Journey To Shirts

Finally.

Shirt printing is finally back at PrintKEG. It has been quite a long journey reimplementing this service into our product line so today the PrintKEG team celebrates.

For awhile we used commercial transfers and were limited to white shirts. Our prices were very low, but the process was limited and quality was not to our satisfaction. Later we worked with a 3rd party vender; unfortunately, that relationship soured for a number of reasons (mostly because of me) so we were quickly back to square one and using transfers again. Looking back, I feel like we should have just stopped offering shirts until we regrouped.

We bought a DTG machine. Our company procrastinated a long time before investing in DTG (direct-to-garment). Frankly, I would have purchased equipment sooner, but dropping tens of thousands of dollars isn’t easy for me (that’s a good thing), so we massively researched beforehand and that’s going to work in our favor since the technology has made significant progress the last couple years.

We tested for a long time. Honestly, this time period proved incredibly frustrating. We’ve dealt with faulty equipment. We’ve searched for the perfect t-shirt to print on. We’ve performed washing tests. This “development” phase consumed longer than I had hoped.

We mastered the process. The shirts we’ve been printing look beautiful. The shirts are high quality, tag-less and feel great when wearing them. The washability is wonderfully long lasting. We couldn’t be happier with the results, and I’m convinced customers will totally love our shirts.

What’s next? Currently, we are only offering 12 colors of adult and youth t-shirts. We will be adding toddler sizes, women’s tees, tank tops, v-necks and long sleeved shirts very soon. We’re also planning to add American Apparel as a featured brand. Launching these new garments might be slow because we want every single shirt that ships from PrintKEG to be the absolute best available.

Why Our Postcards Rock

Yep, our cheap postcards rock. Here are five excellent reasons why.

Many sizes. PrintKEG offers 10 useful sizes including standard sizes 4×6 and 5×7. Other cool sizes such as 4×3 have really increased in popularity since they’re super cheap and pocket sized.

Perfect card stocks. Artists, musicians and marketers can all agree our premium gloss and matte card stocks are perfect for almost any project. The ‘Gloss Card (110# Cover)’ is heavy, cheap and vibrant while the ‘Matte Card (100# Cover)’ is elegant, easy to write on and less shiny.

Always cheap. The prices on our website are everyday low prices. They’re not on sale (sometime we do have postcard sales though). Our cheap prices for postcards are consistently lower than everyone else so customers can rely on continuing savings at PrintKEG.

Custom sizes too. Yes! We do provide custom sizes for any postcard project. Please feel free to call (extension 1) or email our customer care any time. Please understand there may be limitations.

Design options. Most art we print is predesigned, but for customers who need design help, look no further! Our staff artists have mucho experience with creating postcards for almost any occasion.

We care. Our artists check and double-check all files before printing. We look out for weird margins, low resolution, insufficient bleed areas and much more through rigorous internal inspections. Every single PrintKEG staff member truly cares and monitors prints so they look great when delivered.

Shirt Printing Will Return

Last week we temporarily removed our shirt printing services from PrintKEG.com. Our former process utilized transfers (which has its benefits) but we recently purchased new equipment adopting Direct-to-garment (DTG) technology.

DTG has some interesting advantages over screen printing. The most notable is the ability to provide small orders of full color apparel printing inexpensively. That pretty much sums up our entire business model so it seems like a perfect fit for PrintKEG. Basically, projects requiring 100 shirts or less and a wide array of colors, DTG makes a lot of sense. A DTG machine works very similar to a wide format inkjet printer, which is what we use for large posters, so we have a fair amount of experience with this. Other DTG printers might gaff at that last statement, but that’s okay.

Needless to say, our entire team is beyond excited about revamping our shirt printing. This time, we will be offering a wider variety of shirt types for adults, kids and toddlers along with adding a fancy online shirt designer. More incredible features will also be available, and we’ll reveal more as we approach the relaunch.

The below photograph taken via Instagram (@printkeg) shows a few eager staff members peeking into the newly opened crate containing our DTG machine. They’re a bunch of nuts!

New Website Features

Adding new features to any website can be a daunting task especially in our development environment. Our development staff (me and co-founder Tony) is extremely dedicated to maintaining a clean and simple shopping experience which means ideas are heavily criticized and observed before implementation begins. Yes, we want to provide a sophisticated experience that satisfies the demands of thousands of customers, just not by sacrificing our website’s design simplicity which I love. Alas, a few small features made the cut and are worth mentioning.

Order Messages/Notes

Once a customer reaches the cart, a new option under each line item is available. By checking the “Message/Notes” box, a text area becomes available allowing special notes, custom requirements or messages. This is a great time to inform us of deadlines, concerns or requirements without needing to email us later. It’s more organized and permanently saved while also facilitating a more responsive service by us.

Just be sure to hit “Save” okay?

Rush Turnaround

We get it. Sometimes a customer needs prints faster than our typical turnaround times allow. If all the prints in a shopping cart qualifies, a rush turnaround option will be available. By clicking “Apply to order” under the “Need It Faster?” heading, an order can be sent out a day sooner. One day may not sound very impressive, but combined with a faster shipping method, it can be very effective when trying to meet time sensitive deadlines.

Art Thumbnails

Inside our PrintKEG customer control panel, a thumbnail preview is now available for each order. This makes it easier to quickly identify orders, and quite honestly, just looks prettier. We should have implemented this much sooner.

These thumbnail previews are actually a first step towards greater features in-the-works including reorders and online proofing.

