Success Stories Ep 83 - "Big Prints for the Big Boys"

What is it like to design and print for the big boys? 

On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll speak with Kim Cartano, who has worked with Team Edition apparel, also known as Footlocker for over two decades. 

Kim will share her story, some process ideas, and what she's excited about in the future of apparel decorating. This is going to be a good one so get ready!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
What's it like to design and print for the big boys? On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll speak with Kim Cartano, who has worked with Team Edition apparel, also known as Footlocker for over two decades, Kim will share her story, some process ideas, and what she's excited about in the future of apparel decorating. This is going to be a good one. So get ready. So Kim, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Kim Cartano 
Thank you, Marshall. I've been so excited about this. Thanks for having me.

Marshall Atkinson 
Hey, it's my pleasure. And for those that don't know you, and maybe don't know me, who knows, there's people out there, right. We met at the M&R Innovation Day or week or whatever that whatever that was called...

Kim Cartano 
Yup!

Marshall Atkinson 
And it was so much fun meeting you. And I think, you know, the fun part was when you meet somebody new and you find out wow, they're just like me.

Kim Cartano 
I love it. Absolutely!

Marshall Atkinson 
We share a lot of interests and stuff. Right. So that was kind of cool.

Kim Cartano 
It was awesome. I enjoyed it so much.

Marshall Atkinson 
And I think that's the reason why people need to go to stuff, right? I mean, you can, you can do a lot sitting there at your desk, but there's nothing better than getting out and doing stuff and i i always use the phrase you must be present to win, right? You just gotta go do it. Right and, and that includes getting on your desk and going out on the shop floor and being next to the printer when they're trying to print your miracle design that you slave last week over. Right. So

Kim Cartano 
Absolutely. And checking in and just making sure that everybody is onboard. Everybody's going towards the same purpose and knowing that they have support to from, you know, the art team, the QC team, it's really important to be there for for each other takes a village.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh man does it ever. Alright, so let's get into some questions, shall we?

Kim Cartano 
Absolutely.

Marshall Atkinson 
All right. So here's the here's the first one. So I want to start the show by discovering how you got into this crazy business. I'm always interested in that. So how did you get interested in design? And how did you start working in you know, that whole t shirt world? So walk us through that whole thing?

Kim Cartano 
That's probably not a normal process for sure. It was you know, just watching my my dad when I was a little girl, he had been in Vietnam and he started doing pastel prints doing. You know, the first one was a it was a pastel of my basset hound. That was my first pet. And it was remarkable the way he could capture. Like her soul in the eyes. He is an amazing artist. So this was something just to help him get through recoveries. And my grandfather. Now my dad is an engineer, my grandfather was an engineer as well. He had when he was retired when I started to kind of take an interest in everything everybody was doing. And he had his whole little art studio set up. Downstairs in his basement. He was doing a lot of oil paintings at the time. And in fact, my entire walls in my home are all oil paintings from him. And he had a certain perspective, it was always through a doorway, leading up a lane or out of a window. So I always thought that was like a journey just about to happen. So it was just a great perspective to see. I remember when he and my grandmother sat me down in front of the TV and supplied me with my own little canvas paint brushes, my own paints, and turned on Bob Ross. And there I was in a whole new world, painting happy trees and making happy little accidents everywhere. And it was just it's one of those memories and I was I was you know, single digits at the time. It's just one of those memories that I love and it's still you know, if I can get a paintbrush in my hand, still have a lot of fun doing that and it's okay to make little accidents. Yeah. And looking at, you know, his process. He was very precise, I guess the engineer and him and there was a particular painting that he had on the wall. That was it was a pen and ink. But it also had some watercolor in there. And it was exact. I mean, every line, every little stroke was just amazing. And I would watch this, look at this painting or pictures, I walked into their house. And I saw new things, the taller i i got as I was growing up. And it was it was the one thing that you know, it's it's a treasure, and that hangs on my wall as well. But I think just seeing that creativity was always just amazing. So I wanted to be just like them. And I found out later in life, he was actually, you know, creating logos for people, different family members. He grew up in Texas. And he was also creating cartoons, he worked for Standard Oil at the time. And he was creating these amazing cartoons, whether it was for a safety poster, or just really cool stuff. And he had a particular style. And his handwriting was just remarkable. It was just one of those things that I you know, someday, if I ever get the chance to create fonts, I have to bring his handwriting back as one of those fonts because it was yeah, really, really cool. So every now and then a great uncle will send me a little you know, Facebook post and say, Hey, look at this, I found another cartoon that your grandfather created. And he would go under the name, my maiden name is Selender. And he would he wrote his that name backwards. And he went by Red Neles when he was doing these little cartoons. So they taught me that was you know, Solander spelled backwards. So it was kind of a cool, little, little glory. And then, you know, I went to business school, I didn't go to art school, worked at my first job was at a driving range. And then went to a country club after that, and there was a need for posters all the time. And I would get those big giant fat sharpies out, sit in a back room, inhaling all the Sharpie fumes. And I can still hear the squeak of that Sharpie marker on the poster. But I created my own little style and look and took a lot of pride in my little poster artwork and found out that you know, I, I think I really liked doing this. Because my fonts that I created are my writing. I was invited to do a lot of tournaments, the big board, so I would write all the names for the board. So I had my own little style. It wasn't really traditional calligraphy, it was kind of the Kim style, but I ended up doing envelopes for different clubs and, and different things. So I found out that I liked that side of the world and found in my jobs following once I moved to Florida that went with me. And I worked for an entrepreneur starting restaurant concepts. And at the time, I had a access to CorelDRAW and Quark and I was trying to take whatever I had done on poster boards with Sharpies, and put it on to a computer and create things. And I'm there were horrible programs. But it was...

