Success Stories Ep 100 - "25 Years of Wisdom, DTF Tech and Ninjas"

100 episodes, we've hit our bingo card milestone! 

And with this episode, you are in for a real treat. 

So Jason Peters, with S&S Activewear, is on the show today to chat about his career and also thoughts regarding the industry. Jason's been around the block, and he's been in the industry for over 25 years, holding various production leadership and consulting roles. 

Currently, he's the manager of the Embellishment Solutions team at S&S. So what does that mean? What does he think about the industry? How can he help your shop? 

We'll explore all of that on this episode of success stories.

Transcript

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Marshall Atkinson 
100 episodes, we've hit our bingo card milestone, and with this episode, you are in for a real treat. So Jason Peters, with SNS activewear, is on the show today to chat about his career and also thoughts regarding the industry, Jason's been around the block, and he's been in the industry for over 25 years, holding various production leadership and consulting roles. Currently, he's the manager of the embellishment Solutions team at SNS. So what does that mean? What does he think about the industry? How can he help your shop? We'll explore all of that on this episode of Success Stories. So Jason, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Jason Peters 
Thanks, Marshall. I'm excited to be on I feel special to be on the 100th episode here.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't know. I think it's just how the dice rolled, but we'll put it this way. We saved it just for you.

Jason Peters 
There you go. I thought it was based on my age, so I'm glad that that wasn't. That's good.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. Okay, well, cool, so let's just dive right in. Okay? And I usually start, and fans of the show will know that we love to start the first question with, you know, the origin story, right? So, so take us back how you got started in this crazy industry, you know, what attracted you to it, and then maybe how have the experiences that you've had, you know, helped you grow over the years? So just like start us off.

Jason Peters 
Oh, great. Well, when I I, my dad owned a street, pretty business in Iowa when I was born, and he had it for short period of time when I was young, but I had enough exposure to it to, let's just put this way, say, I didn't think I wanted to be a part of that at all. So it was I got a really good view of what that looked like later. You went on into management roles and offset pretty that sold that business and then worked into a career in HR, but that was my first experience with screen printing. Is I just thought it was insane, and we still insane. I know that, but I didn't want to have anything to do with it. So just kind of all ties together. As a teenager, I started working with with adults and children that had conjugate developmental disabilities, just through organizations, I did a part time job or rock your job of the summer, went through high school and took some grab cards classes, just kind of a little bit interested, but not really, went to college and then started working for this bank called MBNA America. And like everyone else, you start lending or and collecting, which was pretty much a really horrible job, because you were cash for Edison all day. And I've heard that they had started this in house screen printing division,

Marshall Atkinson 
A bank starts a screen print division? Why would they do that?

Jason Peters 
Pretty crazy. Yes.

Marshall Atkinson 
I've never, I've never heard of that before ever.

Jason Peters 
believe it wasn't to print money or credit cards? So it was, yeah, it's really interesting. So they actually had a department called support services, where they wanted to provide meaningful work for people who had conjugate developmental disabilities, so Down syndrome, all tibs, so many, you know, splits on the spectrum, so they wanted to provide meaningful work for them to do. Well, this they started. They were kind of one of the forerunners of what's called into infinity marketing. So could take you back to, you know, back in the 90s, to remember, you go to a Penn State game and you get a free T shirt, or, you know, a month sign up for a credit card. We used to joke, if they're alive, give them five, you know what? The Juice per culture, $5,000 well, that Infinity Marketing was in motorsports, college athletics, MLB, they basically just started signing anything from sports marketing to teachers associations to Aoba airplane Association, all that was backed by some kind of a premium for activation to get them to sign up for their credit card. Well, they decided that this was like a great opportunity to provide opport, you know, employment for this particular group. They have three, got 3m and R automatics eventually, and built it up to a pretty decent-sized apartment. We're probably doing about 3 million impressions a year, with two ships and all that. Or T-shirts, all extra large, by the way, greatest, greatest print drive ever. You run an extra large all the time to give away at a median NASCAR rates, they might drop 20,000 applications in one weekend. That's 20,000 shirts. So could be at a Philadelphia Philly state, you know, they have a Philly shirt that did right there sign up, or a Penn State game, or any college you can imagine. And from any conference they pretty much had an a relationship with. So that's how to how I got involved in screen printing, starting out in banking. So it's kind of a crazy story. And then again, they have three Mr. Automatics in there. It, you know, it was a lot of the work was pretty primitive in the beginning, but then it became a lot of simulated process as they got into more motorsports things with NHRA and NASCAR, but a lot of it was, you know, your typical, you know, sports team, you know, Spot Color crits. In the beginning, those all white t shirts. Then they started doing a lot of colored stuff. And it really just expanded from there they went to, actually, towards the end there they went to start working, ready to sell the bank or, you know, to to Bank of America, which is, you know, that kind of they quite acquired it, uh, acquired MBNA. And I had an opportunity to take a package at the time, and I decided to take that package in Iraq. And then I went on to my next screen printing adventure after that, which was I went to work for a company called Thunder Creek, where I was director of operations. I did some consulting for a while before that, worked in a cut and sew facility that had 22 sewers, and we printed on an M and R jumbo panel crates that were just on white cotton, and then we would just make whatever color we wanted based on a water based print, so all sorts of really crazy experience. And the peak of that was working for thunder Creek, which we were doing pre print retail. Did Tony Hawk by crookholes, Chuck Norris, one liners, a lot of Walmart programs that were licensed programs, anything that you could ever think of, and then that evolved into a very large facility that printed about 60,000 impressions a week and then outsourced maybe another 40 to 50,000 impressions a week. So I managed both aspects of that, like the internal operations there, and then the outsourcing so that. But I spent a little time in Mexico, sometimes working on large programs for Walmart getting over to DC. So started out with very humble beginnings, working in a bank, and they kind of ended up in the on the higher end of the crazy retail pretreat world, where, you know, putting the T shirts is easy part, packing them and fixing a whole other animal.

