Have you ever had colour block? It’s like writers block….but only with colours. Sure, we all have. Which colours to paint the house; which colour t shirts to produce or which colours to use in designs? Well there’s a great solution to all this colour frustration at COLOURlovers.com, a great source of colour palettes, colour patterns and inspiration.
The Philani Child Health & Nutrition Project is a community-based non-governmental organization (NGO), operating in the informal settlements of Khayelitsha, Crossroads, Brown’s Farm, Mfuleni, Nyanga and Delft on the outskirts of Cape Town, 20-30 km from the city centre. An estimated 750,000 to 1 million people live in these areas (the majority of whom originated in the Eastern Cape), in simple core houses or informal dwellings made of corrugated iron, wood, and plastics – many overcrowded and without water and sanitation.
If you read through this blog you will notice that most of my posts are about work that we’ve done for other companies. This is because Lava Ink is not like other clothing firms – we do not sell our own designs. We are a garment engineering company and our product is our connections, experience and knowledge. We make it possible for anyone to start a label without having the the knowledge about processes, suppliers or service providers.
So you have this great idea for a t shirt label and you want to give it a go to see what returns you can get. You feel a bit scared to take the plunge because you don’t know if the idea will flop? Which t shirts to choose? How should the artwork be prepared? Which processes to use? How do you choose a reliable printing company? All these questions can make you doubt yourself. This is where Lava Ink comes in. We take away all the hassles and make your idea a reality.
So what do we get out of the deal? Lava ink has a rep status with all of the suppliers we use. Which means we get special discounts from these suppliers and service providers and all we do is add our mark-up to their cost and level it out so that you pay the price for the products, if you had gone to them directly. We save you time because you don’t have to run around sourcing all the inputs and give you peace of mind because we only use the best service providers to do the work. This applies to manufactured products as well.
At Lava Ink our main purpose is to bridge the gap between the client (which is you) and the Industry. It’s like owning a clothing business and employing all the right people without all the overheads.
Love Sharks? Love Carcharias Clothing!
About Carcharias:
Born in the South African town of Gansbaai (widely accepted as the great white shark capital of the world), Carcharias Clothing is a unique clothing brand inspired by the oceans apex predator, carcharadon carcharias – the great white shark. || Read more
Well done to all the SA supporters because we have run out of South African scarves and beanies! We have therefore produced these stunning polar fleece versions because no fan may be without the green and yellow.
Another cool product from our LavaLab. These custom made hoodies for OAM Sports Academy are fresh, funky and too cool for school!
OAM Sports Academey 240 gram LavaLab Hoody
If you love jazzy vibes and cool music, then you’ve gotta listen to Ivan Mazuze.
About Mazuze:
Ivan Mazuze, Mozambican, Cape Town based saxophonist, has an extensively musical experience with South African internationally acclaimed artists such as Jonathan Butler, Jimmy Dludlu, Hotep Galeta as well as top bands such as Dondo, Tucan Tucan and Loading Zone to name but a few. Ivan Mazuze’s debut album entitled Maganda (2008) has diverse styles with strong influence on African music.
taken from ivanmazuzemusic.com
Check out these funky slim-fit tees that we did for Mr. Mazuze.
I know technology has become the beast that we cannot live without but this is really radical and I don’t whether its cool or a bit over the top? Imagine speaking to someone while watching a TV on his chest?
2 colours, screen printed on the front
2 colours, screen printed on the back
Recipe for these great, 100 % customised t shirts
- Excellent ingredients
- Good preparation
- Perfect timing
- Garnish to perfection
We didn’t help put Humpty together again… but we gave him stitches and printing.
Humpty Dumpty embroidered golf shirt
These 160 gram t shirts for Touch Lezinto are light, soft and fitted. It has a single colour screen print on the front of the tee and a single colour on the rear.
This is our second job for Stellenbosch University’s Geology Department (see the first job here). These hoodies were developed from scratch in our LavaLab.
