Conference Schedule

Master the move from manual to automatic screen printing. Learn hands-on press fundamentals, darkroom prep, and setup efficiency to scale your shop with confidence.

Why Someone Should Come

Moving from manual printing to an automatic press is one of the biggest decisions a screen printing shop can make. Automation can increase capacity, improve consistency, and open the door to larger jobs, but it also requires a different mindset around screens, setup, workflow, labor, maintenance, and production standards. This session helps attendees understand what changes when a shop moves from manual printing to its first auto and how to scale in a way that supports productivity instead of creating new bottlenecks.

Who Should Come

This session is ideal for manual screen print shops that are thinking about automation, business startups that want to get into screen printing in a serious way, and new automatic press operators who need a practical introduction to automated production. It is also valuable for shop owners and production leaders who want to understand what skills, systems, and expectations need to be in place before adding or fully utilizing an automatic press.

What They Will Learn

• Manual to Auto Mindset: Understand how the move from manual printing to automatic production changes setup, labor, workflow, and production expectations.
• Automatic Press Fundamentals: Learn the core skills and best practices needed to operate an automatic screen printing press with confidence.
• Darkroom Readiness: Discover why screen quality, exposure, mesh selection, registration, and reclaim discipline become even more important when printing on an auto.
• Setup Efficiency: Learn how to reduce downtime through better job staging, screen preparation, registration habits, ink setup, and press organization.
• Hands-On Production Concepts: Explore practical automatic printing applications, including projects such as fleece and simulated process work, so attendees understand how different jobs behave on press.
• Scaling the Right Way: Learn how to evaluate when automation makes sense, what to prepare before the press arrives, and how to avoid common first-auto mistakes.

• Understand the power of heat printing and why the heat press remains one of the most versatile and profitable tools in the modern decoration shop.
• Compare today's leading heat-applied decoration methods – from DTF to HTV to plastisol transfers and beyond – to understand where each excels.
• Explore tools, products, and workflows that help decorators increase efficiency and consistency.

New to machine embroidery? Learn the fundamentals of thread, needles, stabilizers, and design readiness to start producing consistent, professional results.

Why Someone Should Come

The foundation of successful embroidery starts with understanding how the major variables work together. Thread, needles, garments, stabilizers, design choices, and machine setup all affect the final result, and beginners often struggle because they are trying to solve problems without knowing which variable is responsible. This session gives attendees a clear, practical starting point so they can move beyond guesswork and begin making better production decisions from the beginning.

Who Should Come

This session is ideal for new embroiderers, apparel decorators adding embroidery to their shop, business owners evaluating embroidery equipment, and production staff who need a stronger understanding of embroidery fundamentals. It is also a strong refresher for anyone who has learned by trial and error and wants a more structured explanation of the basics.

What They Will Learn

• Embroidery Fundamentals: Understand the basic terminology, machine concepts, and production variables that every embroiderer needs to know.
• Thread, Needle, and Garment Relationships: Learn how thread type, needle selection, garment construction, and fabric behavior work together during stitching.
• Design Readiness: Discover what makes artwork and embroidery designs more or less production-friendly before the job reaches the machine.
• Quality-Focused Setup: Learn how strong setup habits reduce waste, improve consistency, and create a better foundation for profitable embroidery production.

All-Day Conference for Decorators and Distributors featuring business, creativity, innovation, and leadership keynotes, including Nigel Barker.

The foundation of a great print begins with proper artwork preparation. This session demystifies the art and separations used in screen printing, showing you how to take a concept and turn it into print-ready art.

Why Someone Should Come

The foundation of a great print begins with proper artwork preparation. This session demystifies the digital side of screen printing, showing you how to take a concept and turn it into print-ready art. Whether you are dealing with customer-supplied files or creating your own designs, understanding how to manipulate art for the screen is the first critical step to success.

Who Should Come

Beginners, graphic designers transitioning to apparel, and shop owners who want to understand the requirements for screen-ready artwork. If you struggle with color separations or knowing when to use vector versus raster images, this class is for you.

