John LaRoy, CEO of Apparel Redefined, discusses the challenges of decision fatigue for entrepreneurs and how Apparel Redefined addresses it through its branded apparel contract services. He highlights NOMOS, a manufacturing execution system that streamlines order placement and tracking. He also covers “laser deck” for laser engraving, “fast flex” for waterproof materials, and DTF for digital printing on various fabrics. These services offer flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and high-quality production, enabling clients to focus on sales while Apparel Redefined handles production. The conversation underscores the importance of technology in scaling operations and the versatility of their offerings.
Key Highlights
• Decision Fatigue and Entrepreneurial Challenges 0:02
• Introduction to NOMOS 1:39
• Development and Functionality of NOMOS 3:51
• Benefits of NOMOS for Clients 4:51
• Laser Engraving with Apparel Redefined 7:15
• Fast Flex: Digital Print on Heat Transfer Material 10:18
• Direct to Film Technology 11:25
• Economies of Scale and Digital Printing 13:04
Presentation Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:02
Hey, John Leroy, Apparel Redefined. How are you, my friend,
John LaRoy 00:06
I’m good. How are you? Curt,
Curt Anderson 00:07
hey, doing absolutely phenomenal. You know, you and I love talking about branded apparel. We talk about that brand promise and it Apparel Redefined. You have a whole slew of contract services now for our buyers out there, you know, I don’t know. Do you ever, as an entrepreneur, do you ever struggle with that decision fatigue? I certainly do. Do you ever have decision fatigue?
John LaRoy 00:29
You know, I do when I’m talking about things or doing things for the business? I, you know, decision paralysis sometimes, yeah, but when it comes to something I know I want, it’s, it’s instantaneous.
Curt Anderson 00:43
I know how you are sometimes with my you know, I have, you know, grind all day and get done. My wife hits me up with a, you know, hey, you know, you want to go, you know? And I’m like, wait a minute. I’m like, my full capacity. Let me digest this for a second. So anyway, I want to dive into, you know, that decision fatigue. And I think you’re hitting it right on the head when you’re certain about something, when you’re convicted, man, it’s just like you make that decision. Now, if you’re new to something, and you’re like, Man, I don’t want, you know, let’s take our buyers out there, you know. And they just don’t want to make, especially a new buyer for branded apparel, they don’t want to make that mistake. Okay, what I want to do is, I want to run through on how, like you guys do, you’re just a fierce educator. You do a great job of guiding your customers into making those right decisions, to help them with that decision fatigue. Let’s talk about some of the contract services that you guys offer at apparel redefine and how do you help people make those like, nice, easy, convicted decisions where they make the right choice?
John LaRoy 01:36
Sure, absolutely.
Curt Anderson 01:39
Let’s dive into all right? So you have a service called nomos, right? So that’s a little unique. So for folks that are that, term might be new. What is NOMOS, and how does that help entrepreneurs?
John LaRoy 01:50
So I was told that nomos is Greek for teamwork. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but
Curt Anderson 01:59
GBT, okay,
John LaRoy 02:01
yeah, in the Google world, I should know that. But okay, you just put me on the spot there. But yeah, so NOMOS is the product of being in our industry for 19 years now, and about 10-12, years in, I’m like, There’s got to be a better way to do this. And long story short, you know, you could talk about all the stuff that’s written on the back of a bar napkin, but it literally was, I actually still have the napkins and the papers in my office one day, hope to frame it. But, you know, I had a talk with my former partner, and it was like, hey, you know, what’s next? Because we were kind of just a very small local print shop for people in our community, and that was, you know, a part of the vision, but not nearly the vision I had had. And how do we take it to the next level? How do we scale? Because at that time is very paper intensive. It’s still somewhat is. But to get to that next level, we need not fear technology, because a lot of people our industry were and still are scared of technology and advancement. But how do we leverage it? How do we make it work with us, you know, for us, and make us better? So we started developing, I’m not a software engineer, but had the idea of partner with a couple really good software engineers to come up with this, this technology that it sounds archaic, but in our industry like there was no way to submit an order, place an order, track and order, know that your order is done and have everything kind of live, because we’ve talked about this in several other shows per like, I don’t say no and when people would come in on Wednesday, but hey, I need an order for Friday, sure. And like, you know, in a pizza shop, like, they’d be like, hey, the kitchen closed three hours ago, and you’re still accepting orders for pizza, and you go to the back of the house, not only is nobody there, but now I gotta do it, right? So we were just always in this capacity of saying yes, yes, yes, without knowing what, how many orders were already in the house, and what can we commit to? What’s our capacity? So we wanted a way to not only cleanly present data, but communicate it, not only to the customer, but to our internal team, because there’s a lot of people that touch every order, and how do you make it clean, visual, and all that type of stuff. So it’s still in development. We’ve been developing it and improving it, and it’s a nice thing that it’s ours. So when our you know, we have 120 clients using the software right now, probably close to 500 users, when you consider internally as well, everyone’s got an