Marshall Atkinson 
And that's where you lost all your hair.

Jason Peters
That's it, right there. Pretty much.

Marshall Atkinson
I'd make that joke if you don't know Jason, he's bald, right? So shaved

Jason Peters 
Pretty shiny.

Marshall Atkinson 
Shiny, yeah. Mine is just male pattern baldness, right? So, you know.

Jason Peters 
I would've had that, I would take that, I would, I would take a little bit of that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, so, the thing that I think remarkable here was the work with the folks with the disabilities. I really appreciate that. And so let me ask you, just going back to that, a little bit like, did it make you feel a little like fulfillment of giving these people meaningful work, right? That must have, must have been very satisfying.

Jason Peters 
It was amazing. And I tell you, I learned a lot of things because I've been in a lot of shops, my current job, and what I did before, and I've never seen anyone load on a zero index, on like a three color in a white shirt, like a guy with autism, it's phenomenal. Like, there's zero focus. Like, I that the issue that we had is when we didn't have work and we were so that's where it was a struggle. But the days we had work, they that some of the loaders that we had and our loaders, they were just so spot on. I i would have paid a million dollars to bring them into the shops I worked on later on, after that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. Okay, so, and then, how did you wind up selling apparel and working for SNS?

Jason Peters 
So I went after Thunder Creek. I did, I did a little bit of sales. Friend of mine. We, we were actually, we worked out in that there's an acquisition with GG Outfitters. So it's a very large segregated a lot of people know there land in Maryland. I went worked on for the short period of time. They acquired her retail pre print business, and then went over there with some of the team and operated there for a while and just helped out with some projects, mostly stuff that was big I've ever seeds in Mexico and for a little while, then cut stegweed Try to let me get this whole promotional products thing to try. And my buddy had a small business with two automatics. I went for in sales with him, did that for a while, and, you know, did the whole ASI side promotional product. So that side, that was definitely not for me. And I heard a friend of mine reached out to me, told me about an opportunity with company called TSC apparel, and I had a connection with them because I dealt with moelle, who makes fold a product called MnO and Toltecs, they actually manufactured that for TSC and then those kind of connections all just brought me back over. Or into this world again, but on the wholesale side, on black apparel, and you think to yourself, hey, what can go wrong? We're only shipping blanks, right? I mean, after all, last disaster, I mean, it seemed like it was going to be down broad.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, it was. And so now, right? You're the manager, so now you're the manager of the embellishment Solutions team, right? That sounds like a really fancy thing. So what? Nothing embellishment Solutions team do, and you know, how are you serving in that role?

