Roger L. Jennings

Lands End Corporate Sales embroiders business logos for orders of any size, many of which are small. NEBS, a business forms company, bought a screen printing and embroidery company to serve the same corporate market as Lands End. Uniform suppliers like Wear Guard have recently entered the same embroidered shirt market.

Corporate sales is the place to be today to increase sales rapidly at high profit margins. A Lands End shirt that any Printwear reader can buy for $10 is being sold by Lands End for about $45, but who is offering screen printed caps?

Large and small businesses are an obvious target market for large and small screen printing shops. Large shops can convert their automatic shirt press to high speed cap presses, and small shops can print caps on manual presses.

Printing a cap is the same as a shirt, except the art for caps is almost always simpler. Most caps are printed with only 1-2 colors, and never more than four colors. Just don’t stretch the cap out of shape when mounting the cap on the platen – just like a shirt should not be stretched out of shape when loaded on a platen.

Here is what you need to know, if you are going to be the next Lands End of the cap business:

First, the image on the cap is advertising. The image on the cap must match the same image in media ads, on packaging, and every other place where that image appears. That means photographic quality is required. Corporate logos are typically simple 1-2 colors, because companies do not want to incur color charges when printing on paper. So your shop will be able to scan the image in a program like CoralDRAW or Adobe Illustrator, click the separations button, and you have the separated art.

If the customer wants the popular 6 panel cap for younger people, 5 panel for the middle aged, or even corduroy for a niche market, your shop can print them all. Capillary film and 3-D inks compensate for texture and seams allowing a photographic quality image to be created exactly as the image appears in all other media. You can even match all PMS colors with ink. Some companies can be very demanding about color matching.

Second, your sales presentation can be built around the cap as a walking billboard. A cap on a head is seen before even a larger image on a shirt, and never gets covered up. The cap ad is a display day and night, rain or shine, winter and summer. No other printed apparel item is displayed so continuously. A shirt gets washed and put in the drawer, but a cap is worn again the next day, and every day, until the cap is worn out.

Ad value is based on the number of people who see the image. Media ads more widely viewed on TV or widely distributed through printed media cost more than ads with less exposure. Caps are seen by everyone who comes into contact with the cap owner. So the image should be immediately recognized by anyone. The logo makes the strongest impression on the cap owner who handles the cap multiple times in a day. Maybe this should be called Trojan Horse marketing!

Third, keep the art simple when you prepare art, but include the WOW! factor. The image to be effective needs to jump out at you. Use high-contrast colors like black and red, bright colors like orange, athletic skeletons around contrasting fill colors, and opaque colors for the image to stand out. In certain circumstances, specialty inks like a reflective or glitter silver or gold, or even at times a bright neon cap or image will get the attention.

Today the best way to generate a WOW! is with an image with a hard edge from 3-D ink printed through a thick capillary film. If some of the new graphic effects are added so that the image is displayed as a three dimensional image, that is sure to attract attention. New, fresh graphics that are immediately recognized as new and different are sure to get people staring at the cap.

New graphics do not have to be complicated or difficult for the typical screen printing shop to execute. For example, if tan suede ink is printed on denim caps (and shirts) with a dash line in the art within 1/16" of the entire outside border of the image, the image will appear to be a sewn patch and will feel like leather. Another example is to print a two color with one color as a choke of another color so that the larger layer of ink on the bottom of the image is viewed like an athletic skeleton. However, people will immediately see the dimension and photographic quality resolution to the image.

Some of these target companies will want their street address, zip code, phone number and other minutiae included. Don’t! If they insist, have the customer view the art their way and your way where only the most significant information to be remembered is displayed. Make sure the customer views the comparison from at least 15’ away so they won’t be able to read the street address and other minutiae, but will see your image clearly. Letters to be seen must be at least 3/8" tall, and better at ½" to make a strong statement. Image simplicity, brightness, opacity, size and unique graphics will be recognized immediately. So avoid complicated scripts, vertical writing, letters that are real close or any image that requires blinking to read.

Fourth, promote caps and your company as the "go-to" source for corporate caps. Direct mail, web sites, media ads and a promotional cap for sale will get the word out. However, nothing beats direct, face-to-face marketing. You just need a sales person with good self-esteem and an engaging, outgoing personality to go to target markets. The big companies like Lands End will not be able to compete with your personal contact. Good candidates are food service, because of hygiene laws.

Other target companies are the delivery people so their customers recognize the business purpose of the pizza or whatever delivery. Contractors all love caps. Golf events arranged through the golf pro or shop will need caps with custom printed sponsor logos often on shorter notice than embroidery can meet. There is no end in sight for sales potential.

So which Printwear reader is going to be the Lands End of corporate caps? The opportunity is just waiting for your shop to put together existing printing technology with existing marketing methods to sell a new screen printed item – the Corporate Cap!