ways of bringing you the knowledge that will help take your business to the next level. So if you're looking for ways to deliver something unique for your clients grow or operate your business and to learn new methods for selling products, check out the press at press the SS activewear.com Thanks for listening.
Marshall Atkinson
So how can more shops be unique in their approach to embroidery? Eric? What's the secret to be less of a commodity? Because I think, you know, kind of like screen printing you know, it's just a it's a left chest. Anybody can do it. Why do I care? Right? How can we provide more value get better clients? So we're doing we're embroidering some things that's hard to beat like, like, I can't get that just anywhere. How do we develop that?
Erich Campbell
Well, certainly some stuff we already talked about because so few people do think of it as a physical medium. Knowing how stitch angles stitch length type, and honestly combination where they're when they are close together, how they contrast each other, will go a long way understanding embroidery like that goes a long way into creative or dimensional use of embroidery where we don't just grab a vector shape and splash fill stitch to entirely fill the entire area. If we stopped doing that, start piecing things out parsing them so that we can get some different stitch types and qualities to our texture. That's a big thing. That's a very good start. Beyond that Now we can go just into the materials, you don't have to use 40 weight, polyester thread on everything. You can use different thread types, you can use Applied Materials. So let's say we're not changing the art yet, we can do an applique, we can do a patch version of something, we can use a multimedia, we can use printing as part of the setup, sublimation, and I know we were often talking about coloreel coloreel is actually a new thing rather than thinking of it as just replacing thread changes on your machine. Think about what it can do that other things can and it's the same thing with any embroidery. What is it the embroidery can do that other media do not do, or at least don't do the same way. And it is, like we talked about before the roof, the way light reflects off the thread, the ability to change the sheen and texture of the piece, the dimension off of the surface, I always like to tell people to thinking about digitizing both for technical, technical problems and for creativity. Imagine yourself as an ant walking on the garment. And now start thinking about building those layers of embroidery and you think about them differently. It's structural. And we can build up dimension or use materials 3d foam washaway materials, especially if you're doing this something is retail style, and you can convince one of your customers to let you wash the carbons at a cost. That's been hard in my career to get people to go that far. These days, people are willing to do more retail style treatments, whereas I know back in the day business to business, we didn't do a lot of it. But using those Applied Materials using different threads. Working on the texture is the first step, then we go even beyond that. And you get to a point where you bring in the design chops from your team as well. And the one thing I like to tell people is to coordinate don't replicate, don't take the same logo at a couple of slot sizes and slap it on the hat, slap it on the left chest, make a big one and put it on the back of the thing and call it good. We want to do coordinating pieces. I mean, Nike does their logo in a million different ways in different colors and different styles and different positions on the garment. And it's still the Nike logo, you can do that on a commercial level. And I have done where we have problems with the hat because the entire logo mark is too small or it's too vertical and narrow. So it doesn't look great on a hat front. Use a different element that's part of the branding on the hat front and pair it with the outerwear, pair it with the garment to make a uniform collection. Even in the business world, we can do things like use an icon or a mark as the the hat logo, but then go in and have text or the full word mark on the shirt of the outerwear that it goes with. If we think about coordinating looks, and we think about the more retail style of presentation, especially as it comes to adding, you know different stylistic treatments, what if your company now did a varsity jacket, I've done this very experiment before. Let's do a varsity jacket for your top earners in your company. And we'll do your logo. But we're going to do it in a collegiate style that looks like it's from the mid century. And we're still bringing the logo in. But now we've got shinier lettering and arm patches and a colorblock style jacket. And we've made a look around the brand that has some other stylistic cues and gets to make the best use of the medium that get let's embroidery do the thing. It does best, have some texture have some visual interest to it. So it's not that that's something every not every company is coming in. Not every Joe's plumbing is going to come in and say yeah, I'm looking for a full retail styled, you know, three garment package that's going to do this stuff. But that's also not a client. And we're looking for those clients who want to spend a little money and have a cool corporate image package. I think that's something we want as especially people who are reaching a little bit beyond. So yeah, thinking that way.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, we can think about, you know, the it's the same amount of time on the machine. Are you making $1 and making $10.
