Ensign Emblem Interview with Kristine Shreve
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Marty Hartman:
Welcome to the Supplier Spotlight Interview. Today we are excited to have Kristine Shreve, who is the Director of Marketing for Ensign Emblem. Welcome Kristine.
Kristine Shreve:
Well thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Marty Hartman:
All right, so we’re talking emblems today and when I think of emblems, I think of solving problems for our members. Could you give us just a quick little snippet? Why should our members pay attention to this interview?
Kristine Shreve:
Well, because I think emblems are bigger than ever, first of all. And also I think the thing that people often forget about emblems and, okay, this is my marketing background coming out, I’ll admit it, but emblems are a form of branding. And branding is very important and getting your brand in front of people is very important. And so what your members are selling to their customers is the ability to get their brand in front of a lot of people by putting it on a person who’s walking around, who’s interacting with other people all day, depending on what they’re doing of course. So that’s the thing that I think people miss about emblems. And it’s one of the things that I say about our company quite a bit, is we’re not really selling emblems, we’re selling branding. And I think when you look at it that way, you start to see the value of that little piece of fabric with somebody’s name on it or somebody’s logo on it.
Marty Hartman:
So when people think of emblems, what should they be thinking about? Because I know we’ve all seen different styles and different types. Give us a little overview, what does Ensign Emblem, what can you deliver for members?
Kristine Shreve:
Well, it depends really on what you’re looking for. Obviously, there’s the standard emblem, like if you go to your mechanic or if you go to your doctor’s office and you see they have an emblem with their… A patch, so to speak, with their name and their title on it or their department or whatever it is. There’s that sort of thing. We also offer direct embroidery, which is embroidery directly on the garment. We also have options if you like the look of direct embroidery, but you are not really interested in permanently marking up the garment. We call them signet emblems. And so the advantage there is that you can put something that resembles direct embroidery on the garment, but you can also easily remove it if you need to use the garment for someone else.
Marty Hartman:
So what does that process involve? Is that a heat seal process?
Kristine Shreve:
Yeah.
Marty Hartman:
Great.
Kristine Shreve:
It’s a heat seal process. And all of the emblems are available either with sew on or heat seal, so the customers can choose how they want to put them on the garments. But one of the main points of this type of branding is that it’s fairly easy to remove. I mean our heat seal emblems are industrial strength heat seal. So it’s going to take a little work to get them off, but not to the point that it’s going to be so labor intensive, it wouldn’t be worth doing.
Marty Hartman:
So in a case like that, for example, a laundry that is doing a uniform program where they’re personalizing shirts and with employee turnover, it’d be easy to take off one person’s name and put on another one.
Kristine Shreve:
Exactly. And that’s really the whole point of using an emblem. Direct embroidery is a very classic way and it’s a very classy way to add branding and identification to a garment, but it is more permanent. So that’s something that you kind of need to factor in when you’re deciding which way to go with how you want to do it. A lot of people like the look of direct embroidery, but if you have a lot of turnover or if you’re running a rental uniform program for instance, then direct embroidery might not be your best option.
Marty Hartman:
Right. And another situation where direct embroidery may not be something to consider is if a distributor has a uniform program, say for a company and they want that look of the embroidered logo, but they don’t want to order all of their garments all at one time. So they could order the emblems, the applique ahead of time and then just apply them as needed. Is that something that would work?
Kristine Shreve:
Sure. Yeah, that’s an option too. You can order more than you’re going to need at that current moment and have them in stock and then you just add them as necessary. I mean that sort of program is more for a logo or an insignia sort of thing as opposed to personalized names and things like that. But yeah, that’s definitely an option.
Marty Hartman:
So I’ve got a little bit schooled on your website and I was seeing all the different types of emblems that you offer. Can you just walk our listeners through say the embroidery and some of the other options for emblems and what would be the advantages of each?
Kristine Shreve:
Okay. Well embroidered emblems are probably the most classic version of an emblem. And I keep trying to come up with another word besides classic, but classic is kind of… It’s true. It’s the most traditional type of emblem maybe. The advantage to embroidered is it’s thread, it’s a little three dimensional, it kind of stands out a little bit. We also have a really gorgeous thread that we use for embroidery, so it’s got a nice shine. So that’s kind of where the embroidered emblems come in. Another option for emblems is screen print emblems and that is really exactly what it sounds like. It’s screen printing on an emblem. It’s also another very classic look.
Kristine Shreve:
I think embroidery and screen print are probably the most traditional looks that we offer because they’ve been around the longest. Screen print is… What I’m always surprised about from our screen print emblems is you can get a lot more colors than most people would probably think you could. We’ve done some screen print emblems with a pretty big number of colors in them and they turn out… I mean I’m prejudiced obviously, but I think they turn out really cool looking, so I’m going to just go with that.
Kristine Shreve:
Another option we offer that might be a good one for customers who are a little more price conscious maybe, is the PrintMate emblems. Those are sublimated emblems. You sublimate right onto the fabric. Those are great also for people who have very complicated logos or logos with a lot of fades or variegation in them or anything like that because it’s printing.
Marty Hartman:
Would that be a good solution, say you have a government seal that has a lot of detail in it?
Kristine Shreve:
Yeah, PrntMate could be. I mean, I’ve seen some really fabulous government seals done in both embroidery and sublimation too… Or I’m sorry, and screen print too. But yeah, I always say sublimation is a great option if you have something that’s really intricate or something that just has, like I said, a lot of fades or variegated areas or something in it because it’s actual printing. So you don’t have to worry about screens, you don’t have to worry about laying down colors. It’s just you print the design and then you press it onto the emblem and you’re good to go.
Marty Hartman:
Right.
