Often times in fashion, what was old becomes new again, and many trends and styles repeat and reinvent themselves as new generations rediscover gems of the past.

This logic doesn't just apply to bell bottoms and leg warmers, but to industry as well.  I just read that vinyl record sales have increaesed 5 years in a row, even as over all album sales decline - what's old is new....

Well Last night while reading Fast Company, I can across a really great article which highlights one of the newest "old" trends, "made in America." Its been the belief, especially in the apparel industry that Amercian made products can't compete with the lower cost structure of products made overseas.  This viewpoint is extrememly limited however in assuming the competition is measured ONLY by cost, and thus margin.

However more and more companies are finding that competition is fought accross many variables like turnaround time, quality, social responsibility, and brand image just to name a few.  It may be true you can get a shirt sewn in cambodia for $.29 per hour (see this great article on Dallas Cowboy's Merchandising http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7435424/dallas-cowboys-dip-sports-appa... but there is a cost to that cheapness as measured by cusomer negative sediment for the lack of workers rights.

Out of that path to profits, comes a new trend, a positive trend for those of us like Underground Printing (who produces all of our Screen printing and embroidery here in the U.S.) which is for brands to be cool becuase they are made here at home.  

This article does a great job of highlighting a 90 year old American company who faced the hardships of outsoucing and well as a great resurgence of American manufacturing. 

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/edith-a-miller-womens-clothing

As we prepare for 2012, we wanted to take a minute to review some UGP highlights from 2011, in case you missed them.

A New UGP Store

UGP opened our 17th location and our first in the state of Nebraska in August. The Lincoln store is located on the campus of the University of Nebraska at 1601 Q. Street. When UNL joined the Big Ten, we knew we had to open up there, and it we are glad we did. The store is off to a great start, and we're looking forward to continuing to serve the campus community there for years to come.

We also did some revonations at our Ann Arbor - Main Street location to accomodate even more terrific retail products!

Apparel Trends

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2011 continued to the trend of retro-80s throwbacks, with neons and crop tops making a resurgence in popularity. Quarter-Zip fleeces and Deep V-Necks continued their popularity from 2010 with another strong showing this year. Our number one seller however remained the basic t-shirt. In the Gildan 5000 style alone, we printed more than 430,000 t-shirts! Watch out for relative newcomer Tultex in 2012, as they have been gaining popularity quickly for their low-cost, comfortable, and fashion-fit t-shirts this year!

A Million Plus!

We printed a few things in 2011. As of December 29th, we had printed just over 1,040,000 garments this year. That's a lot of apparel!

POGO Popularity Soars

We knew UGPogo, our online group ordering system, would be a hit, and in 2011 we processed 400 new carts. That means 400 customers were freed from the burden of collecting money and sizes from their group by taking those payments and orders on their UGPogo cart. 400 customers also were able to make money (if they wanted to) on their orders by adding a little on top of the prices we charge to raise money or profits! If your group or organization hasn't tried out UGPogo in 2011, make it a resolution to simplfy your shirt ordering in 2012 with a UGPogo cart!

Shop Expansion

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Producing all of those t-shirts, hoodies, and more requires a lot of space and equipment. Our old shop was just getting too crowded for all that jazz, so we took over the space next door, knocked down a few walls, brought in some new equipment, and spread out a bit. When the dust settled (and was vacuumed up so as to not end up on your shirts) we unveiled our now 55,000 square foot production facility with new presses and even more capacity to meet our growing demand in 2012 and beyond!

Thank You & Happy New Year!

We'd like to thank all of our customers who made all of these accomplishments possible. UGP would not continue to grow the way it has without all of your support, year in and year out. We feel very fortunate to have such loyal customers, and we look forward to bringing you even more great apparel in 2012!

Happy New Year, Everyone! Here's to a great 2012 (and making it to 2013 so we can all feel good about how we made it past Y2K and 2012! Take that computer glitches and ancient Mayan calendars).

Another wild college football season wrapped up this past weekend, finally putting in place all of the postseason 2011-2012 bowl games. While the national championship game may be a rematch, there are a lot of other great bowl games to check out. UGP is lucky enough to have stores on 11 campuses whose teams are headed to bowls this year! We want to congratulate all of those teams for their hard work in becoming bowl eligible!