Erich Campbell
On top of that, pitch it? The thing that gets me is I have people who are telling me to my face. Nobody's going to do that. I'm like, Have you ever asked anybody if you could change the logo? Have you ever said, Logos not working exactly great. But here's an idea for how we could get the most the most impact out of the small decoration area on a hat with your logo. And the magic phrase I teach everybody when they come to my classes is look him in the face and say, You know what, I like your art. If it were my logo, if it were my piece that I was making, this is what I would do to get the most out of it. I mean, believe it though, don't just pitch them garbage because it's easier to do that than the small text. I mean, I'd much as much as I often try and tell people you know, use what I call the handshake distance. If you can't read it at three feet. It may not be that important, because that's about how far apart we are Americans especially when we shake hands, we usually around three feet apart. Back during the pandemic I told people use social distancing. If something has to be visible, you might want to have it visible from six feet. Because honestly if it must be read and someone has to know what it says, then making it tiny just for the sake of being able to because you're a great digitizer or a great embroider awesome. But what's the job of this promotional piece for making? If the job is conveying a message? Why do you want it so small that it can't be seen unless someone is very rudely putting their nose to your chest? You don't want that. So part of it is being a consultant for your customer, not a commodity decorator. Now there are Hey there contract decorators. There's nothing wrong with that contract decorators who they may or may not do this, where somebody else has already done this legwork of dealing with the customers desires. And now you're just decorating. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you are in a space where you have direct contact with a customer, and they are asking these questions and wondering why things are one way or another, why not make the pitch? Why not? Hey, why not make your job more creative? So you get to do something fun once in a while. Yeah, nothing else.
Marshall Atkinson
Plus, if you're bringing them new ideas, and I've done this my whole career, you didn't even ask for it. But here's here's something really cool. We just thought it'd be fun to do. And we made this just for you. And then you put that on top of the box with their last order you ship. Absolutely. And here's what they'll say is, gosh, I don't even know you could do hats.
Erich Campbell
Oh, totally. Absolutely. One. The other thing is funny. People say well, nobody will buy this. If you do some of that work. I can't tell you how many times have you seen a really cool piece I've done that was difficult and expensive. I explain how expensive I show them this, you know, crazy masterwork. And don't get me wrong, they look at and go, Wow, that's incredible. I would like a regular single color logo, please. But the thing is the level of trust I have with them after they see my capacity for that is different. Yeah, like man, if he can handle that, that he could definitely do our usual left chest logo. And the funny thing is, then when they do get a little money behind them when they do get a creative project. Who do you think they're coming to first? They're like, Oh, you know, who could probably really knock that jacket back out of the park you want to do for our 25th anniversary? Let's go get the guy who did that weird thing. Let's go get that guy and try something out. Let's see if we can make something cool. That's right.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, that's yeah, he can make a great standing rocker of ribs. All he needs is a ham sandwich. Okay, I bet he thinks he could. Bless
Erich Campbell
your bucks. Yeah. I mean, they're willing to pay more for the ham sandwich sometimes, because they know that you're the guy who makes the rack, right? It's funny, if you can be trusted with something incredible, then they often are like, well, I've got the V guy, I've got the shop working on my work. Well, that's
Marshall Atkinson
what you want. You want to turn all of your customers into evangelists for yes, 100%, right. And the only way that you can do that is to be unique, and to do stuff that nobody has ever seen before. And so that way, they'll go, hey, you need to use my embroidery guy, or my embroidery gal. This is they do such amazing work. Let me give you their number. That's what you want.
Erich Campbell
I'm not gonna lie and say it's not more labor on your part. But what I'm gonna say is, for me in my career, the outcomes have always outweighed that labor. For me, that's the truth, the outcomes in the end have always outweighed that labor. I can very rarely I can count on on both hands, how many times somebody has seen a more creative version of the logo that I've come up with, or what I always do is the dimensional carving, where I break up a big area of flat color and make it a few different pieces of, of embroidery, a few different objects that I get some cool textures, or I can represent real structures in the item, like we have a silhouette and I break up the hands into satin stitches. So the fingers look nice, whatever it is, I can count on two hands. How many times have you said nope, I want the flat version. In fact, I think it's one hand and this is with a career spanning decades. It's not that everybody likes the more dimensional look necessarily. You probably have a couple of people who don't, but people don't even know it's there. And often what they do is they see some little detail in your work and go oh wow, look at that detail. Whatever that detail is. Wow, look at that. I can't believe you even thought to put that in there.