What They Will Learn

• Vector vs. Raster: Understand the critical differences between vector art (Adobe Illustrator/Corel Draw) and raster art (Adobe Photoshop), and when to use each for apparel design.
• Spot Color Separations: Learn how to color separate vector designs using solid coated Pantone colors, ensuring accurate film output.
• Artboard Setup: Master the process of setting up your canvas to match your film size (e.g., 13x19) and sizing designs appropriately for different garments.
• Registration Marks: Discover how to add and align center crop marks to your artwork, a crucial step for maintaining registration on the press.

Build the repeatable systems that make automation profitable. Learn hands-on SOPs for press setup, darkroom, training, and quality control that help your shop scale and use them to print a job.

Why Someone Should Come

Automation works best when the shop has repeatable systems behind it. A press can only print as efficiently as the process that feeds it, and many shops lose time because each operator handles setup, screens, approvals, ink, garments, maintenance, and cleanup differently. This session focuses on the standard operating procedures that help shops create consistency, train employees, reduce errors, and turn automatic printing into a repeatable production system instead of a daily guessing game.

Who Should Come

This session is designed for shop owners, production managers, automatic press operators, lead printers, and teams preparing to scale. It is especially useful for shops adding their first automatic press, training new operators, trying to reduce production mistakes, or looking to document best practices so the business can grow beyond one person's knowledge.

What They Will Learn

• SOP Foundations: Learn what standard operating procedures are, why they matter, and how they create consistency across art, darkroom, setup, production, quality control, and cleanup.
• Press Setup Standards: Understand how to document repeatable procedures for loading screens, registering jobs, setting squeegees and flood bars, staging inks, and preparing garments.
• Darkroom and Screen-Making Procedures: Learn how consistent coating, exposure, washout, drying, labeling, and screen storage help the press run more efficiently.
• Training and Accountability: Discover how written procedures make it easier to train new employees, set expectations, evaluate performance, and reduce reliance on tribal knowledge.
• Quality Control Systems: Learn how checklists, approvals, test prints, production samples, and job notes prevent mistakes before they become full-run problems.
• Continuous Improvement: Understand how to use SOPs as living documents that evolve with better equipment, stronger habits, and lessons learned from real production.

• Explore a variety of AI tools designed for different business needs – including image generation, design assistance, upscaling, editing, and productivity – while recognizing there is no single AI solution that fits every decorator.
• Learn how to evaluate AI tools based on your business goals, budget, and workflow so you can build an AI toolkit that supports creativity, efficiency, and growth without getting overwhelmed by the options.

Demystify embroidery digitizing. Learn how software turns art into stitches, why auto-digitizing falls short, and how file types and fonts affect your results.

Why Someone Should Come

Great embroidery starts before the machine ever runs. Digitizing is the process that turns artwork into stitch instructions, and misunderstanding that process can lead to poor coverage, excessive stitch counts, registration problems, distorted lettering, and frustrating machine performance. This session introduces digitizing in a beginner-friendly way, helping attendees understand what embroidery software can and cannot do and why auto-digitizing is not a one-click solution for professional results.

Who Should Come

This session is designed for beginners, shop owners, production artists, and embroiderers who want to better understand stitch files, design quality, and the language of digitizing. Attendees do not need to be advanced digitizers, but they should be curious about how designs are built, why some files run better than others, and how to communicate more effectively with digitizers or software providers.

What They Will Learn

• Software to Stitches: Understand what digitizing software does, what it does not do automatically, and why human decision-making still determines stitch quality.
• Auto-Digitizing Expectations: Learn where auto-digitizing can be useful and why simply clicking a button and sending a design to the machine is not a reliable production method.
• File Type Basics: Discover the difference between working or condensed files and stitch or expanded files, including why purchased stitch files can be harder to edit than original working files.
• Fonts and Lettering: Learn how keyboard fonts, stock fonts, and automated font conversion differ, and why lettering choices matter in embroidery.
• Workstation Setup: Understand how monitors, mice, tablets, comfort, speed, and ergonomics can affect digitizing efficiency and long-term workflow.

Screen printing starts with the screen so in this session you will learn how to make consistently good screens. Jump hands-on into the darkroom and learn best practices for screen selection, cleaning, coating, and exposing.

Why Someone Should Come

A perfect print is impossible without a perfect screen. The darkroom is often where the most critical, yet overlooked, steps of screen printing occur. This session covers the science and technique behind creating durable, high-quality stencils that will hold up during production and wash out easily when the job is done.

