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Nicole Rollender, editor

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On Links and Needles

Expand your understanding and hone your technical skills as award-winning 10-year veteran digitizer, e-commerce manager and all-around technophile Erich Campbell explores and explains the intersection of embroidery, technology and business. He’s the go-to guy for stitches and tech at Black Duck Inc. in Albuquerque, NM, one of the Southwest's largest screen-printing and embroidery firms. Get connected at: ecampbell@blackduckonline.com.

Being on the Cutting Edge Requires Balance: Saying Yes Without Fear and No Without Reservation

Not to make too much of my (very) minor Internet stardom gained as a result of writing this blog for the illustrious Stitches magazine, but I have with some regularity been asked how I managed to get here. Mostly people want to know how I won in the Stitch-Off and Golden Needle contests, but they also ask why I have so many customers who believe that my work is different and/or better than the rest.

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When Not to Sweat the Details, or, Fighting Customers Means Defeating the Purpose

I've talked about all manner of customer relations issues before, and given tips on how to educate your clients, how to stand together with your company to make things right when faced with a fouled-up order, and even on how to redirect problems with your customer's requests into possibilities for better work.

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Embroiderer, Decorate Thyself

Thinking over the countless times I've talked to a great many decorators over the years, I noticed a fairly disturbing trend I couldn't remember almost any of their logos. More to the point, I'm almost certain most of them weren't

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The Chisel vs. the Silver Bullet – the Truth About Technology

I'm about to tell you something you don't want to hear. Like the old ostensibly Mongolian saying goes, "A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup," and I am just as prepared for your resistance to this revelation.

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Taming the Latest Techniques and Scoring More Sales – Take a Field Trip!

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a rut? Do your days and designs run together in your mind until you can't separate one from the next? Has it been months since you changed your default stitch settings on

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Monolithic Management: Being the Magic T-Shirt Machine, and Staying Stone Solid for Your Customers

OK, so you are probably a little puzzled as to why I might be referencing a standing stone in the title of my post. I'm not trying to suggest we revert to the ways of antiquity; it certainly makes embroidery take longer, if nothing else.

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Learning About Kerning

I'm not usually one for such a miserly entry, but this is something short, sweet and to the point that every embroiderer should know. From those of you with a simple lettering program up to full-time digitizers, you can all do one simple thing to make any name, monogram or other assorted text element look its best, and it's something I've found I have to correct more often than not when reproducing the work of my peers. You need to learn to kern.

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'Tis the Season (To Make Good on Your Promises)

There is a scheduling epidemic among garment decorators this time of year, and I'm here to inoculate you before you suffer the symptoms. You may not know it, but whether you are fresh to the business, a single-head start-up, or a major multi-head, multi-shop player, you are at risk. The sickness I'm speaking of is not the flu, porcine or otherwise. I'm talking about chronic under-delivering – CU for short.

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On the Importance of Stitches, or, When Quality is at Stake, it's No Contest

Some of my readers may have recognized my name from this month's Stitches Golden Needle Awards article, or perhaps from awards in Stitches from years past. While I'm not above self-promotion (hence all the blogging, I can almost hear from across the digital divide),

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Diamonds in the Rough

I believe that most digitizers, as a breed, are finicky creatures. We are prone to fits of over-editing and micromanagement. Given time and opportunity, some of us may fiddle and tweak away the better part of an afternoon on a complex design.

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Opening a Window (Before You Close the Door on a Sale)

Eventually, it must come to pass that a customer will ask you for the impossible. As sure as night follows day, any chain of easily digitized, clean-running, beautiful jobs will break and someone will bring you a design fraught with difficulties, a completely hoop-intolerant garment or a yesterday deadline.

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Why Quality is the New Price – The Power of Reputation

So, you are in the apparel decoration business and you want to survive and thrive. You know that you need to court new customers and make the customers you have as loyal as possible. Let me offer you the following advice: Don't compete on price alone.

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Dimensional Digitizing, or, Getting Some Relief From Flat Embroidery

Let me start by blowing your mind a little bit. Embroidery is sculpture. I know, it might not seem like it at first blush, but stitches happen in three dimensions. As flat as they might seem sometimes, each embroidered design

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From One-Off to Web Site: Five Ways to Choose Customers With Potential

As the manager of Web sites that provide direct-to-business apparel, I'm often asked why we decided to pursue the markets we are in, or how we got our foot in the door, so to speak. The answer is that we chose to spend time and effort on customers with potential.

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Tailoring Your Pitch

There are a few lessons that I learned during my time at college that have translated particularly well from the world of English composition to the world of business. The most important, hands down, is that one should always consider one's audience.

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From Delivery-Boy to Digitizer

It might seem strange to start a blog, or truly any venture, by looking backward. That said, any good digitizer knows that laying, or underlaying, a good foundation is the key to creating a design that holds up to close scrutiny.

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