2011-2012 Bowl Schedule for UGP Campuses

• Dec. 27, 2011
  • Little Caesars   Western Michigan vs. Purdue at 4:30 PM
    • Get your WMU Apparel for the game at UGP
• Dec. 30, 2011
  
  • Insight   Iowa vs. Oklahoma at 10:00 PM
    
    • Get your Iowa Apparel for the game at UGP
• Dec. 31, 2011
  
  • Meineke Car Care of Texas   Texas A&M vs. Northwestern at Noon
  • Kraft Fight Hunger   Illinois vs. UCLA at 3:30 PM
    • Get your Illinois Apparel for the game at UGP
• Jan. 2, 2012
  • Outback   Michigan State vs. Georgia at 1:00 PM
    • Get your Michigan State apparel for the game at UGP
  • Capital One  Nebraska vs. South Carolina at 1:00 PM
    • Get your Nebraska apparel for the game at UGP
  • Rose   Wisconsin vs. Oregon at 5:00 PM
    • Get your Wisconsin apparel for the game at UGP
• Jan. 3, 2012
  • Sugar   Michigan vs. Virginia Tech at 8:30 PM
    • Get your Michigan apparel for the game at UGP
• Jan. 4, 2012
  • Orange   West Virginia vs. Clemson at 8:30 PM
• Jan 7, 2012
  • BBVA Compass   SMU vs. Pittsburgh at 1:00 PM

We are also fortunate to have official bowl game apparel available for two of our BCS matchups this year as well. Check out the official merchandise offerings for Wisconsin from Sconnie and for Michigan from Moe Sport Shops!

Sugar Bowl Apparel

The Sugar Bowl apparel for Michigan is awesome and a must-have for any Michigan fan. After a 10-2 season under new head coach Brady Hoke, the Wolverines are fired up to have reached a BCS bowl for the first time since 2006. Moe Sport Shops has all of your official 2012 Sugar Bowl gear in store at 711 N. University in Ann Arbor and online at www.moesportshops.com.

Rose Bowl Apparel

The Rose Bowl will feature the Wisconsin Badgers for the second straight year, as they seek a victory against the Oregon Ducks. Led by Montee Ball and his 38 touchdowns, the Badgers will try to reverse the outcome of last year's Rose Bowl loss to TCU 21-19. Sconnie has all your official 2012 Rose Bowl gear in store at 521 State St. in Madison and online at www.sconnie.com.

Let me set the stage for a very common problem that affects many of our customers including businesses, student groups, greek houses and non-profits.

In the hype and hubub of the fall, you went to Underground Printing and got your organization a great deal on some sweet t-shirts that everyone has been wearing around town. Unfortunately, that was all the budget you had set aside for apparel for 2011. Flash forward a few months to today, when the wind is blowing, the days are colder and shorter, and your sweet UGP-made t-shirts are covered up by jackets, hoodies, snuggies, or whatever people are using to keep warm these days.

Buried under all that down and fluff is your brand, logo, and message. You may have outdoor, cold-weather events coming up, or you may just generally want your name and logo circulating around town, still, despite the cold!  Sadly, you don't have the budget to hook everyone up with a new hoodie, fleece, or jacket. With a busy end to the year, you probably don't have the time to collect money from everyone, either. Lame, right?

But wait...There's UGPogo!

UGPogo (UGP Online Group Ordering) solves this problem perfectly and with almost no effort for you! With UGPogo, we will create an online cart for your organization. Here's how it works in three ridiculously easy steps!

STEP ONE: TELL US WHAT YOU WANT AND WHAT YOU WANT ON IT

We'll take your logo or design and slap it on some products for you! Need some free design help? No problem. Need suggestions for hot new products people will love? No problem! We've got hoodies, jackets, fleeces, sweaters, winter hats, and much more. We'll create a great looking digital sample of the products and art so we can set up your cart.

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STEP TWO: GET YOUR CART LINK AND EMAIL IT TO GROUP MEMBERS

We'll get you a custom link to your organization's cart. You can email it out to all the members in the group, post it on Facebook, or send it along to anyone you think might want to buy an item. Each person can pick the products and sizes and pay for their order individually, just like any online cart site. (hint: anyone can purchase items on the site, so this would be a great time of year to email the link out to a parent or significant other who is desperately trying to figure out what to get you for the holidays!) When everyone has ordered and you're ready to close the cart, we'll total everything up, print it all, and get the items to you in just 7 business days! Don't want to deal with distributing everything? You can set the cart up so that each person gets their items shipped individually, straight to their door!

