Over the last decade, many clothing companies have moved away from your standard sewn-in brand label or care label to something that could be called tagless, heat seal or pad printed label. These labels are used quite a bit in performance apparel as they don’t rub up against your body and itch like the traditional sewn in labels. They also can be less expensive to purchase and less expensive to place into the garments.
Blog
Celebrating 29 Years of Darn It!
This April, Darn It! proudly celebrates 29 years. Since 1996, we’ve stood by one mission: helping brands, retailers, and importers turn apparel, shoe and general merchandise challenges into retail-ready solutions.
If The Glove Doesn’t Fit…You Must Re-label It
If you don’t remember one of the craziest trials of the mid-nineties, let me jog your memory. The lawyer says to the jury…If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Ring a bell now? Lawyer Johnnie Cochran stood there and explained to the OJ Simpson jury that the glove that the prosecution brought into evidence was too small to fit OJ’s hands, and for that reason they must acquit OJ. His tactic worked and as you know, OJ was acquitted for murder.
The Sustainable Choice: How Darn It! Helps Brands Reduce Waste and Restore Value
At Darn It, we provide a crucial service that helps brands, retailers, and importers rescue products that might otherwise be discarded due to defects or minor imperfections. Instead of contributing to landfill waste, companies can turn to us to refurbish, rework, and restore their merchandise to first-quality condition, ready for sale.
Speed Sells: Why Fast Turnaround in Apparel Refurbishment Matters
Are you jammed up with Quality Control problems and can’t seem to navigate outsourcing the inspection and repair processes?
How Darn It Can Help Assemble and Distribute Your Displays with Precision and Efficiency
At Darn It, we specialize in refurbishing, reworking, and prepping apparel to make sure it’s good to go — but did you know we also help with display assembly and distribution? From retail displays to product packaging, we can manage all the work, so your products arrive in-store looking their best and ready to sell.
Relief for the overwhelmed DC Manager
Solving the DC Manager’s classic “good news/bad news” dilemma…
Returns Processing
Many of you know the statistic that in most cases, 20% of apparel purchased online will be returned by the consumer back to the retailer. We have also heard that some companies have close to a 30% returns rate. That’s a lot of returns!
Who Is Darn It!
Not many people these days use the words Darn It! when something goes wrong in the workplace or doesn’t go their way. They use other words that I am sure I shouldn’t be writing in this blog. Their heart starts to pound and maybe they start to throw some things across the room. They then take their frustration out on someone else at the workplace. Not really a good idea.
Darn It! and Jeff Can’t Cook!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Customers, Vendors and Friends.
Don’t be a Turkey. Take advantage of this very rare opportunity to take a day off. Shut off your phone, don’t check your emails and enjoy the time off with your Family and Friends.
Jeff, Katherine, Bob, Lisa and the entire Darn It! Team.
“Your Problem Is Our Business”
Apparel Refurbisher: The Vital Link!
A Refurbisher partnership is the Vital Link to any supply chain. You may ask, what is An Apparel Refurbisher and is there such as word as Refurbisher? As discussed in the latest Blog in “Supply Chain Matters”, our CEO, Jeff Glassman, talks about why all retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and importers should partner with a Refurbishment Company and how important it is to the supply chain of any company.
Apparel Repair: “Tis the Season for Smelly Garments!
Have you ever received a shipment of goods with a strong odor? Do the garments or other items have a mold or mildew smell. Do they smell like oil or gas? What do you do with it? What if the musty smelling goods represented $1.6 million dollars at retail and you can’t put them on the shelves as they would stink up the whole store? Darn It’s Apparel Repair team can help.
Apparel Inspection: Everyone Is Entitled to One Good Scare
Happy Halloween and welcome to crunch time for all manufacturers, importers and retailers. This is the time when your “Just In Time Inventory” planning turns into “I NEED IT NOW” inventory planning.
Overcoming impossible odds to pick/pack 55,000 coats
In the apparel industry, some items are small and easy to manage. Wallets and wristlets come to mind. Other items – such as bulky winter coats – require significant square footage. Plus, the sheer bulk makes it challenging to process the goods and pack shipments. Thankfully, at Darn It! Distribution, we have plenty of space in our Apparel Warehouse and highly trained employees who provide value-added services.
Simple label swap reaps $1.1 million
Thanks to apparel relabeling, DC manager’s “light-bulb moment” pays off!