Marshall Atkinson 
No disagreement here, Kim.

Kim Cartano 
Yeah, it was it was crazy. And then at the time you look at I have this little font or style of writing. And I had access to I think Papyrus was in there some other fonts. So I think I may have created a logo, very ashamed to say using Papyrus as the font, many,

Marshall Atkinson 
at least it wasn't bleeding cowboys or Comic.

Kim Cartano 
So that was that was the start of it. And I thought you know what I, I really liked the creation side of this, I was getting, you know, everything that I did at that time, it had to have a little creative flair to it. Now, this was the time of sending fax messages. And I thought, well, this is gonna look really boring with just writing on it. And we're starting restaurant concepts. So I'm going to put some of the slogans and some of the cool fonts on the sides and, and make these a little bit more exciting when they come through on the other end. So I was jazzing it up that that went way back. But I saw I was I was doing this working and CorelDRAW getting super frustrated because those ideas that were percolating in my brain weren't making it onto the computer screen. And I thought I I need to take a step backwards and learn what the heck I'm doing and I took at that point I, I left this company and I took an entry level position with an advertising agency in Sarasota to really dive deeper into what was happening. So they took a chance on me.

Marshall Atkinson 
So you're pursuing your passion for design, and just restarting.

Kim Cartano 
Restarting, and it was very scary to do. And, but it was so well worth it. I worked at this time in Illustrator and Photoshop quite a bit. And one of the first projects that I worked on was for an outdoor furniture company, and it was a big catalog. And we were taking chair pictures and actually sketching them. And, you know, so I was learning lots of different methods. And I would have to, you know, put all those little points in Photoshop around certain images and learn how to put a path around them and, and things were difficult in the old days, but it gave me a great basis for how things worked. And to realize these were endless.

Marshall Atkinson 
You kids have so easy now.

Kim Cartano 
True, it's absolutely amazing. And then you look back just five years ago, yeah, so much things have changed. So it's it's been, it was it was a fun journey. So stayed there, learn some some base skills, gotta a feel for the business side of things, too. Because it was a small agency, there were there were three of us at the time. So I got to work with, you know, the people doing the drone scans at the big photos that we had, and the printers that were working on catalogs, and I got to learn terms and how things worked. And I asked a lot of questions back in the day. So and I think that's the key to keep asking the questions because I think I, I keep learning every day. But I did, I did go back to the entrepreneur with the restaurant concepts and created their menu boards, they ended up being listed on what they call the all FX exchange over in London. So I got to create annual reports and had cool covers that had interesting cut lines to kind of go with the whole look of the of the concept. So I learned a lot. And I felt that it was always scary, because I had no one else at the time to really help me through the process. So building relationships with people at the printers and just saying, Okay, now are you sure now have I have I created enough, you know, bleed and creep on all these pages to make it make it look the way it should. So I still have a lot of those items. And it's kind of fun to go back and look at where your creative levels have been over the years.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that's great. That's great. So into the t shirt world, let's fast forward.

Kim Cartano 
Yeah, fast forward, I was working tons of hours traveling a lot and was newly married. And I thought you know what I need to, I want to just design, I don't want to open restaurants all over the place, I would like to just design so I saw an advertisement for an opening at a place called Team Edition apparel. Right down the road. It was a 10 minute drive. And I brought my little portfolio in its big black box with all of my stuff and walked in. And they took a chance on me and I started to design for Team Edition, which is part of Footlocker and it was mainly college apparel at the time, and you want to talk about a learning curve going from, you know, printing catalogs and brochures to printing on T shirts. It's a whole different world.

Marshall Atkinson 
So it's like, hey, guess what? You know how to speak German. Now you need to know how to speak French.

Kim Cartano 
Yes, and a few other languages thrown in because everything is different. So it's and I honestly, it was probably the best decision I've ever made. Because I've been blessed with meeting incredible people in this industry. Incredible people with the brands that we've worked with. And yeah, so almost 25 years later, here I am still having still having fun and still learning. Still doing it. Yeah, we're doing it. Still trying to get better too.

Marshall Atkinson 
So it's no secret. I'm a former art director. I still design and do stuff all the time. Right and I'm always fascinated by somebody else's design process. So I have my own thinking. As weird as it is right? I Have my own thinking, right. So I know how you iterate and create, I am a process person, everything to me starts with a thumbnail. Usually on a square post it note, that's my favorite thing. And I just doodle, just a little quick little sketch, and I'm done. And then if I don't like something, I'll just make another one. And there's no erasing, right, I just find something I like. And the reason I like a post it note is, I can stick that right there on the side of the monitor, and then that becomes the basic architecture framework for whatever the layouts gonna be. Right? That's my way. How do you come up with ideas? And and in work? I'm very interested in

Kim Cartano 
that. Yeah, it's funny, because I, you know, I think sometimes that it's a hot mess, how I come up with an idea. And I do have scrap pieces of paper, anytime we're cutting something in the art department, and there's little pieces of paper left behind, I put those on my desk, and they're my quick little ideas. And, you know, I think they look like an Eddie vich caricature. And they're fabulous. And they're just a couple of lines. And it's like a masterpiece, but it's probably the hot mess part of the process. Then when I you know, same with you all, I'll create a little t shirt sketch with a couple of lines, and I'll see where things fit. And it's kind of my, my placeholder for what's going to happen once I get into Illustrator. So I, I'm pretty crazy about organization on my computer, I have my fonts. And this is something I want to pick your brain on. I've been using font agent to categorize my fonts.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't categorize any of them, no, no, and arising file names. And I, everything I do, if it's my file, it's an all caps. That way I know I created it, because not everybody does all caps. So it's is easy to look at a list and go, there's my file, you know, and I'm a specific way to name things. And I'm very folder driven, right, so I'm