And finally…

For questions or concerns about these new features, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Welcome 2013

First, I must start with this: Thank you! We depend on our customers and appreciate every single dollar, order and opportunity. Thanks to every one of you out there who is working with PrintKEG.

2012 was undoubtedly exciting for PrintKEG. We got better at what we do, and our company grew in every measurable way. Our poster printing reached new heights. We launched some awesome new products like die-cut stickers, vinyl banners and canvas prints.

Our story of converting a tiny print shop into an online print company is nothing short of remarkable. 2012 was huge, but I feel that 2013 will truly be our year of greatness. Here’s a few things we have planned.

Better T-Shirt Printing

We just placed a down payment on a new DTG machine. This direct-to-garment printing technology will greatly improve our current t-shirt printing process. By the end of the first quarter, we will re-introduce colored shirts for adults, youths and toddlers. We’ve been planning this move for quite a long time so it’s relieving to finally make this bold step into apparel printing.

Calendars

Our new calendar printing is beautiful and affordable. High quality calendars make wonderful marketing materials, and they can be thoughtful family gifts. The beautiful part about this service is how incredibly inexpensive we can offer them.

Website Improvements

Our development staff is working on some nice improvements to our print website, the members section and even our internal customer management tool. Gradually, these additions help us greatly improve service at every level as our small company scales to meet the needs of a growing customer base.

Holiday Printing

Tis truly is the season to be jolly especially if you need holiday printing. Check out these awesome products that are sweeter than eggnog.

Canvas

Photos make wonderful gifts when printed on canvas. We offer gallery and museum wraps. Maybe the grandparents might love receiving an updated family photo. Look how cute my son is up there…how could you not send a photo like that to your parents?

Cards

Businesses and residential customers will discover that our holiday card printing is super cheap. Print your own custom graphic or choose one of our many free holiday card designs.

Photos

We offer many ridiculously cheap ways to print high quality photos that fit numerous frame sizes. On our singles page, you can print 8×10’s and 11×14’s. Our postcard printing includes 4×6’s and 5×7’s, and our large posters page hosts 16×20’s, 20×30’s and 18×24’s. Since our printing is photo quality, you’ll save a ton of money with PrintKEG.

Stickers

Our custom stickers can be utilized for almost anything. Stickers make awesome and inexpensive badges for office parties, name tags for gifts (as seen above) or as crafty additions to holiday promotional materials.

Mr. Keg Redesign

Mr. Keg needed to be redesigned badly.

At the end of 2008, we created PrintKEG.com and wanted a fun mascot to represent us. Thus, Mr. Keg was born. Within a week, we quickly developed our first website and designed a clip-art-like mascot. At the time, I really liked that little guy. I look back now, and yes, he’s a bit lame, but something about him stays close to my heart.

Within a couple days of launching PrintKEG, it was obvious our website was going to be a hit, so while we began work on developing a new website, an intern helped us create Mr. Keg #2. Number Two has been with us since 2009, so we’ve wanted a refreshed design for quite some time now. Since 2009, we’ve grown tremendously, built our own e-commerce platform and created our own internal customer management system. We’ve really changed and matured since then, yet Mr. Keg was ignored.

As we continue to improve everything about our company including our website, internal processes and production equipment, we felt it quite appropriate, and rather symbolic, to finally implement a new design for Mr. Keg. We hired a fellow, and talented, Instagrammer (@genuinehaha), who was absolutely wonderful to work with. The new design is more upbeat, contemporary and fun! We hope you like him as much as we do.

New Holiday Cards

Can you believe the holidays are almost here again?

Whether you’re sending holiday cards to family members or clients, PrintKEG is here for you. We’ve recently added 15 new designs to our already extensive variety of pre-designed Christmas and holiday greeting cards.

We also offer three incredible card stocks for holiday cards: ‘Glossy’, ‘Matte’ and ‘Gloss Front / Matte Back.’ All cards come with 70# white envelopes.

Incredible Canvas Prints

The color accuracy and richness of our large posters has always been simply amazing, especially at the prices we offer. With such an impressive suite of wide format inkjet printers at our disposal, we knew we could offer an incredible canvas product, but could we do it cheaper than anyone else out there? The answer is a yes.

We’re proud to announce that PrintKEG now offers canvas printing. I was pleasantly surprised by the color richness of each stretched canvas print we made during development. Everything about them blew me away: The colors, the canvas thickness, amazing detail - everything. During testing, I thought we might be onto something big here. Now, I know we’re about to change the game.

Canvas printing is offered as single sheets (commonly referred to as rolled canvas) or stretched. They make wonderful custom gifts or home decor for any occasion. With our canvas printing, artists can be more profitable when selling their art while also providing amazing reproductions.

New Digital Press

Mr. Keg recently ordered a new digital press from Canon that will work alongside our current Xerox digital press. We’ve needed another press for quite some time now, but we wanted to make sure we chose the right machine for our workflow. That selection process consumed more time than we had originally anticipated. However, we’re certain we made the right decision.

First and foremost, this machine can handle at least five times the workload we’re currently running providing the capacity we need to meet the demands of our company’s growth. We’ve been running at maximum capacity for a while now, and soon all that will change. It just burns our britches when even a single job is late and this upgrade provides the redundancy and speed we need to maintain ourselves as a cheap high-quality online printing company for years to come.

Other tremendous improvements include superior registration and color accuracy ensuring the quality is unrivaled by anyone else out there. The standards we set for our staff, our prints and our policies remains extremely high and our new digital press reflects that.

Products to be affected: flyers, postcards, rackcards, business cards, stationery, booklets.