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? Now, of course post Covid, many of us have become germophobes and would never stick our hands in and sort them…right? Wrong. You grab a bunch and then leave the ones you don’t want on a plate or place them in the trash. For me it is usually the black licorice tasting ones. I am the guy that will take a clump and waste about 20% of what I grabbed. I don’t like the flavor or the smell.
What if you put on a t-shirt in a store and had a flashback to that bowl of jellybeans? Yes, the shirt smelled like black licorice. Even if you liked the candy, I am not sure that you would like the smell on you all day wearing it. One of our customers realized that they had this problem with a large inbound shipment of 3,200 shirts that were received at their warehouse. It was so bad that they placed all the shirts back in their original boxes and wrapped stretch wrap around the pallets 10 times to contain the smell.
The next step for our customer was to call the Darn It Apparel Repair Team and see if we could help. We have posted many blogs over the last number of years talking about how we can remediate mold and mildew. This same process can be used to get rid of terrible odors that may exist on your new clothing shipments.
This customer shipped us a few dozen samples for testing and the results were great. They then shipped us the balance of the goods for us to process. For smells and mold, we usually use our two ozone chambers to treat the garments. When people hear the word Ozone, they think that this is extremely bad for the atmosphere, but that is not the case with this process. Chemically, ozone is oxygen with an extra atom added. Electrically, ozone is oxygen with a higher energy level. Ozone oxidizes airborne pollutants, then reverts back to oxygen, transforming polluted air to pure and re-freshened air.
After placing these units in the ozone chambers for a specific number of hours, we needed to let them air out for a few days. Once aired out, you can smell the original fabric smell like it just came out of the factory. There are no chemicals or perfumes used in this process. We also don’t have to change any hang tags or price tickets throughout this process. The hand (feel) of the fabric is the same. If we were to launder or dry clean these tees, we would have to remove all the hang tags and price tickets and replace them after processing. You are also taking the chance of losing that original feel of the garment. It may look washed when it is in the store.
Upon completion of the airing out process, the Darn It Apparel Repair Team performed the “Smell Test” on many of the tees before placing them into new polybags and new boxes as the old ones had the same terrible smell. We then manifested the shipment, and they were off to our customers original distribution center. All the units were now saleable and ready to wear!