Kim Cartano 
folder driven, as well. And I think everything has to be very well organized. And then I'm able to find all of my elements. So once I have a project in mind or design in mind, I go to my spots and grab my elements and bring those into, you know, an artboard in Illustrator and that, you know, start out with a couple little things and then before you know it, I've used up all of the usable space and its fonts will be down in the lower right corner and then I'll have all the filters because I you know, you and I talked about this in Chicago, how filters and taking photographs of strange textures and trees and bark and, you know, concrete and cracks on and they create the best design. So I did because

Marshall Atkinson 
I think it humanizes things right and, and just a little slight little texture. Instead of printing flat color. I want to little something little in there. And the average person never sees that, right? But for me, it's like it's the it's the sprinkles on the ice cream sundae without it just falls flat, you know? Exactly.

Kim Cartano 
I was gonna say it adds that dimension. You're absolutely right. And everything needs some sort of filter. And at some of the filters have such great memories. My family, we would travel to Holden beach every year. So I'd meet my sister, my brother in law, their kids, my mom and dad, my husband and I and, and our daughter and I would run around with a camera because it wasn't the iPhone back then. And everybody's like, Oh, look at the sunset and like look at the sand and how it looks right now we need a picture of this. And I know what I can do with it when I get it on to into Photoshop. And so I will use those and it brings back some some great memories as I'm creating too. So I'll have my elements and I create a working file. And from that I begin to whittle so I know what I want. I have the idea in my head and now it's just trying to find all of my elements and how they go together and how I start to develop them and give them a life. So you know whether it's the outlines or the drop shadows or this

Marshall Atkinson 
or that, would you already have a color palette in mind? Most

Kim Cartano 
of the time, a lot of it you know, I think when I'm thinking about this process, I'm thinking about designing for collegiate apparel, right so the team color right using the team colors and knowing you know Each school has a rule on how you can use their elements. So keeping that in mind as well, when you're doing a full breadth, though, if you're doing 75 schools, you kind of need to keep those idiosyncrasies in mind when you start a program so that they can all align together and be a complete program. But if it's if it's something else, if somebody gives me free rein to be creative, then yeah, the color color palette will be, you know, Hey, I saw something. In fact, yesterday, I was shopping with a friend and I saw two towels next to each other. And they've already brought out all the Christmas stuff. So it was a it was a great burgundy red, and it was this wonderful, green that wasn't 100 Green, but it was kind of muted. So they were like jewel tones that were soft and Damas vintage on like, well, I have to use these in a design coming up, because they were fantastic together. So I walked around the store with these two towels. And my friend Paige thinks I'm I'm not sir. Just going back to them saying, Okay, look at how beautiful these towels like, Yeah, but the colors. So it's anything can cause you to have like a creative explosion. And that's what makes it fun. I think for

Marshall Atkinson 
sure. Like one of the things I love doing, okay, I love things that almost touch because I like the tension of it not touching if it touches this less, right. So I like things that almost touch. And I'm big on really thick, like outlines that are in the background, I think that like pulls everything together. So you could do like a logo of something. And then there's an outside outline. That could be a quarter inch thick, right? But it's like, you know, for 21 gray or something, it's just gonna balloon to the background. But that's what like, gels the whole thing together. Right. And I love getting that connection. Things like that. cohesiveness? Yeah. And I love using the t-shirt color. Right, that's one of my favorite things is to have negative space with the t-shirt color. And of course, if you're doing multiple t-shirt colors, that means you need another printer, you need another unit another color sometimes, right. So there's some disadvantages to that. But you know, I just I like, you know, my first rule is it's got to please me. And if it doesn't, please me, I know, it's like a please donate money. Right?

Kim Cartano 
Yeah, you feel a sense a great rule? I do. And do you have? Here's, here's a question. So a lot of times, I will, I will maybe work the idea too much where I'll, I'll have oh, this is, you know, this is my original idea. And I'll get that gelled together, and I'll be super happy with it. But my mind tells me I need to take it in this direction, this direction. You know, there's, there's so many different iterations or totally different pathways. And then I go back, and I look at that first design. And a lot of times, that's the one and that's the one the client will pick. That's the one. And it's, it's probably because I, I stole it, it came together for me the way I wanted it to, and I loved it. And same thing. So if the if I'm pleased with it, I feel it, it can go out there and live its life. Right?