Marshall Atkinson
And you can sell a circle are
Erich Campbell
true enough right? Sometimes it's not this that's that's the hardest thing sometimes the most complicated pain in the butt stuff we do is just the most forgettable
Marshall Atkinson
Well, you know, you're dealing with a brand Yeah, that's a big deal.
Erich Campbell
Tiny trademarks and tiny circle RS I've done my share.
Marshall Atkinson
Alright, so I want to talk to you about the future and I know that you think about this and I'm thinking about this and we have AI and artificial intelligence and shad GPT and mid journey and coloreel is so awesome and whatever, you know, where do you see or maybe hope that the embroidery end of this industry? Where's that heading with some new tools is a new thinking maybe it's not out yet but gosh, I wish I had this. Well,
Erich Campbell
I'll say this much. Um I know some people are going to come on here and go Eric always says auto digitizing is not the answer. And I'm certainly going to go ahead and say, yeah, the current state of auto digitizing probably isn't getting you this kind of creative work that I'm talking about. But what I want to see is people number one, understanding what the technology does and using it for its strength. That's the big thing. I this is all the technologies, this is color real, this is AI, this is everything. There was a time at which we controlled our embroidery very well by us by punching every single stitch. But then it took days to make a logo, our output was strangled. Now we draw a vector style shape. And we say fill it with this kind of stitch. And here are the parameters and the stitches appear. But the thing is, you don't hear anybody railing against that as being like dangerous to the world of embroidery anymore. Because we've warmed up to it, we understand how to use it. And we also understand now if you're somebody like me, yeah, slapping on any vector shape can make it pretty boring. If it's flat, one kind of stitching. And I add a little bit more manual jazz back to it, I think we're gonna get there. With AI. Where we get to this point where AI is a great tool for ideation, it helps us create different looks, it helps us maybe we look at a design or we have some art in front of us. But we need to change the pose slightly. And we can do that by describing an AI instead of trying to redraw an entire piece. That would be something that's really excellent as a starter for our digitizing. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I think we will get to a point it's a matter of money time and the right people being on it, that someone will make an AI version of digitizing that works very much like mid journey or stable diffusion or any of the other image generating engines or any of the other like style transfer models that are out there, someone will eventually get that to work with embroidery when they get the reality of the manufacturer with the artistic side of that together and enlarge enough base of designs and original art, I think it's coming. But I think in just as with every other tool, we're going to find a place where there's a world that we have creative impetus protected where human creativity is still there. And these things are tools that are either a portion of what we do, we are they're helping us to get somewhere and we can still add our own manual touches to them. Or they allow people they democratizes for people who aren't going to do that kind of work to just get into the game. I think we're there. Now we're doing it in different ways. Like there was a period of time where you had to have to artists work on embroidery designs are punching every stitch, the first thing that happens is they have to draw it out as a six to one enlargement, and then set up all these fiduciary markers and things to tell you where to drop stitches. And then somebody came back and drew every stitch. That was the bar of entry before now the bar of entry is is a normal personal computer and the digitizing software. And I think that there was very likely a period of time before my time where somebody says I can't believe these people who now have to only use a screen and are putting this big on the big digitizing board. They don't know what they're doing, and they're just going to ruin embroidery. I'm sure somebody said it. And I think we're gonna keep doing this over and over the new technology comes in somebody's gonna say this is going to cause the collapse of everything we're going to do
Marshall Atkinson
well, that's good. I don't think taking people's jobs. So my job is to do that like, Well, yeah, somewhat. But here's the thing, if the people that know those jobs and have those jobs, learn to use the software, then that just makes them faster. And they will get their use their use their time and their talents by thinking about hey, how can we push this a little further? How can we do things that nobody's thought of. And that's where the real fun is.