Jason Peters 
Well, it's not, it's not like providing tinsel for Christmas tree, like maybe it sounds but it's so embellishment solutions is basically who we're servicing in that role. As I like to segue with, you know the old I think it's a Farmer's Insurance commercial says we know a thing or two because we've seen it thing or two. My motto is, I know a thing or two because I've screwed up a thing or two. So it's kind of gives me an opportunity to really help customers. It's customer engagement. And so through that, we offer, there's a lot of functions we have that fall under the embellishment solutions umbrella. One of those is our contract decorator network, which is, you know, over 330 contract decorators, and that is just, you know, a powerful tool that connects, you know, people in the promotional products industry with wholesale decoration services who buy black apparel but they don't decorate. So that's a national network that just kind of lines up with our our national distributions model of, you know, being a one day ship. And so they're spread all over the country. And we, we service our sales team and our customers by being able to identify, you know, anyone that needs separation by region, by certain you know, if it's for discharge, water base, if it's for embroidery, if it's for direct, you know, direct film transfers or silicon transfers, we have that ability to source that and then connect them to a contract decorator network that participates in our than our program. Along with that, then we also provide decoration resources for our sales team. So that's really about empowering the salespeople team, and they learn a lot from it. So salesperson will submit a request. It's a porthole that we manage. And they will actually, you know, for any kind of challenge, if I'm having a hard time, I'm burning the original 112 I'm breaking needles. I'm having a dye migration issue on the pultex, 241, because it's at 65% polyester, anything that you could think of in the Scooby Doo world of screw printing that could go wrong. We work with customers on providing them pathways, you know, to have a salute, you know, a pathway, really, to solve their problems, and then, you know, work with them like I'll buy fabrication, and really get detailed in working with them, you know, let's just say they buy avion, or they buy Rutland, they buy wilflag, or they're buying international coatings that ring source. We work with them in those parameters. So if they need a locally white, we make sure that we're working with them with the International coatings white. Or if they use a certain kind of, you know, wrong material, like, you know, any kind of material that they're comfortable with, we try to work with them in those parameters, just to make as tailored as possible. So it's just super effective for them, because at the end of the day, the bottom landmark for what it's about is we want to make it easier for them to sell apparel. So the easier we can, you know, make it for them to embellish apparel, the more apparel we could sell. So it's just kind of a win win for both of us. And we really feel that our, you know, what we're focused on is partnering with decorators, because if decorators are growing, we're growing. So it's a win win.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great, and you and your background really serves that up well, where you could mentor and coach these people through a, you know, maybe a decoration technique they've never tried, or a way to get something through the system faster. Or, you know, maybe an advice on what type of shirt blank to use for a particular project, right? You're really helping them and guiding them through whatever challenges they're facing, right?

Jason Peters 
That's correct. I mean, a lot of it, you're, you bring a really good point mark. A lot of it comes down to fabrication. Like, hey, what? Like, what's, what's the end game here, when you're talking to customer, sometimes we get the conversation you have in a decoration challenge that's like, well, we market this to, or you're selling a tribal into a, you know, to a landscape company. Okay, let's maybe, let's maybe go look at 100% cotton, like six, 6.1 ounce tea, you know. So there's a lot to it that we can, you know, we really try to work with customers, you know, and make sure that we're giving them the best tools to decorate, you know, every fabrication that we carry. And we really are work. We also work with our merchandising team as well, so that when we take on new product, we're really evaluating and saying, Hey, before we take on this new product, you know, we really want to look at it, make sure that we can embroider it. We could screen print it, and we can apply, you know, eat applied graphics to it. Because if we can't really do all those three things, like it's we really. Really are, you know, it's for us. It's where we really, really make sure that we have product that is, is, you know, had some kind of a solution embellishment, before we roll it out to the customer base.

Marshall Atkinson 
So if you're in these shops all the time, right? And you probably see people who were like, world class, and you probably see some folks that you know maybe aren't as good, right? What do you think really sets people up who were doing things the right way, you know? So, you know, we can emulate that, right? So what do you see that that you would, you would just like throw out there. Hey, you should focus on this. What would you say to them?

Jason Peters 
Yeah, I tell it like, I learned one thing that I'm never gonna learn. I'm gonna just learn something new every week in this shop, because I learned so much from visiting shops, you know, all over the country on a weekly basis. I will tell you the the overall thing is adaptability and flexibility you have, like, the those who are willing to change, you know, those are willing to look into the next innovative decoration method, you know, that are willing to say, Hey, I'm going to give this a shot. Or I'm going to, you know, I need to maybe offer more decoration services. You know, maybe it's an embroidery like we like, for example, I would we have some, like, giant contractor embroider who don't spring, and now they're taking a look at, hey, you know, maybe I'm going to, like, add a few heat prepses, and I'm going to get direct to film and some heat it by graphics a shot, because it's a way I can diversify my sales. And I can start selling, you know, just besides hats and wovens, I can start selling some, you know, more T shirts. So, you know, to my current, existing, you know, customer base, you know, are offer more, um, you know, to my customers who dropship to me. So it's just, I think that really, that adaptability. And you you know very well, Marshall, you know, well you do as well. There's always that one guy in some shops that holds everybody hostage because he's unwilling to change, and he is always right, and he's never going to be wrong, and he's never willing to take a look at anything new. If that guy's in control the shop, and you'd see it a lot, you could just tell that that place is going nowhere. But when they have people that are willing to go out there and learn and and say, Hey, we want to be at the front of innovation. We really want to offer our customers with the most solutions possible for decorating, like apparel and accessories. Those guys are successful.

Marshall Atkinson 
I think you know, it's the lens of how you see yourself, right? So if you call yourself a screen printer, it's really hard to get behind transfers or embroidery or something else, because your whole world has been mastering the craft of screen printing. But if you think that you're an entrepreneur, right, you're a businessman or businesswoman, and now that shifts the focus on to profit and doing other things, I think, you know, then you're looking for better opportunities that for that, right? And so, you know, when I talk to folks like, you know, they've been around, sometimes they have that guy that owns the company, and other times it's like the production manager, or whatever, and this guy's been doing things for 20 years, or 30 years, or whatever it is, and it's really hard to get that guy off his position. And here's the thing is, sometimes he's been doing it wrong for 30 years, okay? And that's all the dude knows, right? And there's in the because of that, there's nothing you can say to that guy, right? And, and I've been there, right? And I've got horror stories, like, you can't even believe we won't get into that, but, you know, but it's like one of these things where, you know, if you just got to shift, how you observe and think about yourself, and then also think about your customers challenges, and are you meeting your customers challenges with what they actually want. Instead of trying to sell them something they may not you know need or want, you're giving them something they're desperate for. You're just going to have a way better experience or probably be way more successful. Don't you think?

