Distributors hit the jackpot at ISS Atlantic City last week as over 160 vendors showcased the newest techniques and hottest product lines in the decorated apparel industry. From March 21-23, thousands of qualified buyers walked the trade show floor, learning about the latest trends in screen printing, direct-to-garment (DTG), embroidery and promotional products. Here are insights and images of some standouts we found:

EG-PRO Ups the Game for Performance Gear

For the past 20 years, New York City-based EG-PRO (asi/51831) has been behind the scenes manufacturing and importing blank apparel for some of the industries’ giants. Now taking center stage, the supplier has scaled into its infrastructure, developing and introducing new fabrics on a consistent basis. EG-PRO unveiled its Evo Heather line of crew neck tees and polos, comprised of 90% polyester and 10% spandex. The company has also added youth sizes to its collection of T-shirts, shorts and hoodies.

Over the next few months, the company will release its Covert Camo hoodie, made of a knit-in jacquard camouflage mesh pattern, as well as women’s leggings. In 2020, another five to six fabrics will be added to the collection. All of these products are made with moisture management/anti-microbial technology that keeps the interior of these clothes bone dry.

“Traditionally, we’ve focused on corporations and end users decorating for specific customer needs,” said Vince Winters, president of EG-PRO. “Now we’re going to the team business by supplying the same core blanks at prices quite frankly nobody can really touch because we’re vertical. We own the factories.”

Winters says he added 24 new sales reps in the last three months, just focus on targeting the team sports market. “I’m competing with some big companies and we’re trying to change buying habits,” he said. “Having sales reps that have the relationships to at least show the breadth of what we have has certainly been helping.”

M&R Companies Embraces the Digital Age

M&R Companies, one of the largest manufacturers of screen printing equipment, had its machines and technology sprawled out all over the trade show floor. Attendees were welcome to test out the equipment and ask questions from the company’s service technicians, getting a feel for how the presses operate. “I like it when it’s not mobbed because you can spend a little more time with people and get a little more in depth,” said Glen Carliss, director of sales for U.S. and Canada at M&R Companies. “Our job here is to help people find the best way to be profitable in business. We want to help people understand where their markets are heading, talk to them about their business and what improvements can be made.”

M&R’s most popular product on display was the Digital Squeegee. At production rates of 400+ prints per hour, the machine bridges the gap between DTG printing and screen printing. M&R’s hybrid printing process reduces the time, labor and cost required by digitally printing alone, making small and mid-size print runs cost effective. A wide array of fabrics, including synthetic and performance blends, can be printed digitally due to the screen printed underbase, opening the door to new market trends and cost-effective high-end digital textile imaging.

“We’re working on playing a bigger role in the digital market,” Carliss said. “We’ve come up with R&D work that we’re providing to some of the major brands to work more toward a production run of one unit – that’s really being driven by the likes of Amazon. You will have to be required to make one production run of one unit over and over again: a T-shirt, then a hoodie, then a women’s sleeveless garment. You’re going to have to have the equipment that allows you to touch a garment once, put it on a machine that will then decorate it, be cooled off automatically, folded, packaged and put in a mailing envelope, label on top and into the back of a truck. All in one touch. M&R has all of those parts already developed.”

Market to Target: Pets

Joe Johnson, co-director of Jackson, WI-based Dog & Company, was constantly being asked about the variety of pet apparel at the booth. There were hoodies, jerseys and T-shirts for branding, leashes and collars for embroidering, and pet tags for engraving. “Pets have become an extension of our family,” Johnson said. “People are looking for different accessories to have, like that jersey with their favorite player’s name on it or their kid’s jersey number on their pet.”

Fleetwood, PA-based Attachmentville (asi/62860), a division of The IRIS Companies, also dabbles in the pet market. Primarily a lanyard manufacturer, Attachmentville has extended its line to dye-sublimated and screen printed leashes and collars. “If someone is selling shirts and hats already to a company, this is a nice, easy upsell,” said William Banks, director of technology at The IRIS Companies. “We can work with their artwork and provide what they need.”

Technique to Master: Heat Transfers

Rick Roth, an award-winning screen printer and president of Pawtucket, RI-based Mirror Image Inc., runs a popular blog with Tom Davenport called The Ink Kitchen, which shares “real-world” knowledge of the decorated apparel industry. Throughout the trade show, Ink Kitchen hosted free talks on practical and visionary topics by decoration and garment experts. On Thursday, Roth and Aimee Derouen, general manager at Mirror Image, discussed dye migration, ghosting and over evils in screen printing. “A lot of times if you design artwork from the ground up, it’s going to work out better,” Roth said. “If you design with a printing technique in mind, you’re going to get a soft, cheaper, faster result in the end.”

On the topic of upcoming trends in screen printing, Roth suggested that apparel decorators turn to heat transfers. “Transfers are exploding and it’s a really good option for a lot of things,” he said. “It actually works and looks just like printing. I took a transfer around the trade show floor last year and asked people what they thought of the print. People who should really know said it looked good. But it was a transfer. A guy asked what you should set your dryer at. I don’t know what you should set your damn dryer at. Everybody has a different dryer, different humidity, it’s crazy. But if I say this transfer works at 320 degrees for 12 seconds with 50 pounds of pressure, it will work every time. So your promotional people that are worried to death about ruining something have a very specific recipe with a transfer that will work each and every time.”

Introducing Stokkup: Next-Generation Shop Management Software

The self-proclaimed underdog of ISS Atlantic City, Chicago-based startup Stokkup is hungry for a piece of the market. The shop management software company intends to streamline communication and improve capacity planning and efficiency for apparel decorators. A Cloud-based service, Stokkup’s goal is to shave time off every task that every shop has to do, from invoicing, scheduling and art approval to production, shipping and order tracking.

“A lot of shops think they’re not ready for digital, but they are,” said Yona Gidalevitz, technical operations manager at Stokkup. “If you can shave a second off at every single touchpoint on an order, at the end of the day, you end up seeing a huge uptick in efficiency and huge downtick in cost.”

Gidalevitz says the onboarding process is a very personal experience. Shops get assigned a “client success” rep to communicate with. The rep will get on a conference call and share computer screens, walking shop owners through everything step by step. The website also offers a chat feature for reps to answer any questions and a FAQ section where users can search for articles that explain how to perform certain functions. For an additional fee, Stokkup’s team will fly out to the shop and spend three days onboarding the entire staff.

Quikflip Apparel Steals the Show

If you attended ASI Show Fort Worth, you probably remember Rener Gracie. The scion of Brazilian jiu-jitsu royalty, Gracie serves as a carnival barker at industry tradeshows, urging passers-by to stop in their tracks and witness the ingenious functionality of Quikflip Apparel (asi/89364). Each of Gracie’s products – zip-up hoodies, pullover hoodies, crewnecks and waterproof jackets – can be easily converted into an adjustable drawstring backpack in seconds. After watching his energetic demonstrations, attendees at ISS Atlantic City were quickly digging into their pockets to buy samples.

“This is the biggest innovation in outer wear since the front zipper,” Gracie said. “When I invented it, I was so excited to tell the world. I don’t need to drink coffee. I don’t need to take drugs. I don’t need anything to get out here and bring the fire because I know what I have is going to change lives. Why do you come to these trade shows if not for innovation in apparel?”

.@RenerGracie stole the show at #ISSAtlanticCity w/ his fired up @QuikflipApparel demonstration. @issshows pic.twitter.com/kBAuGppZIN

— John Corrigan (@Notready4Radio) March 25, 2019