Erich Campbell
The models have to be trained, and refined. And we can continue to be the trainers of the model. And the model doesn't come up with brand new designs necessarily of its own volition, we have to steer it. And if it doesn't understand something, at least someone creating manual input to be processed by the model. I'm not saying I'm 100% in on AI, I'm not I'm not 100% in on replacing all digitized AI and of course, digitize your heart for you to say that at the same time. Do I see the value of it? Absolutely. I do. And especially when for the embroidery world is even a little different than print I mean digital printer print artists, I feel why they're they feel white. So you know, more likely are quite, quite likely to be a little more antagonistic to the world of prompt generated images. Whereas embroideries we often didn't do our own art digitizers usually don't do their own initial art and being a designer is a little more rare. You usually are interpreting someone else's art that's already been given to you. Yeah, and for us, it would actually empower 10s of people who are good at digitizing, but who aren't graphic designers of their own right to create some initial design work that they can then refine because they do know embroidery very well, and they could make changes to that art as part of the digitizing process. So even at the current state of the art without it making an embroidery file for you. I think that AI will be probably a boon to a lot of people in the embroidery world because we won't necessarily be entirely be Hold into designers or we can present a thumbnail an AI prompt, generated image to a designer for refinement and say, this is kind of what I'm looking for, it's not coming out exactly how I want it, I want this, I need to add this texture this logo to it, can you help me do that, and then I'm going to take over and do the digitizing portion of this because I know embroidery. I think there's, at every stage of development, there's a place where we can use this tool. And as long as we don't remove the human creative impetus from this tool chain, I think that I'm fairly happy to at least explore it. And also, hey, it's common anyway, we might look somewhere on
Marshall Atkinson
the way that genies not going back in the bottle. And, and I think, you know, my personal take on this stuff is, I remember in us is not an embroidery thing. But sure, I remember way back when I was working on my master's degree in architecture, and I was I started a T Shirt Company, right and pay for graduate school because I didn't want any student loans. Yeah, yeah. And so I was doing everything by hand, hand separating on blue line, you know, using letraset rubdown letters, if you're, like me, you know what that is. And and, and so like, each find it to do one t shirt design is like two days where the work maybe is something like that. Yeah. And then the shop that was running my stuff for me, because I didn't like do the printing, I just outsource it to somebody. They said, Hey, we're getting rid of our stack camera. And we're getting this new thing called Adobe. It's running on this new computer called a Mac. And then you've got this program called Photoshop, you should learn it, it just came out. So I started that, and it totally changed the whole trajectory of my life. I became the art director, I quit graduate school, I started doing T shirts full time and bubble Wah. Hai is that now it's a to me, it's the same time relationship thing where it's such a time saving thing, and you can't predict there's no way you can predict five years from now where we'll be with this stuff, because it's virtually new, or you know, Chad's GPT, is new, even though it's been out for years, you know, mid journey, or, you know, Dolly, or what, you know, name your thing. These are all, you know, Photoshop just came out with generative fill, right? These, these are all kind of newest tools, but people using them is not mainstream yet. And we don't know the craziness that's gonna happen. Imagine like for an embroiderer thinking, okay, we can use a tool like mid journey, just as an example, and come up with a decorative floral pattern that we can put behind something, or have it make it into a shape or whatever. And you don't like it, you just hit a button, and it gives you a couple of different versions. And then using word prompts, you can kind of dial it into what you want. And then that's when you can digitize it and put it behind something, or in front of something, or as a texture, fill in that circle, to just make things look incredible. And I don't think anybody's really doing well. And if you talk to him, he's seen. Have you seen somebody doing that yet? With
Erich Campbell
work? Yes, I have actually. But the here's the funny thing. And this is where I get into a place where people kind of either challenge beer, we get into a weird discussion about it in the home and craft and fiber arts market, yes. Because they are not making something for a client that is coming out of a brief. They are planning. And because they're playing, they are doing things that are more expansive than we do in the commercial world. And sometimes, though, we can you can always do this thing where it's like, oh, man, these crafters are coming in with their cheek machines and don't know what they're doing. Go ahead and say that that's fine. Watch them a little bit for your own good, because you will see somebody out there who's like, oh, wow, I saw this cool work by this embroidery artist whose name was married and well, no, this is a real example. And I really love these really organic plant things she