Jason Peters   
Totally and high state bound from, you know, where me and you both are right now, because we both been in, we've been in the fire, right? We've been down the graph. It's easy from this view up here, we're kind of, we kind of could oversee from the top. When you're in the mix every day, it's so hard to think rationally. Sometimes, so sometimes just a rational voice like that you provide for, you know, consulting, and then I do with, you know, upping decorators, just because we're not in that, that pressure cooker every day of their shop, so we can see things that they just can't see because maybe they're too busy, or, or just the emotional attachment to the, you know, all the things that are going on in the building at the time.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, like, you know, here's one, you know, why are you putting a. 16 piece job on an auto you know, it's just stuff like that. Then you just see, like, what's going on and and then the answer is, well, we've always done it this way, right? That's, that's what kills you. And you see other shops that are just crushing it by doing something else. You know, one decoration channel everybody's gonna agree that's seen really incredible growth in the last couple years is the DTF market, right? Which is why, you know, people shouldn't be printing 16 pieces on what is driving that? Jason, and what do you think the impact it has in the industry?

Jason Peters 
Basically, it's amazing. Marshall, like, I just, I mean, I wish I could go back in the time machine and go back and, you know, and be in this DTF page, because it's, it's phenomenal to direct from transfer. I think the biggest thing that makes me so, like, excited about it is that, you know, that all the parameters with screen printing, like, Oh, I gotta have to use, I gotta have to be careful, I don't, you know, scorch the rayon in the tribe line, or I have to use a low bleed ink on this polyester shirt. Or, you know, I have to worry about, you know, turning the, you know, the the dryer temperature down so I don't cause dye migration. So it's like, there's all this variables and screen printing, you know, and it's really hard sometimes to get white, opaque prints on, you know, certain fabrications, because you're just, you're playing around with all these different things, with all the different polyester blends and rayons and all now we have so many new eco fabrics that are out there. There's just so many different things, of fabrications and direct to fillers, just like, hey, we have, like, one solution that works on everything you know. And I think that's what's so phenomenal about it. It's just the way that you apply it to a garment or a wearable, and the customization you know that you can do on a small scale and now be profitable, like you Lynch and hey, I'm not going to set up, you know, a $16 job, or maybe less than, you know, like for now, I'm going to look at all my numbers say, hey, what's the threshold now for, for, is it five colors and more and I have 25 shirts? Or is it 30 shirts or 50 shirts? Maybe I'll just use direct to film instead of screen printing. So there's just it gives you flexibility as a screen printer for, you know, for to run your capacity, because you could turn it on or off however you want it. You know, today, maybe we ever have all the presses full. So we're going to run this job on direct film transfers, and we'll back it out that way. Or this is too many colors to set up, and it's a low quantity. So the best thing to do is to run on direct to film or have a unique placement that's just too difficult to screen print, like it's, like, on the hem of, you know, on the cuff, or it's a sleep print. I just don't want to deal with those pallets. Or, I think another thing that's cool about it is you really don't have to thread the garment on the palette, which I love, which is so different from street printing. A lot of times you lay it on there and then apply the, you know, the transfer. So that gives you a ton of flexibility on placement.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is, you know, a DTF transfer, you can put that on a block of wood. I mean, it'll go on just about anything. And, and we don't really have to deal with a lot of the stuff. Now, there's some things. It's just not going to work, right? It's not going to work at some kind of crazy, like, three quarter zip hoodie with the, you know, jacket that's got to, like the polar fleece, right? It's never going to work on that, right? And so we have to, you pick your battles, right? And I think one of the things that it gets labeled is that it's not screen printing. And so it sucks, right? And let me tell you, how many times have you seen some really sucky screen printing, like I see it all the time, right? And so if we're going to compare it to screen printing, are we compared to the best possible use case of screen printing, or we compare it to a lot of the stuff you see out in the marketplace. I mean, just, frankly, go to go to any store. Okay? And is that the best screen printing you've ever seen in your life? No.