Marshall Atkinson 
Yep. So my big thing is, I call it the squint test, where you squint your eyes, you can barely see the thing. What is the element of the design that pops the most? And is that the primary thing you want your viewer to know? Right? So if it's a team name, and then there's some other background outline or something that's taking over, you know, the need to tone that down or something or to emphasize whatever the primary whatever it is, right and back when I was an art director, I was famous for saying make the logo bigger. They're paying the bill make the logo bigger,

Kim Cartano 
make the logo bigger. I love it. I was actually driving to work today and there's a strip mall on my way into work. And I've driven by this, I can't tell you how many times and there's I was stopped for whatever reason and I'm looking and I'm looking and there's one logo and it's too busy. I have no idea what it is and it's next to the building is kind of a milk chocolate color and a white logo. The logo is big, it just pops and you know exactly what it is and then the one next to it. I haven't No idea. I'm gonna have to drive into the strip mall to see. Yeah, so yeah. So it's a lesson in how is this going to be used? And to your point are we getting the message across? So

Marshall Atkinson 
tell you one of my favorite things that happened was my son. Jack is his name. He came home from school one day, all crazy excited. He had gotten an award. Right. And he shows us this award at the same time. He's disappointed. I'm like, What's going on, buddy? This is a proud moment. Because Dad Look they use three different fonts on this thing. What a bunch of dummies. Love it. And of course, my wife, you know, his mom was you know, she does design also and it was like, We did it. It's such a proud parent moment. Right. He gets it.

Kim Cartano 
He understands we sowed the seeds and it's now flourishing. I love it. That's great. I

Marshall Atkinson 
like what you hear so far. Be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zack shortly with the SMS spotlight.

Marshall Atkinson 
As much as we want to design and create our masterpieces and everything. It doesn't matter unless it actually is produced, right? And I think there has to be an importance, we have a symbiotic relationship with the production folks and love him or hate him, we really need him right. So you've been working with your crew for 20 years, right? And so I want you to talk about that relationship, and how you think about the N way something has to be produced, or knowing that they might question something, or maybe they are they're really going to print and this print order. I mean, whatever, right? What I want you to share some tips, I want you to share a little story or two about that, because you've been working in the same place for so long, there must be some sort of backhand freehand kind of loose way of, Oh, I know what they're gonna think about this, and now design it that way. So it works better. So I want to get to that.

Kim Cartano 
That's a great process for me to think about. Because I have one memory. Ben Davis and I have worked together for 20, almost 25 years. And he was running the production floor. And I was you know, up in my happy place designing way. And I had a particular collegiate graphic it was for a long sleeve tee. And my vision was to have this was going to be kind of a monotone look. So I had three to four patches, leather patches for the sleeve. And I had this grand idea of how this was going to look it had, you know the running stitch, look around the patches, holding it onto the shirt. And Ben took a look at this. And he came up with a better way of doing it that was going to be friendlier to the production team because we're going to do this in 75 schools. So that was how many pieces of film we weren't going direct to screen yet that wasn't around. And we'd have to burn all of these high density screens. And so this was going to be very labor intensive. So he said Well, let's not knock out the verbiage that you're putting on these. Let's do you know a layer not we're not going super high on the high density but have kind of a darker brown high density as our base. Put another kind of distress a little bit lighter, high density on top. And then we'll put the running stitch in there too in the darker brown and gonna print overtop of that. So we're gonna print your established dates and your mascots. And whatever it is that's going in each of these patches, that'll be a separate screens, we're not knocking anything out, we're gonna print over the high density. And so I watched this process and one

Marshall Atkinson 
screen, yeah,

Kim Cartano 
you're just,

Marshall Atkinson 
you've got, you've got the circles. So you got all this stuff. And of course, this flash was dry. So the only variable is the one screen that prints on top, instead of having to do all screens for all the different schools. Exactly.

Kim Cartano 
So it was that efficiency. And it was his thought process to take my great idea what I really, you know, what I envisioned? And he's like, Yeah, but we can do it this way. And think about how much more streamline how much less work, it will be for you, too. And I thought, huh, I've got a lot to learn. So that was, that was an eye opening experience. And so now, you know, transition into more branded work, you know, it's the, it's our job to take the vision of the artist and really give it life. And we're doing this for the brand. And we're doing this for our divisions. So to me, I take great pride in protecting them and making sure the best product goes out the door. So again, going back to being processed, driven, so let's find a process that we can follow. So there's no surprises, when the production floor gets what we call a package from us, it's going to have a CAD, which has all the details on it, including you know, where the placement is going to be, what all the PMS colors are, and we go as far as to provide what we call in calculations. So it's the square inches of, you know, coverage that this particular ink color is taking up so that when they start to build the inks for the job, there's less waste, so they're taking, you know, using calculations to really plan their process on the floor as well, based upon how many units are being produced. So all of this information goes down with a setup sheet, our setup sheet is generated now automatically based upon Okay, head number one gets this particular underlay, it's going to be on 156 mesh, it's going to be you know, the squeegee is a 72. Runner. And we're going to have, you know, this many pounds per square inch angles, speed dryer settings. So we're we're laying out that whole story at one time. And it's also been vetted by the r&d team. And they take a lot of time to really look at the process. We're we're sampling on automatic presses. So right there, we're already comparing apples to apples. So really look at it from the production standpoint, they're going to be running 2000 of this, what are the potential hiccups? We see, what do we think the best press would be for this so that we can recommend that. And then you know, that becomes our recipe for the cake, and it will go down with the actual sample. And it will have all of the details with it. And it'll go downstairs. And we also have meetings where we review all of this with the supervisors. So we can say, Okay, we have this particular design, it's going to be challenging, this one's going to take 1010 colors, we've done a couple of wet on wet sequences, but you know, this, this is here's how we baked the cake. It's approved, it worked. Here's where you may have some hiccups. We're here to help you through that process. So it's really, you know, it's looking at not only the customers that are going to buy the shirt, but also looking at our customers within the building. How are we best serving them to help, you know set them up for success? So that's important.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's awesome. So let me ask you so a lot of that stuff. There's people who just listened right now what what if so, are you like a lot of this stuff is standard, right? So this type of prints always the Smash, always the squeegee that type of stuff? Do you have a chart or a spreadsheet that you can easily refer to maybe you hired a new designer and they don't have 20 years of history like you do? They have to go look it up? Is there a way that somebody can find the information if they are needed to build out that mock up and that stuff? Right? You have that right? Yeah,