opinion. Some of them are great, some are not, but we have the ability to say, hey, that is a good feature. Let’s put it in and and build it. So, yeah, essentially, it’s a manufacturing execution system, long, you know, long word for an order placement tool. But it’s more than that, because it enhances our entire manufacturing process, from inbound intake of inventory to invoicing to billing to production traction tracking metrics we know exactly how many you know Prince Steve did today. How many stitches Allison did? How many boxes Rick counted? So all of that you know into one, essentially mini ERP. System that enhanced it. Now long why does that help the client? Right? Well, if you are a contract services client, and you are, you know, an ad specialty guy, or you’re a sporting goods shop, or you’re just, you know, out there trying to print, doing a little bit in your garage and also selling, you got a really good community. This is a tool that enables you to kind of sell more stress less, as I said, like, it’s really hard to do two things really well, right? And then three things, you know. So are you selling really well? Are you printing really well? We we decorate very well, right? We let you be the salesperson. And this is a tool that allows us to have that synergy with you, where, hey, you have the community, you have the relationships. Because, as you know, people don’t buy products. They buy people, right? You buy from people that you know and you trust. And this enables you, if you have wherever you are across the United States like this is also kind of like enabling that gig economy you never would have gotten a stranger’s car 10 years ago. Now we do it all the time, right? Well, now you can have that side hustle, you can continue to build your business and have the production come to us at the experts, and we can white glove service. It looks like it’s coming from Curt’s t shirt shop, right? So we’ve built that tool really twofold, really to enable that person, that company, that entrepreneur, that solopreneur, to be able to have, you know, the capacity of a big shop, but we’ve also made it so that we could become a big shop, because you need tech to support that, and it just trickles down, right? It’s better for that type of client. It’s better for the retail client because they have visibility into the entire process, so that they know, hey, their shirts will be delivered on time for their big event. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, there’s ways that it benefits that we didn’t even envision, and we continue to build it and develop it out.
Curt Anderson 06:48
Well, I love that, and teamwork makes the dream work, right? Is that what they say? So I love the name. It’s just such a powerful tool. And again, for you know, digging into that entrepreneur, understanding their their challenges or frustrations for them to scale. It’s just wonderful to have, you know, a partner like Apparel Redefined where you come in. You’re the muscle behind the scenes and like, just let them do what they do best, let them sell. And I just, I couldn’t love that more, you know what? Like you said, this might be another episode that we need to dive a little deeper. Now you have a lot of other wonderful, powerful solutions on the menu right on the website for folks to choose from. And that was back to, like that decision fatigue that I was mentioning before. As you walk through folks, you know, we’ve got things like laser deck, fast flex. So, you know, let’s talk about laser deck. What? What is laser deck? And how do you help folks with that?
John LaRoy 07:35
So laser deck is our word for laser engraving. Laser engraving. You know, it’s a great way to personalize or enhance 1000s of products. Most of the products that we do, the most popular type stuff are like tumblers, Yeti style mugs, where any Yeti that you see anywhere the Ace Hardware at your local soccer field is a laser engrave it’s a black mug or blue, whatever color it is with, you know, laser etching that essentially burns away that that color coding. So it’s really good for corporate promotional gifts. Even, you know, some of our customers that are corporations, they use that to purchase gifts to go after more clients, more business promotional type items. You know, you can get pen and stress ball exhaustion walking through a trade show, but if you walk, if you get a product, especially a high end quality product, what does that say? I mean, you’re not going to give it away to everyone who walks by your booth, but if you’re willing to give away, you know, a $50 Yeti mug that’s personalized, people are going to use that, you know, and they’re driving to work and they got their coffee, they got this, like, you want to be able to give impactful items, especially in a promotional type setting that people are using, because if you can get use out of it, and you get traction, you get traction, you get some momentum. The momentum turns into sale. Maybe not for that person, but maybe they talk to someone, or they see someone that has that. It’s like, hey, that’s really nice. Where’d you get that? What do they do? Well, I don’t know, go hit them up. A T shirt. A really nice t shirt, is probably the best, most economical way to to give stuff away. But yeah, so back to the laser deck, laser engraving, you know, typical, like we say, mugs, tumblers. Wood is really popular, you know, like the custom charcuterie boards. I mean, spell that Curt. I mean, I could barely say it, but, yeah, leather, leatherette, you know, we laser engraved leatherette. We actually also use the laser to cut. We cut twill, because we’ve one of our services is twill work. Yeah, there’s a lot of acrylic glass you can laser edge, like wine bottles, again, corporate gifting, yeah, it’s, it’s very versatile, and it’s nice because it can be, you know, you could do one, or you could do 10,000 you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not as rigid in terms of quantity as screen printing is.
Curt Anderson 09:59
Well. Again, great point in, you know, whether it’s a personal situation, like a celebration, an event, an occurrence, you know, that type of thing, or, like you mentioned, you know, could be a corporate event. So, you know, again, lots of the lots of things that aside, and that’s wonderful thing about partnering with your team. You can help me with that decision fatigue, and give those right that guidance, that professional expertise on what’s the right product for the right fit, for the right occasion. Let’s keep going down the list. Here. You mentioned being flexible. Let’s go into fast flex. What is fast flex at apparel redefined.
John LaRoy 10:31
So fast Flex is a digital print on a heat transfer material. This this formulation. So this was, this was kind of a predecessor of what’s hot in the industry is known as DTF, which is direct to film. Geez. So yeah, so direct to film DTF, what makes fast flex different is the actual backing or vinyl. Fast flex more now than ever before, is pretty much exclusive for waterproof materials. So if you think about swimsuits, bathing suits, Collegiate High School swim team, where they got, you know, their school logo on their fast Flex is pretty much exclusively used for waterproof. But now, if you switch over to the corporate setting, you got your Columbia jackets, you got your patagonias, all that water repellent type of work. I’m sorry, you know, hiking gear, that type of stuff, there’s a coating on there that actually makes that repels the water. Well, what else it does is repel decoration. So there’s it’s a specialized vinyl that allows you to adhere to that type of material.
Curt Anderson 11:34
All right, let’s keep cranking down the list. And again, we’ve got everything listed right on the website. Let’s go to digifuse. What are we talking about with digifuse? So,
John LaRoy 11:43
yeah, digifuse is our, again, our creative spin on DTF, direct to film. So direct to film is very similar to fast flex, but it’s pretty new technology industry. We’re talking under two to three years, some big improvements. It’s a, again, a digital print on a poly, poly based film that’s heat pressed to a garment. So you have a ton of flexibility here, you know, in a screen print world, if you came in, you said, Hey, I got a design. It’s, you know, more than five colors, and we only need, like, four or five pieces. It’s not going to happen where it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg. So the advantage here is you could do as few as one piece, you do as many as you know, 5000 and the pricing is will stay pretty much the same, so you know what you’re getting. And it’s very it’s very friendly to all different fabric types, right? The other service we offer, DTG, or digiprints, as we call it, you’re you’re pretty much tied to mostly heavy cotton rich garments, or DTF digifuse. You can use across a whole different array of garments, types of garments, bags, and because it’s going on an actual heat press, you’re, you’re, and you don’t have to mount it on a machine with a platen. I don’t get too technical here. You could put it pretty much anywhere. So it’s a really good, really good, cost effective, high quality way to add a logo to apparel, products, what have you.
Curt Anderson 13:11
And did I catch that? Correct? You said that it’s not a dramatic cost, whether it’s a small quantity compared to a large quantity, correct? Yeah, yeah. So and, you know, so, from my naive mind, I’m, you know, it’s always been like, what volume, volume, you know, manufacturing to do a couple, what can just walk us through? Like, what, what’s the benefit? Or, how is it able to be such a stable cost across the board?
John LaRoy 13:36
Because the process essentially is the same, whether it’s one piece or 10,000 right? So the economies of scale that you would expect in the manufacturing setting, that you know, once you get to a certain quantity, amount it why that is that way in manufacturing, is the setup, right? You know you talk about in tool and die manufacturing, the most of the cost is in the setup same thing in screen printing most of the time, and labor is in the setup. And once the job is set up, you don’t want to stop or take it down. But since this is a digital process, and like as the machine is feeding the film, it could print all different logos at the same time. So if you only need one, you cut it out, you press it down, but that action of actually pressing it to the shirt. It’s the same repetitive process that would happen if it’s one piece or 10,000 so the economies of scale are not there from like a pressing standpoint, which benefits the lower quantity orders. But yeah, it is a little bit of a hindrance on the higher volume orders. But if you have that option again, as our contract decoration partner for you, if you’re talking even five, six colors, seven, 810, colors, and you have a 10,000 piece order, we’re not going to DTF that that’s going to be screen printed where you could take advantage of the cost savings of screen printing on
Curt Anderson 14:53
incredible that’s super valuable, right there, especially for the folks that you know, small runs, small quantities, small events. It’s, you know, that time they need the freedom, flexibility, and again, for, you know, a lot of consumers out there, probably, you know, are not aware of that. Um, you know what we’re going to wind down. We’ve got a lot more that we’re going to cover. We’re going to we’ll cover it in another video. Anything that you want to wrap up with is, this was phenomenal. What a great education piece. Just even for myself, anything that you want to close out with John? No,
John LaRoy 15:20
I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation. There’s a lot that we do, and I could probably talk for an hour on each surface, so hopefully it’s interesting. But yeah, I look forward to picking this back up and going through the rest of what we offer.
Curt Anderson 15:35
Yeah, fantastic. So John, thank you. Apparel Redefined, there’s be all sorts of information down below and stop by the website and again, go through the contract services and just a lot of valuable information here. So we will catch you guys. We have some exciting programs come up in the next few weeks, and we will see you soon. John, thank
John LaRoy 15:52
you, my friend. Thanks. Curt, you.