Jason Peters 
I used to do that screen printing. I know it's not about how many things are at a registration when you go look at that or, Oh yeah, wipes is not big enough.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, yeah. It's just crazy. And what's funny, when you're like, been in the industry like me, and some, some you probably, and other people, right? You could be at the mall or at the game or whatever, and you're walking and you see something, and you instantly know, without even it just what it just tracks on some kind of weird industry radar, that that's an inch off center right, or whatever, or is crooked by five degrees. And you go, like, why? What? You know, why would they? Why would they get that out? You know? What's funny is, I was sitting in a football game once, and and the opposing team, there's a dude that was sitting in front of me and the whole game. What really bothered me wasn't that my team was playing horribly because they were it was the fact that he had a locker patch, you know, the decoration location right below the neck, right? And it was, like, incredibly off center right to the point it was my Oct was like, kick you the high gear. I almost had like, two shakes over it. Like, how could this because, you know, and let me tell you, it was a really high end athletic brand, right? I'll just, I won't say that, but they're based in Oregon, okay. And so it was, it was like, how can they let this out, right? And so it really bothered me that this thing was just so badly printed, okay, and, and this wasn't, by the way, a heat press, right? This was screen printed. And so it's just, you know, there's crap out there everywhere, okay, but what I think is really great about DTF is that the error rates, because I, you know, I've seen the numbers, the error rates are considerably smaller. Tracking through your shop is considerably faster. Now, not if it's 2000 pieces or something, obviously, but if it's a smaller order, it makes lots of sense. Think about in your shop, right? You know, the shops that I've run, we tried to get under five minutes of screen to set up, right? That's our goal, right? A lot of shops that I work with, sometimes, when we start looking at this stuff, they're not even close to be under 10 minutes of screen, right, and the goal for them is just to be at seven, right. And if you just look at how long it takes to set up a multi color job. You could be done with that with a with a transfer, okay, and you're now, you're getting more product out the door faster, and avoiding the screens, avoiding stuff, avoiding, you know, some types of problems, or whatever. And also, your employee headcount doesn't have to be as high, because think about all the people you need to run screen printing versus a heat press shop, right? So eights, right? And here's the other thing, here's some proof, social just social proof, right? I challenge anybody right now to go to the mall, go to the store, go to Dick's Sporting Goods, or shields, or whoever, right? And go look at what's in the Nike section, the Under Armor section, the Adidas section, right? And how many of those garments are screen printed.

Jason Peters 
Not many. Yeah. I mean, they, you know, they're, you're right, 100% and you bring up a great point, though, about the screens also, in regards to the teardown, removing the ink from the screens.

Jason Peters
Oh, yeah, yeah, it seems like lost time.

Marshall Atkinson
Yeah. Now, will screen printing go away? Hell no, right? We need it because somebody out there has a really large job or has other things they need to do, or DTF won't do some things, okay? So we need screen printing, and we still have a use cases for that that are a mile long, okay, but what I'll tell you is that the manual press, whole department, right, has been, like, totally replaced with DTF. People who are coming into this industry, like, three months ago, they decided, hey, I'm going to do t shirts. You know, three or five years ago, they went about a manual press. Now they're getting a heat press and ordering transfers.

Jason Peters 
That's a great point, because, you know, you mentioned you're right. Screen crane is very it's nothing's ever going to beat the cost effect of this of screen printing on high value so and then embroidery is always going to have its place too, which is why, you know, I always tell customers listen direct to film or heat of pipe graphics, in general, all the other things that's just, it's a tool belt. Embroidery is a tool that's the hammer, whenever you want it to be. Screen printing is a tool on that belt. Now, direct to films to on that belt right use the right tool for the job, and you're only helping yourself by doing that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yep, and so that, I think, just like, there's so much going on with this. And so if you're listening to this show, and you're in that camp that. That DTF is horrible, right? I want you to just have an open mind. And I want you to go to a trade show. I want you to go to a sporting goods, uh, store, okay, I want you to see what's available, right? I personally know there's transfers out there that have no hand. You can feel them, okay? And there, there's stuff out there that that has a lot of really cool stuff. It's reflective, or it's metallic, or whatever. It's got stretch in it. So you can put it on the waistband of a Lulu Lemon pan, right? There's stuff out there for lots of use cases, right? So it what I'll tell you also is that every Tom Dick and Harry out there has a DTF printer, and they're trying to sell dtfs to the other screen printers out there. And that doesn't quite mean that there's quality associated with that then ordering from a more reputable supply chain vendor, right? Because people who are doing this, this is their only thing they do. They've mastered that. The dude that's down the street from you, okay, is he an expert at building ICC color profiles? And does he? Is he looking at as a the adhesive powder. And like, is he doing the things he needs to do to make the craftsmanship in that transfer that you're going to order, or are you going to have some really upset customers in about three weeks.