Kim Cartano 
we have that and we also you know, we have the history of similar designs that are at our fingertips that we can find quickly. So it's that, you know, what we this is how we printed this particular design. And it worked really, really well. I think that's a good starting point. So when we're creating that setup sheet, we'll follow the certain process, you know, just like we talked about the all those settings, you know, this worked well, here's what we've learned. So it's, it's having history and having proper documentation and making sure if you do make a change, if you rotate something on the press, that because printing, you know, this color, this pink after this purple, cause the whole look of the graphic to change. So we're going to have to flip those. So making sure that that those changes are made when you finally send that recipe downstairs to the to the production team. So yeah, that that is that is always there. We also keep every sample in, you know, a closet, that is a reference point. But I really think the communication and the why. To your point, if somebody comes in that's new, you know, why? Why do we do it this way? So having having that kind of passing that education along? Because I never looked at a t shirt as a widget, you know, a lot of times we're looking at business, and you're like, Oh, it's a widget, and this is how it works. To me, every t shirt is a piece of artwork, it's it's a vision, and is screen printing, yes, we're replicating something, but every press has personality, anything can happen. So you have to look at that and say, okay, here at the end of the dryer, is that sample that's fully approved. So we have that reference point. And if things are out of alignment, then we need to go and start that troubleshooting phase and telling the team Okay, here's the here's the spot, you may, you know, watch the registration on here, you know, we may choke back the underlay a little bit if, if we're having issues consistently, so it's learning together. And it's, and I think your

Marshall Atkinson 
type of business is challenging, because it's retail. So if, you know, a store is out of mediums, and they order more, the replacements have to match the other sizes that are on the shelf. So anything that's wrong, you know, some eagle eyes, somebody who would go, well, this doesn't match, and then that causes all types of problems. And so I think you guys have to have that dialed in to be able to do that. But the fun thing here, I think, for everybody to take into consideration is that once you're at that level, you are like basically masters of your own domain, right. And in your a lot of degree, you're untouchable with how you print, because a lot of the competition can't do that. Right. And that causes all types of supply chain stuff, and whatever, that's reputation, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes the other way from trying to be excellent. So, so if you're listening right now, and you're wondering, Well, that seems like a lot of work, right? There's a reason why you should really invest. And, you know, and so I like information, I like data, I like to know things. Also, I like perfecting a certain way of doing it. And, and when you agree that, you know, this industry is made up of variables, right, if we can control our variables, we can control the outcome. And, and if you're out of control, a lot of times, that means there's some variable that's in your process somewhere that's just a little wacky. And we gotta like, put some time into it. So these controls by specifying what we should be using, or how we like get to consistency. Yes.

Kim Cartano 
And I couldn't agree more. And I use the term it because it Qc is also something that that falls under my umbrella. So we get to see the birth of the graphic, the birth of that sample and get to watch it through its life in the production process. And you know, that data driven decision making is so important. So we're gathering, you know, if there is a defect, you know, there's, there's lessons we're learning from that. So if we're seeing it and then you put all of the data together, then those are those turned into opportunities to take a deep dive. Are we is it okay, we're okay, this was crooked Miss was crooked. Three On Three shirts. What was late in the shift? Was somebody tired? Do we need to look at ergonomics and start rotating people more frequently on the press to allow rest? So here's

Marshall Atkinson 
something to look at when people get tired, right? Are they right handed or left handed? Absolutely right. And so what happens when you'll say you're left handed? Well, what happens when you're left handed or right handed is that the other hand, we're trying to keep our hands parallel when we load the shirt. So what happens when you're tired, or when you're trying to hustle or whatever, is that sometimes your hands are no longer parallel? And that's what skews the shirt a little bit, right? So just watching people work, watching people work. And if you've got a problem with stuff, that's little caddywhompus, right, try to find out all their right or left handed, what is causing that right. And then also, a lot of times it's the size of the shirt like so most of the stuff that's Cricut, a lot of times are on the smallest or the largest sizes, right? smaller sizes is because it's really hard to get on the platen and the largest sizes, because it's hard to put the circus tent on the center line. Yeah, where are the edges? What's going on with that. So maybe we need to not be so concerned with speed, but more about loading it right, and just make sure it gets right, before it rotates to the next position, right. And those are the things like you know, good operations guy will look at. But if we're looking at our data that tells us things, so if we start really thinking about it, sure,

Kim Cartano 
there's a story. And that makes it, it's almost because I'll look, I have all of the data being pulled into Power BI. So I'm using the other side of my brain, but it's still creative to me, because it's telling a story. And that story can be so helpful if you dig in. And just like you said that that's exactly the story that it's telling. And those I call that the low hanging fruit, because those are easy things to to address and really go after. So it's all about improving, streamlining, keeping everybody together. And honestly, you know, it takes a village, and I have an amazing team of super smart people. And they have great strengths. And I think they bring it to the table every day. And I learned from from them all the time. So I'm blessed in that way. For sure. Well, you

Marshall Atkinson 
can't manage what you don't measure, right. And it's good to have these things. And I love testing things out. And of course, it's the crew that does all that work. So it's good to have a great team underneath you. So

Kim Cartano 
yeah, yeah, they're, I'm amazed by them every day. So it's it's been a great journey. And I, you know, I learned something new every day, there'll be something I'm like, Huh? I didn't, I didn't think about that. But you're right, you know, talking about, even down to dryer speeds. And if we're running fleece, the dryer inside is going to get a little bit hotter, because we have fleece in there. So again, to your point, then maybe we slow down the press a little bit, we gotta take all of those variables that you mentioned into mind. And they're they're endless, really, when you think about it, how many variables can can come into play? Yes.