The specifications given were:
- Unisex hoodies
- luxurious 240 gram soft-touch fleece in red and black
- lined hoods
- hoods had to be larger that normal
- drawstring waist
- drawstring hood
- kangaroo pocket
- inset pen pocket with vertical zip
- self fabric cuffs (ie. polar fleece cuffs)
- branding on chest, sleeve and lower back
Below is the end result and you may check out some more pics on our portfolio page.
red polar fleece hooded top
22 seconds of Factory life
Here’s a behind the scenes look at t shirt manufacturing – a 22 second glimpse of our CMT (Cut, Make, Trim) factory.
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The garment in this video, is in the previous post about LavaLab designer wear. This factory has, and is still producing for companies like Truworths, so the quality is top-notch and that’s why we use them.
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- ladies top, back view
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- ladies top, front view
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- embroidered emblem
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- printed sleeve
Straight from the LavaLab, these 230 gram ladies tops are creatively fresh and make a bold statement with its shocking pink trims. Loudgear (our client) designed these tops to ensure that the Queens of Tugwell Hall at UCT are hip and happening – but this was a task intensive process that had us biting our nails right up to the last minute because of its extremely tight deadline.
Here’s a summarized version of what happened:
- We developed patterns from scratch according to the client’s specification and size curve
- sourced 230 gram ribbed fabric (black) at a price that was good enough to maintain the client’s budget
- dyed the pink fabric according to clients specification
- supplied fit samples
- processed artwork for screen printing
- processed artwork for digitizing
- cut and soabarred the garment panels to ensure that all panels and sizes were easily identifiable
- pre-planned printing and embroidery to ensure consistency in colours for printed and embroidered finishes i.e. the print colours had to match the embroidered colours.
- also ensuring that the sizing of the print and embroidered logos were suitable for all the garment sizes (small to 3 Xlarge)
- sent the appropriate panels for printing (2 colours sleeve, 2 colours back)
- sent the panels for embroidery
- assembled the garments
- quality checked and removed rejects
- ironed and flat-packed
- re-did all rejects.
All of this in 16 days.
The result is a beautifully mass produced garment that could be mistaken for something that was bought from a designer store like YDE or Lacoste.
PS. Apologies for the low quality images
Defining your target market
There is a heap of info out there about target markets but most simply put – you need to define who your customers will be. The trick is to target groups of people and make your t shirts appealing to them. Here are a few examples of target markets:
- people between the ages of 16 -30 who like surfing, coming from households of a middle income group (Billabong)
- people between 16- 35 from South Africa who have a good sense humour (laugh it off).
- Students between the ages of 17 – 25 who listens to hip-hop music.
People in similar age groups; similar beliefs; similar cultures and so forth, are most likely to be interested in similar things. You need to identify these groups by doing a demographic analysis or other kind of research. A great site to get information about age, race and gender population of South Africa is from Statistics South Africa . Having this information will help you establish where to sell your t shirts; which gender to cater for and so forth.It is all about knowing where to throw your net to get the biggest catch.
Have a goal/vision that guides your business.
Anybody starting a business should have a goal/vision, and the same applies to selling t shirts. How do you see your business in 5 – 10 years from now? What are the objectives of your business?
Reasons for starting a t shirt business.
Some basic reasons for starting your t shirt business could be:
- to make loads of money
- to create awareness(e.g. political t shirts)
- to have many people wearing your designs (e.g. designer t shirts)
- or to have the best online t shirt store
It may also be for a range of other reasons but you need to identify these, and tie it into your vision – then work towards achieving it.
Write a guiding statement to achieve your vision.
A great idea is to write a statement that guides your business’ culture towards obtaining your vision – even if you are the only person in the business at this point. Here’s a great example of such a statement as taken from Ecko t shirts:
Rhinos roam the world on the backs of *ecko unltd.’s forward-thinking consumers, and its diverse brands are omnipresent in visual representations of next-generation culture: from music videos and television programs to catwalks, action sports, and video games.
It is clear that Ecko envision’s their products to be legendary and diverse – and anybody reading this statement will know this.
