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Comfort Colors

Remembering Barry Chouinard

July 19th would have been Barry Chouinard’s 68th birthday. We mourn his passing and most of us remember him pretty damn fondly. He lived a full life, touched lots of people, and nobody would say he got cheated. So I pose the question, “Did you ever meet Barry Chouinard?” The only possible answers would be…

Gildan To Close New Bedford, Massachusetts Dyeing Facility (and Warehouse in CA)

Gildan has decided to close their garment dyeing facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Gildan bought the plant from Comfort Colors in 2015. It will close now as of February 28th, 2018 and 90 workers there will lose their jobs. The facility originally was opened in 1995 in a cavernous former armaments factory by the then…

Decorating Advice (Finally…)

Comfort Colors just sent out an email blast promoting their decorating tips. You can read about many different ways to make your comfort colors shirts look better. This seems to be part of a wave of garment companies looking to help their customers proactively with tips on decoration, rather than waiting for decorators to run…

Gildan is High Bidder for American Apparel

Reuters News Agency is reporting that Gildan has made the high bid for American Apparel’s assets at $88 Million. This is unofficial as as the proceeding are supposed to be confidential and also any bid is subject to final approval by a bankruptcy judge on Thursday of this week. If true then they apparently outbid Next Level…

R.I.P. Barry Chouinard

Barry Chouinard died last night of a massive heart attack while awaiting heart surgery.  He was a good friend and I’ll miss him, and he was a good friend to lots of folks that will miss him. He sold his company Comfort Colors to Gildan about a year ago and was working on all kinds…

Misprint Monday: Out Damn Spot; Fun with Garment Dyed Shirts

We have posted before on the Ink Kitchen on what you can do about ink spots on garment dyed shirts.  Check it out here. The short answer, is “not much.” The shirts are wonderful and customers love the feel and the colors, but the dye system that makes them wonderful also gives printers problems. One of…

Soft Shirts in Soft ColorsSome: Comfort Colors, SanMar, and Hanes Coastal Colors

At ISS Long Beach in January Tom and I did some seminars in the SanMar classroom on printing on Garment Dyed shirts. A few of our words of advice: use good platen adhesive to promote good registration, and re-apply more often than usual. At my shop we mostly use Albatross Brush Tac and then some Albatross spray when…

La compañía Comfort Colors de Vermont es hoy parte del imperio Gildan

Menuda noticia, la compañía Comfort Colors de Vermont es hoy parte del imperio Gildan. Barry Chouinard, emprendedor y personaje peculiar, dueño de la compañía será capaz de comprar un poco más  de sidra de manzana esta semana después de vender Comfort Colors por 100 millones de dólares al gigante Gildam.  consta que que Gildan perdió más  de…

Gildan Buys Comfort Colors!

Holy Cow, Vermont company Comfort Color is now part of the Gildan empire. Entrepreneur and genuine character Barry Chouinard (owner of Comfort Colors) should be able to buy a little more apple cider this week after selling his company for $100 million to industry giant Gildan. Reported as well was that Gildan lost over $40…

Fashion Trends – Part 1

I asked friends in the industry where fashion is going and got quite a few similar responses. I’ll put a few up today and tomorrow. We just designed a shirt on this alternative apparel piece which is a football retro-looking shirt. It hits a few bases that fashion is headed toward: sporty and retro sporty…