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?
Well, this was the problem for a men’s apparel retailer who found that they received 5,000 men’s shirts with buttons that were not properly secured. The worst part for them was that there were 9 buttons on each shirt that were essentially loose and bound to come off with a slight pull.
This retailer has been a customer of Darn It’s in the past, so they immediately emailed the Darn It Apparel Repair Team some pictures of the shirt and the situation. From that information, we were able to give them some ballpark pricing to get the process rolling. They then sent us a few cartons so that we could perform a proper time study and get them exact pricing. Once that was completed and the pricing was accepted, it was off to fix 45,000 buttons in total.
The process was simple, but very time-consuming. We had to remove every single button, clean all of the old threads from the shirt and re-stitch with our button sewing machines, every single button back on to the shirts. We couldn’t just stitch over the present thread as it would be too thick and not look like it was a brand-new shirt.
After each color (there were 6 colors) was completed, the shirts would go to the Darn It Apparel Inspection Team to pull and test each button to be sure that each one was secure. That same team would then button the shirt back up, fold and pack it in its original poly bag and box. This entire process took just under two weeks and shipped back to our customer just in time for their big sale!!