did. So I fit into stable diffusion. Make me a, you know, a foliage pattern that looks like a merit of wool, no art piece. And then the guy got that pattern back and then he digitized it. And he used processes that he learned from watching this artists work. And he was making work that was really quite phenomenal. And the thing that was holding him back is that he didn't have the original artwork to play with. He went into a generative AI and got prompts and said I want it to look like this. I want no more branches on this tree. And I want this to be in this circular pattern, whatever it is, and then he went and digitized a lacework design out of it. It was gorgeous. But he would not probably have drawn that. And we would have lost that piece, you know, that's a piece that he made. And now you can say, how does that relate to me and my, you know, the business stuff that I want to do. If you think you can't take an original logo logo, like let's say, I just told you guys about that example of going with a varsity style logo. Let's say I feed an image of something that is, you know, appropriate to one of these prompt generated things and say, make it look more like a 50s varsity jacket, make this thing look like a bomber jacket, do it in the style of this century, this decade, it will come back with something based on what you started on. And some prompts just some concepts of what might make it look more like that theme that you come up with. And it means that you can take an existing piece of art you're working with or an existing concept and just play with the idea. Even if you're not using that art, it can give you a starting point, it can get you past the blank page and let you work that way. I mean, that's the thing. It's using it for what it is. And if you don't like the concept of releasing all of your control to it, don't think that's the thing. Some people think you have to then go and go straight from that to auto digitizing and digital production. You don't it's it can be just for you to do some thumbnail sketches and ideation and then you can go redraw the whole thing manual if you want to, and change it.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, I think you know, AI is really great for what if? Yeah, exactly. What if we did this one? Because it takes 30 seconds? And oh, that didn't work? What if we change this part? And you just kind of play with it? Yeah, and that's the same thing with chat. GPT, right. You know, I create a lot of content as to you. And, like, I'll write a whole article, and then I'll throw it in there I go, Hey, what'd I forget? Did you get like, Oh, you missed the point here. And here's that sort of three more paragraphs of detail that I can add. But what it doesn't have is my thinking and my experience and my stories and all that. So I'm only using it for like a you know, kind of like a advanced grammerly or autofill or something where I'm like thinking like, here's the thing, I feed it what I did and tell me, you know, hey, hey, Chad, GPT teacher, great at forming, what am I missing? How can I make this an A? Okay?
Erich Campbell
Oh, What's lovely about that, though, is you don't have to agree. It can tell you you're missing something. And it can be totally wrong, because it's often confidently incorrect about things. Once that prompt it giving you the wrong idea. Very frequently will go No, you shouldn't have said that. You should have said this. And you're Wait a minute. I didn't say that. Yeah. I didn't put that in there. Yeah,
Marshall Atkinson
I'll tell you that the best thing that you can do is is with this, this AI stuff is be silly. Yeah, it's just do some goofy stuff to see what happens. And whether you're, you know, whatever the platform is, just to see what happens. You know, write this blog article. Okay, here it is right? Now make it sound like William Shakespeare. Now make it sound like Jerry Seinfeld, right? And then and then you realize, oh, you know what, I really needed a joke in that first paragraph.
Erich Campbell
It's just like bouncing ideas off of a friend. Yeah, I think even digitally even graphically, because somebody will say, All right, well, we're gonna we're gonna use this to make embroidery directly. And I'm like, right now, it's not quite there, it does a really good approximation of what embroidery kinda looks like. Sometimes there's impossible stitches that won't really work that come out in the yard. But here's the deal. You're the expert. You know that? What if, as I've seen with some of the things, you pull it up and go, You know what, though? No, it's not perfect. But I just did an image of, you know, it didn't orange tabby cat logo mascot style. And I pull it up as embroidery. And then you look at and you're like, well, it doesn't have everything right. But the ears kind of cool. It gives me an idea for something I might do. That's still valuable. And that's still a useful thing to do. It can be part of your creative tool chain, without being a replacement for you as a especially as digitizer, at least in the current state of the art. I'm sure I will eat my words within the next few years. I know there's coming something we're out of the other end of this thing is the machine stitch file. I know that's coming. I think that you're you're kind of deluding yourself if you don't think somebody's going to work on it if they aren't already. However, I still think even in that period of time that we're working on this, even when we get to that point, there will be a place for someone who has vision to direct it to alter it, and to guide it to the actual result you want. Because AI can recombine