Marshall Atkinson 
All right. Well, a lot of times we want to print that run as fast as we can. But if we're making mistakes, because we're printing fast, slow down, so you don't have to print it over.

Kim Cartano 
So yes, exactly. All

Marshall Atkinson 
right. So let's wind up the chat today. And let's talk about the future. Right. So. Digital squeegee, hybrid printing DTF DTG multimedia stuff, right? Ai all types of stuff is hanging out there. It's like a lot of this stuff feels like the forbidden fruit. We don't really know what this stuff is going to do. And we got to like play with it. Like, is this really gonna make a thing? Or I mean, should we like invest in it, whatever. From your all's perspective, right? What are you really interested in? What seems to be a little stickier than other things? Right. You know, of course, your everything's going to retail. I'm very curious as to you know, what you think, or what you're interested in on this topic?

Kim Cartano 
Well, I think the DS, we've had our RDS now since. Yep, digital squeegee, since right before the pandemic, so it was probably early 2020 When we started to play with our digital squeegee, and I am I'm blown away by what this machine can do. And I think it was Michelle Moxley Ruby that got me totally hooked on it. what this can do if you see some of the prints that she has put together, our

Marshall Atkinson 
industry genius show.

Kim Cartano 
It's insane. So yeah, just just to get like a couple of days just to sit and get her brain downloaded, that would be amazing. So I need you and Michelle in the room, and I just need to pick both of your brains,

Marshall Atkinson 
we've been in a room together.

Kim Cartano 
I know. So that that is yeah, it's, it's amazing. So where I'd like to go with that, because everybody that I've talked to that is in that space will say, once your first one is delivered, you need to put in the order for the second one. And what we've learned, we have our digital squeegee on a striker. And it's not a big striker. So there's you know, you lose, you lose

Marshall Atkinson 
or modular, you can add more stuff to it, we just

Kim Cartano 
need a bigger building, we need to expand out. But I would I would love to put our next DS onto a larger press so that we can do more, get more special effects in there really, really take this machine where it it needs and wants to go. Right. So that one is something that I'm going to continue to push for.

Marshall Atkinson 
So are you playing with, you know, puff Underbase? Or, like, discharge? Or are you after the print, adding metallic and foil and all kinds of craziness, you know, are you doing all that stuff,

Kim Cartano 
we aren't adding the foil, we have done some designs where we have the high density with the digital print, which is I mean, it's a place you can't go in straight digital. So it's fantastic. We've, we have some new designs coming up that we're going to try to add some gloss to certain areas. So I'm interested to see these are all ideas at this point on how we're going to achieve that. So that's going to be a fun, you know, r&d playing space to get into but again, it's you know, the challenge is always you know, we can have unlimited heads on this process to really just do some crazy things. So it but it's it's been fun and adding you know, some some shimmer and different things to different areas of that print once you get that digital print on there. So yeah, it's endless. I love I think Danny Suim said, it's just, you know, it's only limited to your imagination. So there's a lot we can do. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
that's great. And awesome, you know, the, at the printing at printing United just recently coordinate add a digital printer that printed high density. Awesome. So yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, it's digital, and, and it's just printing more layers of ink. You know, it's like 3d printing digital. So it's just, you know, there's, there's, I think there's just amazing what people can do. And there's really, this proves to show there are a lot smarter people out there than me. Right now, I don't know how they do all that stuff,

Kim Cartano 
right? Same way, just just looking at what can be done and thinking, Okay, I need to learn that I need to be able to do that.

Marshall Atkinson 
So what's interesting, though, I think, is taking a tool like that and saying, Okay, be creative, do some do some wacky stuff. Let's see what happens. And so are you guys just designing just to see like, where the edge is? Where's the edge of the earth? And then after that we drop off, just to find out what that is? Are you doing that? Well,

Kim Cartano 
we need number two, so that we can play a little bit more because what we found is that press does get a lot of use for or so you're running jobs. Okay? Yes, we're burning jobs. So when we when we're able, and I think January will be our, our play time when you know, the holidays have are winding down and we're just gearing up for spring season. January will be played time. So you know, I'm getting lots of things together for the team and, and seeing how we can how we can push some things. But the the DTF world is another area that I'm very interested in. And that one that one could definitely have had some legs with with the retail space for all you know, it's

Marshall Atkinson 
more than what people think. Right? So everybody just concentrates on the digital print. Right? But you know, you can do silicone, you can do all types of different stuff as transfers, right and, you know, and how are people using it and you see A lot of really simple stuff. But I think the other thing is, is placement location, right? So can you do a DTF that is on the cuff of the sleeve, or the collar or whatever, you know, where we can't normally print, we can put the team name, right or whatever, right? That's where this stuff is like, oh, that just added five more dollars to the shirt, retail price that you can get, because it's not anywhere. Look at all the shirts in a row. This is the only one that has that, oh, why is that five bucks more? Well, that's the reason right? And so now we can make more money with just a simple little decoration, then full color just be you know, red or something.