Don’t Open Your Umbrella Indoors
We all complained this summer when it was too hot outside for days and days, and we will probably start to complain again when the fall weather kicks in because it will be too cold. You can solve the problem of the hot days by turning on the air conditioning and solve the cold day problem by turning on the heat. What happens when you have a major apparel quality problem? Unfortunately, you can’t flip a switch and solve it or make it go away.
Don’t let Fall get you down with Quality!
We all complained this summer when it was too hot outside for days and days, and we will probably start to complain again when the fall weather kicks in because it will be too cold. You can solve the problem of the hot days by turning on the air conditioning and solve the cold day problem by turning on the heat. What happens when you have a major apparel quality problem? Unfortunately, you can’t flip a switch and solve it or make it go away.
A Seamless Repair Process!
What happens when a quality issue arises with one of your inbound shipments? You start swearing, pointing fingers, and get stressed out to the max. You also sit and crunch the numbers and try to figure out how much of a loss this shipment is going to generate and how to make up for it. Finally, you are trying to now figure out if you must dispose of the garments and how to possibly do that!
Sort This Mess!!
During the pandemic, many retailers overbought many different items when the world did not know what was coming next. Some of these retailers have quite a bit of extra goods on their floors or in their warehouses and are not sure what to do with all of it knowing that that they need to clear space for the fall and winter goods.
Go Green With Darn It!
Did you know that the average American throws away about 80 pounds of used clothing per person per year, and that 95% of the clothing that gets thrown away could be recycled or upcycled?
Who Likes Black Licorice??
What happens when you go to a party and see that enticing bowl of licorice or that colorful bowl of jellybeans? Do you dig your hand in and play the lottery not caring what color or flavor you get? Or do you touch every piece and sort through them all to put back the black licorice flavor pieces?
My Dress Smells Like BBQ!!
A new dress worn at a BBQ or a BBQ restaurant can certainly smell like its surroundings after you spend a bit of time in that environment. What happens if you pull the dress off the store shelf or off the shelf in the warehouse and the dress smells like BBQ before it actually went to a BBQ?? I don’t think you would buy it. It would be a total turn off.
My Pants Are Too Tight!!
It’s 9am and the phones in the customer service department are ringing off the hook. “The pants I ordered are too tight. I’ve ordered these before, it doesn’t make sense”. 20 calls later, it’s only 10am. The customer service department calls the buyers of the pants and tells her about all the calls they have been receiving. Something is wrong with this shipment of pants. “Stop the sale of the pants” are the next words out of the buyer’s mouth. The retailer pulls the pants from the website.
Small Business Warehousing Made Easy!!
Are you managing your own small business warehouse? Is your business seasonal? Are there peaks and valleys to your receiving and picking? Are you tired of the fluctuations in labor and having a difficult time making the process work? These are many of the questions that The Darn It Distribution team asks potential new apparel warehouse customers.
New Year…New Quality Problems – HOLES!
One US retailer received a large shipment of 14,000 crew neck sweatshirts this past fall and found small holes when performing their initial audit. They were uncomfortable placing these on the shelves at the time, so they called the Darn It Apparel Repair Team to help.
Label Magic – Bada Boom!
What happens if you want to expand your brand outside of the country? Specifically, Italy. Piece of cake (tiramisu), right? Just box up the goods and ship them over and they can sell in any retail store. Well, not the case. This is what a women’s retail customer of ours found out when they wanted to expand their brand into Italy.
Don’t Put Mold on Your Head!
Our customer called us in a panic as they didn’t know what to do with 60,000 moldy hats. These hats had two or three white mold spots on them and, as you would imagine, they didn’t want to put these on the shelves or in bags to ship to their website customers if this was present.
Leave Your Shirt Buttoned!
Hulk Hogan rips his shirt off when he gets into the wrestling ring…Superman’s shirt rips when changing from Clark Kent…The Incredible Hulk’s Clothing rips off when he turns into the green giant! These episodes of undressing are done on purpose. What if you are out at a fancy restaurant on a date and stretch to get something on the other side of the table and your shirt pops open because the buttons on the shirt you are wearing are not properly secured?
Blue Dye In The Pool???
What if your kid was wearing a blue swim shirt that had dye on it that didn’t set properly on the shirt and when she would jump into the pool, the dye from the shirt would come off into the water around her. No Joke! One of our customers called us in March to ask Darn It’s Apparel Repair team if there was something we could do with 3,000 kids swim shirts that had this problem.
Hold On To Your Hats!!
We received a panic call this spring from a new customer who had 450 straw hats with rusted out grommets which hold the chin strap in place. In this case, the grommet would break apart from the straw and so would the chin strap.