things, but that tuning that fine tuning and that work toward a desired goal. You know, that's going to still involve people for some time I think and very well can even if that's not what people were thinking it's going to do it actually let's connect this back to color real real quick because I actually have a comment on this that I think kind of brings it back together. People look at color real and they think it's going to put a gradient anywhere you want Add any color on any stitch wherever you want it, it doesn't actually do that. And that's not that's not something that's necessarily wrong with color, real color real has a certain amount of time if you don't want color real is if you're not embroidery person, it dies the thread as it's being stitched with as a sublimation dye, so that you don't change back and forth between colors. And it means you can do things like a smooth gradient on a big area of like fill. What it doesn't do is do that on an individual stitch. At a very micro scale, it takes time for it to change the color. So if you want to, say have normal satin stitch text where the stitch angles turn all over the place, putting a direct vertical gradient over that is not really possible, because it would require you to stop in the middle of every other stitch and change the color. And it just isn't that fine of a change yet? Does this mean coloreel is broken? No. What it does is it affords you the ability to create these died setups, these variations in color or gradations. But then now we have to work with it as a tool. And as a medium, it is not the same. If we think about it as a replacement for how we used to do things. It falls down in some areas and doesn't make sense. If you make new designs that use color wheel for what it is, you can make very beautiful work that sometimes does something new that's not in the current model. If we keep thinking about this new stuff as how does it replace an old thing I did and never think about it as how can I use it to make something new that hasn't been done? I think we do ourselves a disservice. Because I'm the first person to say is coloreel replacement for learning in a digitized gradient? No, it's not a it's not a replacement for learning how to digitize detail either. Because ultimately, it cannot print a picture on top of stitches anywhere you want the color to go. Does that mean it has no purpose? Absolutely not. It's great for rapid prototyping, so you don't have to go get colors. And you can use any color at all on a solid area. It's great for putting a gradient in any block of fill that has the same angle throughout. And is great for making cool new weird color textures that didn't exist in died thread. And honestly, if we start to work with it with what it can do, we might expand what's possible. Whereas if we just keep thinking of it as a replacement for something's already there, then all we see is the limitations. And I think that's the same with any new technology.
Marshall Atkinson
That's amazing. And so I was at a conference and somebody told me this, and I thought it was just the most amazing thing ever about all this AI stuff. And all this new technology is like, if it scares you, then it's meant for you. Hmm. No, that's probably too deep here. But
Erich Campbell
I like to go deep. I think it's true. I think honestly, it's the best stuff is on the other side of that fear. And now on top of that, if it's coming anyway, and I think we see it, it's a freight train. It's coming anyway. Do we want to just kind of hide our heads? Say it's not there, pretend it won't make a difference. Act like it's not going to disrupt what we're doing? Or do we want to investigate it? Keep our minds open, keep our eyes open and say here's what's good. Here's what's bad, take the good use it for what you can. Hey, and and call out the bad if it's not working. We have the ability to use it for what it is and say no to the stuff we don't like. And to call it out for what it is. But you can't call it out if you don't know what it is at all. And you just hide. Yeah,
Marshall Atkinson
yeah. So there's a there's a great book I read this summer, called Beyond disruptions from the same guys who wrote Blue Ocean Strategy. Yeah. And in the book, they were giving an example of disruption. And not too long ago, Eric, the only way that you could cross the Atlantic Ocean was by ocean liner. Okay. And they and so millions of people a year would cross the Atlantic Ocean. Right? And, and that was the only week and would take a week or whatever it took to go across. And then this one thing came along, which was the Pan American constant Boeing 707 constellation or wherever the plane was right. And now we can go we can cross the Atlantic Ocean in mere hours. And then the entire ocean liner business collapsed. And so what did they do is they retool their whole business into vacations at sea, and the cruiseline business was invented. And now so we're right now we're we're right at the beginning all this AI stuff. And to me will things will it affect businesses will people go out of business? will loot people lose jobs? Yes, but other industries are going to spring up that we can't even imagine? Because we don't know where this thing's gonna go yet. And I think what we have I have to do is we have to embrace what's going on. Because now there's a new way to cross the ocean that nobody's ever done before. And what will this mean? I don't think anybody has a crystal ball. But that's what's exciting about it. And if you're in the ocean liner business, and all you do is bitch and moan and complain about it, you're going to be really less relevant soon.
