Merchandising Your Visual Art » Blog Archive

Skreened Columbus


Come along as your intrepid correspondent goes on a quest to see what makes “Skreened” so special. We met with Daniel Fox (Proprietor) for an intensive grilling and present our summary here. This is just Part One; you can also read Part Two. Trying to sum “Skreened” up in just a few words is impossible; it is a ‘walk in t-shirt shop’ and an on-line POD site (skreened.com). But that doesn’t do justice to the quality and attention they pay to everything from where the shirts are made to how they’re packaged, or the attention to detail they offer customers. Below is a picture of a customer who walked in with artwork, as he and the staff decide exactly where on the shirt to print it. They offer a level of service I think of as what a ‘high end’ tattoo shop does.
I asked Daniel how Skreened is different from traditional screen printers, other walk-in shirt shops, and most web-based POD shops: “It is different from a Screen Printer in that we do ‘on demand’ (obviously) and the technology makes that different; we use ‘direct to garment’. That gets into the difference from ‘head shops’ and the Iron-on places in that it’s a huge quality jump up.“ “And then ‘how are we different on the web side?’ – which is really where the story is for us. In that we are 100% ethically made in the United States under supervisory labor laws and good things like that. So we’re really pushing being an ethical company; being responsible as far as where we’re sourcing our garments from.”
	Ethics- you use that word on your web-site a lot. Some sites talk about using American Apparel and talk about being ‘green’ – how do you see yourself as being enough different to use the word ‘ethical’? “We won’t bend them. You can get on other POD sites and print on American Apparel and also on (brand names) that are sourced with a lot of questions as to their origin. That’s something we are holding a position pretty firm and leaving a lot of market share behind; we’re not gonna go cheap for the sake of cheap and exploit others in the process.“ “As far as the ‘green’ thing goes, it’s not a huge thing. We recycle at the office, Print On Demand is actually a really green process if you think about it; water-based inks, there’s no waste (we’re not doing runs of 144 and then not selling any of them). “We do offer a handful of the Organic Line from American Apparel; stuff that is really good quality in addition to being organic cotton. The new packaging (see picture bottom left) that we got is completely compostable- so if somebody gets the package they can throw it in the compost pile at home and it’s going to disappear.”
When I walked into the store you’ve got a lot of shirts on display (see picture below right) – I gather from the way they’re folded they’re all blank. So it isn’t a store having finished products; it’s almost like a kiosk you walk in, look at the computer, pick the design you want, pick the shirt you want, and it happens right in front of you. “Yup- so 2 ways people would buy if they come in; sit down at our Design Station so they can design their own (if they bring their art on a drive) or surf the web(site). So if somebody in Arkansas uploads to Skreened.com anybody in Columbus can come in, search that design and buy it. So we’ve got a secondary (retail) outlet for their designs.“ If they go into a particular designer’s web-shop and see a design, do they have the option of adding to the design (text or anything else)? “No customization at this point.“ When I look through your site, most of what I see is illustration, some text… “The Text Tool is only a couple of weeks old; it came out with the relaunch of the site.” What I was going for was do you do true photographic files? “Oh ya- and the photos look really good!.”
Of course I had to verify that point- the picture above right is their version of my rosa ‘Melody Parfume’ that I use at various POD sites to see how it handles colors. It is a more accurate rendition of the bloom colors than most PODs have done. On Wednesday, in Part Two, we’ll go into more details about the sort of things we designers want to know; print area, front/back, new colors, shop customization and more.