BY ALLEE BRUCE AND CASSIE GREEN

From deep-dive educational sessions to 1:1 meetings that led to real partnerships, the 2025 Apparel Decoration Summit was a success! Attendees and sponsors gathered in Nashville from June 2-4 to build key relationships and discover new opportunities in the apparel decorating industry.

Check in with Apparelist Content Director Cassie Green and Content Editor Allee Bruce for a quick sneak peek into what this year’s event featured.

An Optimistic, Focused Market

The event kicked off with a keynote session led by Lisa Cross, principal analyst, NAPCO Media. Cross and a panel of decorators discussed some key data from the State of the Decorated Apparel (SODA) survey, which was conducted in November and December of 2024.

Nearly half of apparel decorators (48% of SODA survey participants) expected better business conditions in 2025. Shops are becoming more intentional — focusing on high-value clients, customer follow-up, building relationships, and providing five-star, personalized service.

Megan Griffith, owner of P&M Apparel, spoke about the strategic adjustments her shop is making in response to external economic factors. At P&M — a shop that has historically operated on referrals — change is happening.

“We don’t do any advertising. We don’t really do any cold calling or cold sales,” Griffith shared. “We just let our reputation do the selling for us. And I think this is the first year that we decided not to just sit and wait for falling apples. Instead, we’re starting to pursue like, okay, these are the clients that we actually want … instead of just whatever comes onto our lap. We’re starting to change how we do that, starting to market more, sending out samples and stuff like that to companies that we want to get business from.”

Work Hard and Smart in Sales

Griffith isn’t alone in taking on a new, modern sales mindset. Kevin Baumgart, founder of Sales Ink, led a sales-focused talk titled “Effective Strategies to Boost Your Sales” on the final day of the Summit packed with plenty of actionable tips for shop owners.

He talked heavily about the importance of reactivating past clients, ways to improve lead capture online, launching targeted outbound campaigns, investing in virtual sales assistants, and how samples and kitting could be a missed opportunity.

Baumgart highlighted a case study featuring All City Print in Vancouver, Washington, where it created branded boxes filled with shirts, beanies, and promotional items, showing off the shop’s capabilities. It personally delivered these kits to prospects and customers, and they saw a 70% conversion rate from the 20 boxes dropped off.

The key here is to use the prospect or client’s logo on the items. While it can be a large investment, the ROI can be huge.

Efficiency and Quality

Seconds matter — literally. Jeffrey Paul of YOUNGONE drove this point home in his session, “Why Seconds Matter: Maximizing Efficiency in Print & Apparel Manufacturing.”

Every second saved in production adds up, according to Paul, who encourages apparel decoration business owners to identify and implement at least one time-saving process improvement in their shop.

“How many tasks, how many operations in your business could you save a second on?” Paul posed. “And how many times per day is that person doing it? Where’s the guy that’s cleaning his screen? Where is he going to turn on the water?”

Looking more closely at the smallest of tasks and eliminating unnecessary movements or steps in production can save a few to several seconds per task. Annually, that can add up to significant savings.

After illustrating how his company identifies its per-second costs, it was able to reduce a single operation by about 4.42 seconds, saving the company $430 per year in time.

Whether attendees returned home ready to reclaim seconds on the production floor or reengage past clients, the Apparel Decoration Summit gave them strategic ideas to improve their businesses. Across every session, 1:1 meeting, and networking gathering, attendees were all in.

If you missed it this year, don’t worry. We’ll be back in Nashville in 2026. Trust us: You want to be in the room!