Jason Peters 
Agreed, and there's just a lot of small pop ups that are out there. They're just trying to sell on price. You don't even know what the quality of the product is, but it's all about price. And you know, a lot of regional, small, you know, DTF printers out there, you know, that just want to get into that game. But, you know, I say they don't really have too much seat in the game because, I mean, other than selling DTF transfers, what's the primary business, you know, somehow it's like they could sell that close up and run on you.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, here's the thing, you know, it's like anything you get what you pay for, right? So, if we were talking about transfers, if we're talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is ice cream, okay? So, yeah, you can get that, that cubic block of ice cream at the grocery store that you only serve to four year old kids birthday parties, right? Or do you have the ice cream that's that's a little more expensive, right? That actually tastes good. This made from pure ingredients. That's really going to be an awesome thing to have, right? What's your version of that that you're that you're actually sourcing and using for your clients. So, yeah, it's cheaper. That doesn't mean it's better, okay? And so, so I think here, what we really need to be thinking about is our customers and their experience, and will this thing last, not just for this week, but three years from now, that thing still looks good. Is still sticking to the shirt. It's, it's just an awesome thing for them, right? And so that's what we really need to be thinking about, rather than, I can save a nickel, you know, that's kind of my take on it. You know, I don't know if you agree with that, but it's just like, I just think there's just, it's such a we're it feels like the early days of DTG, when we're all sold to cannibalize everything, and you just, it's just the weird, wild west moment we're in right now. What's the thing?

Jason Peters 
It is, I used to have two Courtney avalanches for a direct to consumer business that we ran where we were doing custom World of Warcraft shirts. We thought, you know, you know, we had this whole thing figured out. But this is back when you're super temper metal based on these solvent based things before the water base. Those things were just, they were just very difficult to work with. They were the climate control and everything else I think about that. You know how it was so hard to get that profitable, even selling a very expensive product as a one off piece. But now I think about it with that would have been perfect for direct to film, like it just had everything that direct to film makes direct to film productive. So there is a place for it. And I think the also, the other key thing is the artwork. Like a lot of people hate it because they've seen bad art. But if, if you don't knock out, you know, the design to make the shirt come through, yeah, you're going to end up with a sticker. It's going to look ridiculous. It's going to feel heavy. But if you work with the garment, and you actually, you know, make the garment come through, especially like on a heather shirt or a tribe, and you make a garment come through design, it's really hard to tell apart from street printing. It's phenomenal. 

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, here, here's, here's. The other news flash is that a lot of customers don't care about that at all. They don't care about the hand feel right? You can go to the store and look at what these shoe brands are selling, and a lot of them, it's a piece of plastic stuck to a shirt. And it's $35 you know, my son's favorite shirt is a directive film transfer shirt of Kobe Bryant holding up a sign when he scored 100 points in one game, right? He wears that thing all the time. This is literally a piece of poster board stuck to a shirt. That's what it feels like. He doesn't care. He just absolutely doesn't care. We care because, you know, we're, we're t-shirt snobs, Jason, we care. Okay? He doesn't care. He's 20. Well, you bought that shirt. He was like, 17, right? He just doesn't care, right? So I think a lot of times we're in putting what we think into what we think our customers care about. Now, do some customers care? Of course, they do, right? Well, a lot of people don't, right. And, you know, just look at what any store is selling right now, and you can see that, you know, there's a low bar, right? Not that we have to do that, right? We always want to be better. But I just think that a lot of people get really the tied up into knots about things that might not be actually, actually true with their customers.

Jason Peters 
I think it's head trash that we developed out of fear that we know of things that our end users will say, but they never actually said, but it's just the fear that they might say that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, you know, I'm sure when the microwave came out, professional chefs hated it.

Jason Peters Yeah. You can't please everybody.

Marshall Atkinson
No.

Jason Peters 
You can't please everybody. But also, like, there's also, you know, I do think, you know, again, I think you have a great point. It does. I think sometimes we get too hung up on what we think the end user wants, because we're almost over educated as decorators. And we just, we really have, just, like, believed that everyone cares as much as we do. About, like, you just said, about, like, the locker patch be crooked. No one pays much of that. Like, I'm a dork. I measured sure with my fingers from the collar to see if the they're placed at the right, you know, place in the front of the shirt, like every time I go into a store. So I have the same disease, Marshall, but it's like, I don't think that our end users do.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, well, you know, come on, I can't walk by T shirts without touching them. This like, it's, it's, it's impossible for me to be in a store walk and there's T shirts on a table or a rack or whatever, I've got to touch the shirt and feel the fabric. I gotta feel the print. I'm like, I'm like, the, you know, the the Braille judge, like, just like, what does it feel like? I'm very interested in that, and I've actually had some sales clerks come up to me and go, What are you doing? Yeah, what's what's your problem? You were at LP, mister. So anyway, all right, hey, last question. So, Jason, you've been around the block a bunch, right? So what are you looking forward to the most right now in the industry, as we're thinking about the future, and we've got all these new toys and all this new stuff going on, right? What's around the corner for you?