STEP THREE: WATCH YOUR LOGO DOMINATE WINTER

Take that winter! Now it seems like every coat, hoodie, and fleece in town has got your organization's logo boldy standing out against the white winter snow. Plus, your budget is intact, and everyone in the organization thinks you're a genius.

Don't let winter tank your branding. Have everybody in your group buy their own totally sweet custom winter apparel using UGPogo! It's so easy, you'll be setting up carts all the time. You can even use the cart for fundraising. Want to know how? Ask a UGP representative near you and they'll give you the 411 on all things UGPogo.

Underground Printing is representing American manufacturing pride the old fashioned way... we make stuff!  All screenprinting and embroidery production for our 17 locations is done in the great state of Michigan, and we couldn't be more proud to say our printing is 100% domestic. 

Just like all manufacturing we create waste (at times a LOT of waste) and although we try to use the priciples of Lean manufacturing, some things are unavoidable... like creating stacks and stacks of used  cardboard boxes.   In the old days when we were much smaller we could always just throw a couple boxes in the dumpster like most restaurants, stores and small businesses, but as we got larger we found that we were QUICKLY filling that dumpster up.   Not only was this forcing us to have additonal pick ups (not free) but it didn't seem right to be throwing away so much recyclable material.  The solution was to partner with a large scale industrial recycling company to take all of our recyclable material by the Semi truck load, including plastics, paper, scrap metal, even light bulbs!

Here's how we generate so much cardboard; every day we receive shipments of incoming shirts for orders, many times with several orders per incoming box.  In these cases orders need to be split out and reboxed.  (we do reuse incoming boxes in some cases when possible to help reduce waste)

We also recycle a LOT of plastic, a big source of which is packaging material and the shrink wrap that trucking companies use to ship pallets. 

So what's the point you ask? Well not only are we helping to keep all of this out of the landfill, we're also saving money.  Had we thown this amount of wate into our dumpster we would have required 55 additoinal dumpster pick ups at an additonal cost of nearly $2,400 per year!

So we say to you, what is the cost of your recycling program? Do you have one?  If not, you could be wasting more than just cardboard!

How awesome is this? Although I'd break my neck...

I came across this article in the WSJ the other day entitled "New Tricks for Old Malls". First off, I'm going on the record as saying that I am sad that Malls have become "Old" and that I really want them to succeed. Its hard for my generation (early 30's) not to be nostalgic about malls - thats where we grew up.

That being said, this article was an interesting read about how prototypical retail spaces are being repurposed for businesses you would never expect in a mall. Gun Ranges, Jungle Gyms, Go-Carts...the massive space malls have to offer lends itself to concepts that need a lot of room and would generally be located further away from these higher traffic areas. One company, Jumpstreet, is putting indoor trampoline facilities in malls.

I love this trend. When UGP first started trying to find great campus locations, part of our appeal to landlords was our ability to conform to small, unique spaces. Everyone knows these spots, the small, oddly shaped space on the main campus drag that usually has a long term tenant. Typical chain restaurants and retail shops hate these spaces. They don't have the square footage required, or else they need extensive buildouts. Underground Printing, however, only needed space for a couple desks and some samples.  We would swoop in and offer to take these weird spaces as-is, with little to no build out required, and landlords loved us for it. 

This conversion of mall retail space to other uses is another example of alternate utlization of space. I'm excited to see how else these endangered retail locations will change. Just don't ask me to explain the movie "Mallrats" to my grandkids.

More often than I like to admit, my shirts come out of the laundry fitting a bit differently than they did when they went in. I just have some magical skill that I can shrink just about anything. But some festival-goes in Germany recently found a completely different shirt in the machine after gettin' their clean on.

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I don't know about you, but I love thrift/second hand stores. It's hard to beat the feeling of satisfaction when you find that hidden gem that has been passed over by countless other customers. Sometimes it just seems like they don't make clothes like they used to.

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NASA's shuttle program is over... mostly. All that's left is for Atlantis to land, and then the 30 year program will finally come to a close. And what better way to honor the past than with a T-shirt?!

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