Who Should Come

New screen printers, darkroom technicians, and anyone experiencing issues with stencil breakdown, pinholes, or difficult screen reclaiming.

What They Will Learn

• Positive Imaging: Learn the best practices for printing opaque positive images onto film.
• Screen Preparation & Coating: Understand the different types of screens and mesh counts, and learn the proper techniques for coating screens with emulsion to create a solid stencil.
• Exposure Techniques: Discover how to properly expose and dry screens, including the benefits of using advanced equipment like LED exposure units for faster times and higher detail.
• Reclaiming & Maintenance: Master the cleanup process in the washout room, including the use of ink degraders, emulsion removers, pressure washers, and dip tanks to efficiently reclaim and dehaze screens for reuse.

Set your business up for long-term success from today onward. Learn the systems, processes, and resources that help you do things right now so you get the right results tomorrow.

Why Someone Should Come

Many shops are busy but not actually healthy. Orders may be coming in, but pricing is random, bookkeeping is messy, job tracking is inconsistent, and every order feels like a fire drill. This class is about getting the boring but essential parts of the business right so the shop can make money instead of just creating stress. Attendees will learn from Cole’s successes and mistakes, including how growth can become dangerous when the numbers, systems, cash flow, and expectations are not under control.

Who Should Come

This class is for new shop owners, decorators trying to turn a side hustle into a real business, production people moving into ownership, and anyone who can make the product but feels shaky on the business side. It is especially valuable for people who are already working hard, taking orders, and serving customers, but know they need clearer pricing, cleaner records, better job organization, and more confidence in the financial side of the shop.

What They Will Learn

• Business Formation Basics: Learn the early decisions that help turn a side hustle or production skill into a real business, including structure, accounts, responsibilities, and basic operating discipline.
• Bookkeeping and Clean Records: Understand why the books need to be accurate, current, and useful, not just something handled at tax time.
• Understanding Real Costs: Learn how to think through blanks, ink, transfers, labor, overhead, rent, equipment, software, spoilage, owner pay, and the true cost of keeping the shop open.
• Pricing for Profit: Discover why random pricing creates stress and how to build pricing that covers costs, supports cash flow, pays the owner, and leaves room for growth.
• Cash Flow and Financial Pressure: Learn why sales volume alone does not equal health, and how overhead, payroll, loans, slow payments, and seasonal swings can create pressure even when the shop looks busy.
• Customer Communication: Learn how better estimates, approvals, expectations, timelines, and follow-ups reduce confusion and protect profitability.
• Simple Systems That Scale: Discover how checklists, templates, job notes, production boards, quoting standards, and repeatable processes make the shop easier to manage.
• Running With Real Numbers: Leave with a clearer understanding of how to stop guessing and start running the business with cleaner systems, better tools, and decisions based on real numbers.

• Discover how premium decoration choices, presentation, and positioning can support higher margins.
• Learn value-based selling techniques that help shift conversations away from price alone.
• Explore upselling and bundling strategies that increase revenue and customer satisfaction.

The right backing, hooping technique, and tools make or break embroidery quality. Learn practical processes that improve consistency and reduce costly mistakes.

Why Someone Should Come

Many embroidery problems begin before the first stitch is sewn. The wrong backing, poor hooping technique, inconsistent placement, or a missing preparation step can create puckering, registration issues, distortion, wasted garments, and unnecessary downtime. This session focuses on the practical tools and preparation processes that help shops create more reliable results across common garments and customer orders.

Who Should Come

This session is ideal for beginners, production operators, decorators training new employees, and shop owners who want to reduce avoidable mistakes in daily embroidery work. It is especially useful for anyone who struggles with hooping consistency, backing selection, garment placement, or repeatability from one order to the next.

What They Will Learn

• Backing Selection: Learn how to choose stabilizers based on garment type, design needs, stitch density, stretch, and finished quality expectations.
• Hooping Fundamentals: Understand how proper hooping affects registration, distortion, puckering, and the overall appearance of the finished embroidery.
• Tools That Improve Consistency: Discover practical tools for placement, measuring, trimming, preparation, and production organization.
• Repeatable Processes: Learn how to build step-by-step workflows that reduce rework, make training easier, and improve consistency across orders.