Jason Peters 
I tell you what, what's really exciting to me right now is, is we are at snets activewear. We're working on a an integration with Ninja transfers, who, as you talked about out there, there's quality products out there. And I asked the question, it's like, what's the end game for some of these people that are in the director film business? Well, Ninja transfers, they have a large tree grain business, over 20 automatics, and they built a DJ product and created it for the sole purpose, originally, of just supporting their production needs. So they have so much skin in the game on this, because it's something they need to be able to use every day to simulate street cream or, you know, around capacity or at quantity. And so they developed a, what I think is, you know, one of the top of many transfers that are out there. There's a lot of great products out there. Products out there in the industry, which is an easy peel transfer that can peel hot and it you or you could peel a cold, you really kind of goof proof. So some hot peels you have to peel right away, or they might cause an issue. This one, you can peel it hot or cold, and it really has incredible Asian on all sorts of fabrications, even on difficult stuff that, you know, we were told no no to, like water, base, roll credit, Digi camo, you know, our, you know, those kind of fabrications, or nylon jackets, those things that are just really difficult. So what I like about it's a product that can really be kind of, hey, this is a great product if I really have that difficult fabrication, and maybe I even create DTF transfers in house. And I, I don't want to, you know, I just want to learn gang sheets. I just want to outrun I production stuff I need only, like, six or seven pieces that are a five by five, or a three by three, or are just something. Of all, I don't want to mess up my production and with running some of these small quantities, so this integration is going to be phenomenal for that. What's really exciting about it Marshall is you're going to be able to go on the accidents activewear website. You order your blank apparel, and you order your blanks, you add it to your cart, and then you add your DTF transfers. You can order it by Po, and the transfers actually count towards your $200 brief rate threshold. So it's combination of your actual transfers that you're buying and your blanks, and then it ships out like a dropship product, like, what from a mill from us? So some of our mill ship, drop ship like a badge or or an L, A, T, so similar to that, it would ship out from ninja. And then you would also get your apparel order separately, but you could all be under one Po. And you can use your net terms, which is phenomenal, because it's, you know, now you're now you have a cash flow solution. Let's just say, you know, a lot of people don't have multiple net terms of every vendor I know in commercial products industry stuff, because you have so many vendors. But let's vendors. But let's just say, every consumable vendor you have, you know, if you use, only use, you know, key to play graphics or direct to film every once in a while. I mean, what's the point of doing that? But you have that all. You have that option of putting that on your assets, active, wearing net terms. So it's a really exciting way, you know, to kind of offer another, uh, solution to make it easier for your bell apparel. And I guess the point I want to make is, you are embellishing apparel. We are not going to decorate anything. All you're getting is a transfer that chip separately, and you're getting apparel that you have to put the actual logo, press it on the actual uh, apparel or accessory, because at the end of the day, again, we know that our best half the growth is when you're on your best passive growth as a decorator, when you're growing your decoration business, we're going to grow SMS after where. So we want to partner with our customers and provide them solutions to make their life easier as an embellisher, but not get in the way of their embellishment business.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that's really interesting. Jason, so, and here's how I see this as an advantage. Just spitball in here. So if you're doing, let's just say you're doing transfers in house already, and you're an SNS client, if you've got a larger order, you know, 100 transfers, I don't know, something from the baseball team or little league or whatever, and you could spend all day running all this stuff out, or you just order it with the jerseys, and everything comes in at once. And now you can be doing all your other transfers with your equipment in house, and then everything meets in the receiving and then you could just move it right to production. And it's just easier to handle. Don't you think?

Jason Peters 
I totally agree. Yes, it's, and it's, it's one touch, right? And, you know, would always say, I think it was the old job Jack Welch saying, like, you know, our our brat, our backroom, where we do that thing that we're kind of good at. It's somebody else's showroom, right? So that's a good point for outsourcing, right? Sometimes, just makes sense to outsource things, because the main reason is to get a fixed cost on it. You think you know how much it costs to run in your building, but at least you have a fixed cost on it. If you outsource, that goes with decorating too. Sometimes decorator that even outsourcing, but it just not profitable for them to do, because it just, you know, it's not, you know, their wheelhouse. So I think that is a great point. And then, from an efficiency standpoint of ordering, I mean, you you're gonna have whoever studio you're purchasing, like you're going on one website, not multiple websites. I'm gonna work. So it's just really easy. If you're going to do, like, a team job, like you mentioned, I'm going to order a team job, and I'm going to, you could put numbers and full color graphics on the same gang sheet. You could run out one whole team order and then order the apparel at the same time. Like, there's just, it's just a lot of really neat efficiencies that come with it's something brand new that it's never been done before. So I'm very excited about it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Now, are you being taught? Is this being tied to any online store platform for auto ordering with because, you know, we have the team, we have the it's the design with the monkey on it, or whatever, and we do this every month. We've got the store set up. Is it set up for that, or is that like future stuff that you're going to be doing?

Jason Peters 
Maybe, right now? No, because it's not going to be on that part of that data library that we pick it up in the EI or an API or promo standard, because of the artwork component that's in it, you know. So that makes it a little bit more difficult. So, and then the other reason is, is you don't, we don't want it to be customer facing. So, you know, it's, you know, you're having a program and you like you want to have, you want to feature certain products. You just, you know, however you decided that creative is up to you. That's, you know, I mean, so that's why we don't so we don't want that as a product option on there for your platform.