Erich Campbell
Well, here's the fun thing to think about with that particular example. They took what was unique about the experience of the ocean liner, and used it to sell on its own merits, that they didn't make it into a plane. That didn't necessarily you don't necessarily even have to take the manual method that we have now and throw it out. The one I always use the sign painting. Most signs you're going to see up now most billboards are all going to be done with big digital printers we all know, you know that we are very aware that as it's going to happen, we're using digital printing all over the place that is going to be happy for most banners. There are still wonderfully talented sign painters and some who are literally selling their work that once upon a time was probably thought of as a great common form of, if not art, probably crafts, they probably didn't even think of it as art. And now they're selling it as artists, and people follow them and they have you know, mass followings as artists doing traditional sign painting. Does it mean there's less sign painters? Yes. Is there room for a very talented manual sign painter who does something unique and wonderful? Absolutely there is. They didn't become a digital printer. They sold what they do on its unique merit. And I think so there's still room for all of it. But if we ignore what's happening, especially in the commercial space, where we are looking to do things better and faster and deliver on time and have our work look good. If we ignore a tool that's going to impact the ability for us to do that. That's on us. But doesn't mean that the entirety of the craft goes away? No, I mean, DTG didn't kick out all screenprinting auto digitizing didn't take we digitizing already. And admittedly, part of that is a quality and skill issue. But I think they're still playing this a you know, we still have room for these places. If we look at what they do best. And market toward what that is, with embroidery. It's it's it is its sheen, and dimension is the physicality of the thing. And if that can be enhanced, if we can get art to look better on the lead end, then it's a boon. And honestly, if we get replaced, then the stuff that gets replaced may not be the most creative stuff. It's like the it's like kind of like the automation is here now is the most creative thing I can be doing with my day, clicking on on points to make sure my fill stitches exactly regular. No, regular linear fill stitches are best done by a computer calculating it for me, can I do more? You know, have I done a manual field search in my life? Yes, for very fine gradient grade gradations that aren't currently done by computers, the day a computer does a gradient for me in a way that I love, I will let it do it. Because the creative choice I had behind it wasn't ratios of one thread color to another. That's not the most creative thing I've done my day, there's a technical thing I have to do in order to get to the creative part is the same thing. When we create a product where I'm at now where it makes a wonderful patch edge. I used to make these beautiful patches that look very much like the old school overlap patch edge. But I used to have to do it with a motif stitch I plotted myself and the quarters were weird. So I'd have to do a bunch of manual faffing about to try and make the corners look good, and the incense look nice. And now it's done with a click. And I don't feel like I lost a creative, you know, part of my life. I feel like the most pain in the butt part of making a great looking patch is now done for me. And what I do now I make cooler stuff on the inside of the patch and quit worried about the border. It's I think that's where we'll get. But right now it's a little scary because it's doing more than it ever has done. We're having a an automated system do more than it ever has done. And I don't know if we know how to literally how to feel about it yet to get once again into that deep end.
Marshall Atkinson
That's That's amazing. And but it's time to wrap up here. So I agree. We can talk about this, I think for another hour.
Erich Campbell
I'm sure we have before we probably will again off camera someday.
Marshall Atkinson
And I can't wait for that to happen. All right. So thanks for being on the show today. What's the best way for someone to contact you if they want to learn more about what you do? Or maybe how you can help them? And also please plug the take up?
Erich Campbell
Oh yeah, in fact, I think that is the best way to get a hold of me go to Erich campbell.com It's er IC H that weird little h makes it easy to find me on Google. But Eric e rish. That's what people say. Oh my favorite but hey, it's memorable. You Erich campbell.com There's a there's a couple blog posts there. I'll admit that I don't keep up that blog way I should but what I do keep up with every single week is the take up. There's a link up at the top to the Take up tab that gives you the full playlist of 157 Odd episodes that we're at now. Long episodes. Don't get me wrong, they're a live chat kind of experience. But I go deep on all these topics. If you if you like any of the weirdness I got into with how much I discussed the meaning of embroidery and how it comes together, believe me, you'll like some of that too. And there's also a Contact Me page on my website that I will definitely get back to you when I can. I love questions. I love talking shop and honestly, I'm just happy to help anybody not be kind of in the dark and spending their nights under the desk like I was learning by myself.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, if you're at a trade show, please take Eric's class. You know, they're always jam packed. You know? And that's where I'll probably see you next time. Imagine is probably the next
Erich Campbell
trade show. Yeah, very likely. All right, buddy.
Marshall Atkinson
Well, hey, well, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate you.
Erich Campbell
Hey, man, thanks for the good talk.
Michelle Moxley-Hruby
Well, that's our show today. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, so you can stay up to date on the latest Success Stories episodes. have any suggestions for future guests or topics? send them my way, and Marshall and Marshall atkinson.com. And we'll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai