How the No BS Rule Improves Screen Printing Shops: Efficiency, Staffing, and Craftsmanship

WANT TO MAKE YOUR SHOP BETTER? Run with more efficiency? Bigger profits at the end of the day? Here is one place you can start. It’s a simple rule and it applies to just about everything:

No bullshit.

Sorry if that is offensive language to you. But I think it is an appropriate business term in our industry context. It sums the collective need to simplify things to push for the greater good.
Listed below are six key areas of your business where the NO BS rule could have a tremendous impact.

Staffing

Your business isn’t just a line-up of computers, machines and other gizmos. It’s made up essentially by the people you employ. Yet shops all across the land often fail in this most-important aspect of their business. They hire the wrong people. They don’t push clear expectations. There isn’t any accountability. They put off employee reviews and difficult conversations.

When it comes down to it, it usually is a leadership challenge. Create a BS Free Zone with how you handle your people.

When you think about your employees or your co-workers does anyone seem extremely out of place or over their head? Get them the help they need or go in another direction in terms of their employment. They don’t “have to” be your employees. That dead weight that’s holding you back can be someone else’s problem. Especially if they have a litany of challenges in their personnel folder.

It should be easy to work in your shop. Have clearly defined rules. Crystal clear expectations. Accountability. Trust. Humor. Training. Teamwork. Empathy and understanding. Effort. Reliability. Honesty. Respect. Even fun.

Shops that have this practically run themselves. Shops that don’t look chaotic. Lots of turnover. Dysfunction. Finger pointing and blaming. Mistrust. It’s basically the opposite of the paragraph above.

If you ever have lamented “We just can’t find good help!” often, the answer to the challenge starts with the top. Is that you? Look at your own BS and see if you need to change something.
This also may mean that your staff just can’t do what they want. If you have established procedures, policies or rules, then those are the guidelines everyone must follow. If the rules don’t work, then by all means, change them. But if they are useful and pertinent, then that’s the direction your shop train is traveling.

Either employees are on board, or they need to get off at the next station. That’s No BS.

Craftsmanship

This is crucial. Either you have quality or you don’t. What do you allow to ship?
The No BS rule here would be to clearly define that line. It is binary.

Can you match a PMS color? Can you print or sew in the correct location? Are the garments folded neatly? Is the quality of the decoration perfect? When you put a sticker or shipping packing slip on a box, is it on straight or just slapped on crooked? Details matter.

If your team has any sort of craftsmanship challenges, what are you doing about it? It’s the question for the ages.

Craftsmanship counts.

• Does staff think craftsmanship is just what happens in production? What about in sales or customer service? How is that mentality driven home in the work they do? The quality of their work affects so many people downstream. When was the last time you had an in-depth review of how orders or information are being used?
• How many customers are lost every year because someone didn’t update the shipping information and the order missed the event? Maybe the info was right, but the shipping label was printed incorrectly.
• How many shops get new business because of dye migration or an under-cured print?
• How many catalog programs are lost each year because your team can’t do an inventory count?
• Take a close look at your art team. How many jobs must stop from the production floor because something wasn’t digitized properly or separated correctly for printing? If a job on press must wait so an artist can make a new screen because they don’t like how something prints. That’s a huge problem.
• What happens if that round art is stretched on the shirt because of too much tack? Are you shipping egg shaped prints? Is the last person to see the garments before they go into a box reviewing for quality? Or are you just stuffing them in without a care in the world?
• Can your team load a shirt straight? How many customers complain about crooked or off-center results? This seems like such a basic skill, but you’d be surprised that it is the most common problem out there.

Your shop is the totality of the mistakes you make. You can print 99 orders right, but the only one the customer is going to remember is that one that “got away”. Plenty of shops get new customers all the time because “my old shop screwed up my order”. Have any of your new customers told you that?

Customers have very little memory of past successes.

The NO BS rule changes that. Don’t accept mediocrity. Learn how to do it right. Buy the right equipment. Use it properly. Train your employees. Have good work instructions that clearly define the order expectations. Insist on excellence in every step. Every time.

• Screen-printing: Load the shirt straight, use the correct ink, printed through the right mesh, on tight screens, with the right off contact, with the proper squeegee durometer, at the correct angle, pressure and speed, on a leveled press. Watch your flash dwell times and heat build-up. Remove the shirts from the press without distorting the image. Cure at the right temperature for the ink.
• Embroidery: Hoop it straight, use the correct thread, with the right bobbin tension, sewn with the correct needle size, at the right speed. Trim neatly without cutting a hole in the shirt. Steam out the hoop marks.
• Digital Printing: Load the shirt straight, use the right amount of pretreatment, with the correct print settings. Cure with the right temperature and time.
• Heat Press: Read the instructions for time, temperature and pressure for each type of material used. Place the image on straight. Hot peel and cold peel mean different things. Select your settings accordingly.

Do you cram mistakes in the middle of the shirt pile and hope your customer won’t find them? Do you argue to your wit’s end that your color match is “close”? Are you the master at inventing excuses? That’s all BS and you know it.

Stop sweeping your mistakes under the rug and hoping nobody will notice. They do. Craftsmanship isn’t about doing just enough to get by. Craftsmanship is all about creating the environment in your shop that pushes the limits of what is the best in the industry. Vince Lombardi has a great quote that applies to this:

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

What level of craftsmanship do you think you have in your shop? Are you working on this every day?

This is shop-wide…not just in production. What are you chasing? Name your top three weakest areas. Start there. That’s no BS.