Marshall Atkinson 
So if I order those that team design or the left chest. With the monkey logo on it right that's in my queue. Can I reorder it? Or I gotta re upload it?

Jason Peters 
You can reorder it. And yep, some of the, some of the features that we have that are rolling out. So you'd actually see the last you'd be able to pull from old art that you've already used in the past, work on that right now. So you got to see that would default to whatever you ran last when you got up in there. But yes, you would have, you would have access to to artwork that you ran in the past five sides. You know, I would transfer yet. So it's, it's really interesting there. I I like it. But they also give you good guidance as well on, like, what are the best transfers per side? So, like, hey, what's the best thing for a neck bed? Well, it's a three by three, or is it a five by five? What can I use a three by three? I'm like, put it on the hat. Put it on my backpack. So they give you a lot of point of references as you're building things out. So you have the option to order DTaP transfers by side. You can order those cut or uncut, and that's like, you know, the cut? Yes, there's an extra cost to that, but again, that's something that has a big cost on it. You think, hey, maybe I'm saving money by cutting them in my building. But you think you know how much it cost you to cut them, maybe you don't. So maybe getting it cut is a good idea. Some people like to leave them on the roll if they order both sides, because they just like to keep the role, you know, somewhere that they can access, you know, if they want to order a little bit extra to use later. And then there's gang sheets. So if you have a gang sheet builder will actually a guide that will help you to build the gang sheet. If you are, you know, don't have a file ready, gang sheet the load if you're not an expert the gang sheet business yet, which you know, a lot of people are learning that some people have it down to an incredible science, and some people don't. But the DTF gang sheet tool will help you build that out and show you different options on all the different sides gang sheets that they have as well.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's just amazing. And really looking forward to see how this takes off. And I know that it's going to be really impactful for a lot of companies, both in the promo space, but also in you know, folks that decorate apparel, right? So, and is this something that you are personally managing, or you're just talking about it today?

Jason Peters 
I've been to the process for bringing I mentioned the whole thing, but just from the point of technical support, yes, perhaps it's customers for our sales team. Just communicate the message of, you know how to utilize this as another tool along with the other decoration services that you already provide. You know what it could be for, and then how to use it on. And then we're, you know, also on helping from a technical standpoint, our sales team and our customers understanding like, hey, where, what kind of fabrications, where this would be really unique that I could use this on. But I never thought that I was going to be able to decorate. Is it a raincoat, you know? Is it like the Digi camo that we talked about? That's just a die migration nightmare, you know? Oh, what are those things? Is it, you know, putting it on a weird spot, on a hat, putting it on a cup, or just easy way to do locker patches, or, you know, another thing, it's, you know, that we, I think, that we really want to get the message out about it. I think that will help you grow your sales. Is you now have a solution to sell, like, 10 pieces, but they don't all have to be the same product. I could sell, you know, a jacket, a sweater, a t shirt, a hat, you know, because the director film makes you be able to do that. So it's great for, you know, running that online store, all those tools. So it's really kind of just, I My goal is, and my role here is just to kind of help educate everyone on how this could be such a powerful tool to help you extend your your product offerings, your customers.

Marshall Atkinson 
I love it. I love it. So, all right. So just to close up here, thanks so much for sharing that whole story, and also, you know what you guys are doing with us today. So if somebody wants to contact you, Jason, about this program or maybe anything else, what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Jason Peters 
My email is J Peters, so that's the activewear.com. You can find me under LinkedIn that Jason Peters said that's activewear. Or if you're ever in a trade show and the lights are really bright. Just look for my shiny head, you know.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, plus, plus, he's like me. We're tall guys, right Western up. We stick out. So you know, it's all good. I I'm always really easy to spot on the trade show, and I know you are too.

Jason Peters 
Thanks, Marshall. I'm gonna take that as a compliment, I guess, right? Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, you know, when everybody in the world is, you know, 5"10 and, you know, I'm 6"5, so it's like, it's, you know, I'm a head above everybody else all the time.

Jason Peters 
So you got the hair, though, you had the hair. So you, yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, I got the hair for like, another, I don't know, two years, maybe, and then it's just, it's, it's like, I don't know, I'm gonna look like a monk soon. I think.

Jason Peters 
It's all right, take it, take it all the way to the horseshoe. It's okay.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh yeah, it's, it's, it's going, it's going there, you know, all right, buddy. Well, hey, well, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate you. And. Uh, looking forward to seeing how this runs for you guys. I think it's be really exciting, and I know it's gonna be, it's gonna really help lots of people. And so that's what I really like about it. It's just just, it's in alignment with what folks need. So...

Jason Peters 
Thank you, Marshall, and hey, congratulations on 100 episodes.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I can't believe it. And thanks for SNS for sponsoring because, you know, they they pay their freight here. So you know, it's really great. And thanks to everybody that's listening and has been listening for the past several years. So we really appreciate you. So alright, dude, well, hey, thanks. See ya.

Jason Peters
See ya. Thanks.