At Mirror Image we print thousands of Hanes shirts. The SL04 Silver for Her women’s

shirt is too well-kept of a sccret - it is fitted and stylish but actually fits non-skinny types. The

Beefy is the premium t-shirt, really the only option that is

heavyweight, soft ringspun cotton, really pre-shrunk, and comes in lots of colors.

   I know first hand about a couple of Hanes manufacturing plants and they have good working

conditions there.

    They are great to work with in terms of accurate delivery times, etc.

    Hanes is the first company really working hard on energy consumption related to making t-shirts, and have earned an ”Energy Star” rating for shirts produced with minimal energy use.

   You can check them out at:   http://www.hanesprintables.com/  

and their business ethics at:  http://www.hanesbullseye.com/Globals/CSR.aspx

-

   We have used Rutland plastisol inks for almost twenty years at Mirror Image. The simple fact

is that their plastisols build up on the back of the screens the least, which means less stopping, sharper images, and less flashing.

   We use their high density inks to create most of the crazy special effects we print.

   I also like that the company is not bureaucratic, they have great support, and you can get honest answers from them.

  We are starting to use the Rutland Claira system which is a non-phthalate system that works as well as traditional plastisol, even the high density parts of the line. We also use their tradtional discharge ink (ZFS) and their water-based ink (WB series) as well. All their inks have easy mixing systems.

   Their main web page is at:   http://www.rutlandinc.com/screen/index.htm

-

   We use all Newman roller frames, 25 x 36 mostly. Using their frames is the easiest

way to make sure you have good tension on screens. They don’t call it

“screen” printing for nothin’, you need good screens to do good

printing and good screens have to have consistent tension. We also

have a Newman stretching table that makes it easier to re-tension the roller

frames.

Their website is at:   http://www.stretchdevices.com/

-

   Union Ink we have always used Union Truetone Process inks  for doing realistic four color

traditional process (CMYK) work, both the ink is good and the

photoshop look-up tables are very helpful. We also use some of their

gels and metallics. I have visited a big shop that is using lots of their burnout

ink successfully.

   You can check them out at: http://www.unionink.com/

Econscious Apparel

Econscious sells good organic shirts, bags, and caps. Stefan Bergill is one of the main guys and he used to run a Patagonia organic program and he really knows organics. He also doesn’t just sell organic bags and apparel, but he genuinely personally cares about the environmental movement. Econscious has some good prices and some very nice styles. We mostly buy their bags, but they have some very stylin caps, the best in the organic market that I know about. They have nice t-shirts in good colors at good prices.