Have you ever put on a new comfy plaid shirt to go out for the night and when checking yourself out in the mirror, you realize something is wrong? No, it’s not your hair or your shoes. You notice that the plaids aren’t matching up at the center of the shirt where it gets buttoned up.
In some cases, you can pull on one side of the shirt and get the plaids really close to matching, but in some cases it still looks odd. Well, suppose there was an entire shipment of plaid shirts that didn’t match at the center…not just yours???
That is exactly what one of our customers realized when an entire shipment from their factory looked like this picture. Plaids DIDN’T MATCH!!! In times like these where it already took three times as long to ship them overseas on a container ship, the retailer had no choice but to try to salvage them here in the U.S.
They called the Darn It Apparel Repair Team and sent us a dozen samples to review and test. After many internal discussions and time studies, we were able to come up with a solution. It was a very labor-intensive solution but solved the problem.
By splitting up the operation and setting up four teams for this project, we were able to get started on the 8,000 shirts. First, ALL 7 buttons on the shirts needed to be removed along with all of the threads. The second team lined up the plaids on each shirt and then marks were made through the center of each buttonhole for the new button placement. The third team was in the sewing department where the same buttons were now sewn back on to the shirts in the proper place. The fourth and final process was handled by the Darn It Apparel Inspection Team where the shirts went through a final inspection. Each button was trimmed, checked for proper sewing and placement, then folded and bagged.
I know you are all thinking that this was a lot of work to complete this task, but our customer was able to get these shirts back in stock within two weeks and out to their customers! The only other alternative was to send them back to the factory overseas. If they chose that option, the shirts MIGHT get back for the next season.
Projects large or small. Call Darn It today.