Kim Cartano 
So because it's different, and to your point, it's something that you can achieve in in a screenprint environment. So I think one of the challenges is when you have somebody new come in, and they have an idea. And they're like, Okay, and we'd like to print, you know, and it's a fleece, and we'd like to print it all the way up, you know, on the left hand shoulder here, and it's tied in and we want it to wrap around the front end. You know, in my mind, I'm thinking of the amount of screens we're going to break trying to go over scenes and you know, it's not going to be efficient in operations, it's going to give everybody tons of trouble. So you can and to your point you can you can control your own destiny by having that ability in house and achieve it through a different means. And I think that's that has a lot of potential.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's been sublimation or printing the fabric before the shirt sewn

Kim Cartano 
something like Yeah, yeah. And that's a whole different animal. Oh,

Marshall Atkinson 
yeah. That that's not something you're doing in your plant. No,

Kim Cartano 
no. But it's, it's, I mean, it's totally endless what's out there. So it's, it's really just dipping our toes more into the DTF world seeing what's happening, hoping that fluorescent inks become part of you know, the, the different colors that we can get out of, of these digital machines just to get that depth and and brilliance. So that's another

Marshall Atkinson 
have extra chrome now, you know, yeah.

Kim Cartano 
Which is great.

Marshall Atkinson 
So the What about AI? Are you goofing around with that?

Kim Cartano 
I am goofing around with that. And that is that's a whole nother That's like going down the rabbit hole. When you start getting into that. And, you know, the journey you're taking with mid journey is very, very fun to watch. So

Marshall Atkinson 
my mid journey journey, Journey journey.

Kim Cartano 
Yes, mid journey squared with it's remarkable, and I think I think there's so much potential, but I do think from a, you know, a commercial standpoint or illegality, I think that's one hurdle that we need to get past. But well,

Marshall Atkinson 
there's some degree I keep up with this stuff. You know, there was a court ruling a week or two ago, like that did not side with the artists. Oh, it's because you cannot prove that that image came from your image, you can scream and moan and say that, yeah, that's trained on that. But there's no way to prove it. And and because it's what, what, how, like, how do you link these images, and I think because it starts off with noise, right, just random generated noise. And it takes every word in the prompt, this is how MIDI works, it takes every word in the prompt, and it turns that into a math formula, which it applies to the noise. So when you say horse, watercolour, it looks at every image that's ever been made of horses, right? And image to text pair, so the image has to be labeled horse, you know, for to know that that thing's a horse, is that actually looking, Hey, that looks like a horse. It doesn't know what a horse is, right? And then what is watercolor mean? Watercolor means this. So everything that's ever been created with watercolor, right? So if you imagine the billions of images that are out there, right, and you're saying that it came from mine, right? That's just ridiculous from a statistical point of view. And, and, but anyway, it takes these things and Iran is signs these this algorithm to this static to the noise, and then out pops the result, right. And then if I gave you the same prompt, you would never be able to replicate what I did, because again, it starts with noise, right? So this is the interesting thing. With how these aim generators work, and of course, there's a lot of people who don't like it. And I totally understand their point of view because they want to create it themselves. Hey, go ahead. It doesn't bother me. As an ex art director, I want to be able to get to the outcome faster, right. All I need is a green iguana, because I want to do a green iguana picture. Maybe as a Tropical Bar, I'm doing a green iguana thing with some drinks and whatever I can do all the flowers is one prompt. I can do the iguana as a prompt, I can do a shot tequila as a prompt, I can do some textures to load into the fonts, because you know, like that thing, yes. All image journey as separate things, and then unloading all that into Photoshop. Right? And then I'm going to separate that. And instead of spending 234 hours designing this monster, a piece of awesomeness, yes, it's 20 minutes now. And and so I think people need to just look at how we're using this stuff to iterate and create, and it's not for everybody, and that's okay. It doesn't bother me. If people don't use it. I think you should play with it and learn? Does it fit with what you do? That's my whole standpoint, is, how can you knock it if you haven't tried? It's like trying to get my kid to eat broccoli? Right? So you say you don't like it, but you've never eaten it? How do you know maybe it's your favorite thing. And you just don't know, like, you know, as a kid, I would never eat asparagus. Now, if I'm ordering a steak, I'm always got asparagus because, you know, it tastes good, right? So it's just one of these things that this is going to help people. And I'm very curious as to how people are using it, and what are they doing and where the prompts and, and of course, all these tools are constantly coming up with the next. You thought it was good. Now he was waiting until now, like look at this thing. And, and that's right, the really cool thing is, I think, where we are now with it. Can you imagine four or five years from now,

Kim Cartano 
it's going to be insane. I right now, looking at what I've created, it's, it's really okay here. Here's the idea I have in my mind, and putting prompts in and seeing what it comes back with. And then because it's going to think of things I have never thought of. And then it's the refining. And I it's fascinating. It's almost like it just I therapy, maybe it's just it's creative therapy. And it's fast to your point. So you get a result so quickly. And it's just, you don't want to stop. So I'll find myself, you know, it's three o'clock in the morning, you're like, oh my gosh,

Marshall Atkinson 
oh my gosh.

Kim Cartano 
Is I've been at this for hours. Yeah. And

Marshall Atkinson 
I think that the thing to do is if you want a certain result, and you're not getting the result, okay. You know, mid journey Dali three, whatever you're using, like even Photoshop general filled to some aspect, right? These are genius four year olds. They don't know what you want, right? Yeah, they can produce amazing, amazing things. But they have no context as to what anything is. Right. So they're only using word prompts. So what were prompts are you using? Yeah, how good is your vocabulary? If you're not getting the results that you want? Are you sure you're using the right words? So one of my favorite tools for using mid journey is a thesaurus.

Kim Cartano 
I love that. Like, okay,

Marshall Atkinson 
what's another word for this? And that's okay, here's a whole giant list. Let's try them out. Right. And then if you want to move fast, that's when we get into permutations of power prompting and that type of stuff. So you can create hundreds of images in a minute, okay, that's

Kim Cartano 
why I need to follow you and your mid journey journey because you're, you're paving a path on all of this, and you're, you know, talking about some of the prompts that you put in there and like, Ooh, I gotta, I've gotta try that and see what happens. And I think we have to be in this space, because we have to know it. It's just like, starting out with CorelDRAW. And if you just stay with that, and you don't morph into more powerful design tools, I think you're missing out and to your point, you know, things are going to change, even our Illustrator and Photoshop, everything's going to at some point morph together and I think we need to stay ahead of it and understand it more. And, you know, even you know if it's, I'm designing for fun in mid journey at the moment, but it's not to say that something that I prompt, mid journey to do, doesn't inspire For me on the other side to pick up a pen and doodle and come up with something interesting. So we're inspired by everything around us. And it's just part of what everything is right now. Well,

Marshall Atkinson 
you know, you can upload your own doodle, you can upload your own painting your own photograph, right? And then have been dirty, do something creative to it, right? And so it's all about just how you're using tool. It's a tool like any other right and so to your point using Carell or illustrator, right, we know how to make a box, we know how to use the pen tool, we know how to use the type styler tool, we know how to invert and whatever, right? We know all this, how to do curves, right? You know, how to do these different things, right? These are just different tools that we're using, and they just require words. So we're not clicking and making four points. And that makes a square. You can design something and bid journey using words. And it could be the really close to what you want. I haven't really ever designed anything in it where it's the exact perfect thing. But the way I kind of explained it to folks, is it's like a football game, right? And you're receiving, you're standing in your own endzone and you're receiving the opening kickoff, and you run that ball all the way to the seven yard line. Okay, so, Kim, the crowd goes wild. It's crazy. You did such a good job. That's just remarkable. Nobody ever really does that most people run 10 or 12 yards and they get tackled. You went all the way to the seven yard line. But guess what? didn't score. We still have to run some plays to score a touchdown. Okay, that's what mid journey is like? Is it perfect? No. Are you gonna have to do something to file? Yes. Okay, but guess what? You're on the seven yard line going in? Right? It's so much easier.

Kim Cartano 
much easier, much easier. And it's, it's a lot of fun. I mean, it's to me, it's just a whole creative journey in itself and seeing where this can take us. And I'm interested, what is your take on Firefly, Adobe, Firefly, have you.

Marshall Atkinson 
I like Firefly. I like what Adobe's doing. But from an as an artist, right? I look at the output the image and the images are like, you know, if I'm grading them, it's a see man. Like, just like it doesn't get where it wants to go. Right? It just go all the way. And now you can do some cool stuff, right? You can use type and you could whatever and you could, you know, there, there's a lot of things you can do. I don't like the fact that it's got a little done watermark still there and you know it whatever. Maybe that's changed. Honestly, I haven't used Firefly in probably three months, so maybe something's improved. But, you know, I, to me, it feels a lot like type styler if you remember that program. Right? Combined with painter, you know, which is the curriculum in ether, right? painter was really cool, because you could actually fake watercolor texture paper and like, do all kinds of cool. I was always playing around with that. Right? And,

Kim Cartano 
but then I turned that into a filter and bring that into Illustrator. That's how I use it. Yeah, yeah. So

Marshall Atkinson 
So we're using these tools. Right? And, and so how are we using? Um, what are we doing and whatever, right? i A lot of people like, the whole Adobe thing, because it's only Adobe's library that it's cheap trained on. Right. And that feels safer. Yeah, it feels safe. Right. But, you know, we have two or 3 million people at any given moment using mid journey. Right. Okay, from a statistical standpoint, where's the lawsuits? Okay. And so if it's such a big deal, and it's such a big problem, where is it in the court system? Okay, now? Yeah. And so and the reason why to me and I'm not a lawyer, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn. So I don't know all the stuff but I it feels to me like it's it's a lot of scared people talking about stuff

Kim Cartano 
well, and I think you'll find that a lot of those people haven't even gone into the program yet. They don't

Marshall Atkinson 
understand how it gets the image. They think it's copy and paste, which is not right. So so if you're going to comment about this and talk about how bad it is, I think you need to understand how it gets the images, how it works, what it does the whole kitten Caboodle and and play with it a little bit, but you know, you got to learn, you know, try their broccoli Kid.

Kim Cartano 
Oh, that should be a slogan. I think we need to do that for mid journey. Just just try the broccoli.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, well, maybe we use ice cream because nobody All right, yeah. All right. Well, cool. Hey, thank you so much for sharing your story of success with us today. So Kim, what's the best way to contact you as someone who wants to learn more about what you specifically do? Or maybe how you can help them?

Kim Cartano 
Oh, that would be great. And thank you so much for having me. The best way would be through LinkedIn. And it's Kim Cartana. So pretty easy to find. And, yeah, I've had the best time today. Marshall. Thank you so much. Well,

Marshall Atkinson 
it's totally been my pleasure. And I know we'll keep in touch.

Kim Cartano 
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks, Kim. Thanks, Marshall.