Kristine Shreve:
So that’s a great option. And then of course there’s the more… Appliques are fun. Appliques are basically emblems that are shaped. They’re cut out into particular shapes, they’re laser cut. So that’s always a really fun option I think if you’re looking for something that’s a little more eye catching or if you have a logo that has a really specific and kind of iconic shape to it. And then signets I mentioned earlier, those are emblems that we create that are designed basically to mimic the look of direct embroidery. They work great on polo shirts or knit shirts or anything like that. And it’s really surprising how much they do look like it’s actually embroidered into the shirt. And then of course there’s standard reflective emblems for safety, fire retardant emblems for people who work with situations where they may encounter fire.
Marty Hartman:
Right.
Kristine Shreve:
So yeah.
Marty Hartman:
And I thought that the fire retardant emblems, that’s a great touch because I know a lot of our members have FR uniform programs and don’t want to mess up the program by having an emblem that is not within the standards that they need for the FR garment.
Kristine Shreve:
Well and one of the issues with that too is that there was an FR stabilizer that a lot of people were using called proban. And they stopped making it. The mill stopped making it a couple of years ago. So a lot of people were kind of scrambling and the FR emblems, everything in the emblem is FR. We have FR fabric, we have FR thread, the whole thing. So they’re going to keep people safe and they’re going to meet the standards that they need to meet. And that’s very important, especially for people like firefighters and electricians and anybody that could potentially encounter a fire emergency.
Marty Hartman:
Absolutely. So once again, solving a problem. Let’s talk about size limitations.
Kristine Shreve:
Okay.
Marty Hartman:
Is there a minimum size, maximum size that people should be looking at for emblems?
Kristine Shreve:
A lot of it depends on what you want to put on it.
Marty Hartman:
Okay.
Kristine Shreve:
I mean our standard name emblem, name patch, name tag, whatever you want to call it, is a one and five eight by three and five eight. And that’s just about the perfect size to go on a left chest. A lot of the size choices that customers make have to be made based on the size of their artwork. How complicated is the artwork, how big is the lettering, all that kind of stuff. I’ve had people try to put very, very small text on a very, very small emblem and you can’t possibly read what the text is supposed to say, because it’s just too tiny. Or they’ll have a design that’s very intricate and they try to put it on something too small and it just doesn’t work.
Kristine Shreve:
So that’s where our account executives come in, that’s where our design team comes in. We’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean so we’ve pretty much experienced at this point, probably almost anything that you can think of. So if you have a doubt, if you have a concern, if you’re not entirely sure, talk to our design team, talk to your account executives. Ask them and they’ll be happy to advise you or get you to somebody who can.
Marty Hartman:
So you do have a design team. If somebody has a logo, like say on a business card and they can make a scan of it and send it, your team could clean it up and make it look great.
Kristine Shreve:
We can.
Marty Hartman:
Absolutely.
Kristine Shreve:
I mean obviously the better artwork we’re given, the faster the process is. Vector artwork is always preferred. But we’ve had people bring us a coffee napkin with coffee stains on it where they drew something and they’re like, can you make this a thing? And we’re like, okay.
Marty Hartman:
Yes.
Kristine Shreve:
We can make it a thing.
Marty Hartman:
The answer is yes.
Kristine Shreve:
But yeah, working with business cards, working with logos on stationary, that kind of stuff. It’s been done.
Marty Hartman:
Yeah. The Merlin System, I saw on your website that if our members… Say they had a situation where they wanted to make their own emblems, can you tell us a little bit about the Merlin System and who would be a good candidate for something like that?
Kristine Shreve:
Well the Merlin System is essentially sublimation, so you need to be aware of that. So what you’re going to be creating is sublimated emblems. It’s not going to let you do screen print. It’s not going to let you do embroidery, obviously. But it is a great option. It has a very… Or a lower cost per piece. The options to get started with the system are fairly inexpensive compared to some other options you might do. And I mean you only use it when you need to, so you’re not looking at a huge cost of supplies or anything like that.
Kristine Shreve:
As to who might use it, I think it’s probably… If you’re looking at doing, or if you’re looking at meeting or producing thousands or even hundreds of emblems a day, Merlin’s probably not for you because that’s just way too time consuming and honestly you could buy the emblems from us and have us do the production for probably a lesser cost. But if you’re a shop that needs an emblem every once in a while or you get a lot of one off emblems where people are looking for one name, if you’re dealing with maybe smaller businesses that are buying uniforms, Merlin could well be a good fit for you.
Marty Hartman:
Okay.
Kristine Shreve:
So it’s really kind of… And the other thing that comes with Merlin is obviously you get our support too. So if you’re looking for a printing system that you know you can rely on the people behind it, I mean we provide warranty for 12 months, we service all the components, you can call our tech people and get help if you need it. And we have software that was designed specifically for commercial uniform rental and laundries. So the software is designed to help you create what you need to create with the least amount of stuff you don’t need, if that makes any sense.
Marty Hartman:
That does.
Kristine Shreve:
That was really good marketing talk there, wasn’t it?
Marty Hartman:
Well we want to make sure the people, our members know about all of the options that they have, depending on their needs.
Kristine Shreve:
Sure.
Marty Hartman:
Because as we mentioned earlier, it’s all about solving problems. So what’s the best way, if somebody wants more information about Ensign Emblem, what should they do?
Kristine Shreve:
I always say the first thing to do is go to the website. That gives you a pretty good overview of what we do and who we are. And it also has contact information. So you can either contact a particular department if you have a question or it gives you contact information for specific people. So you can get in touch with the account executive that covers your area, you can contact our design department. So that’s the place to start I think, because that’s the best way to get kind of an idea of who we are and what we do.
Marty Hartman:
Great.
Kristine Shreve:
And then once you’ve made that contact, then we can set you up with our backend ordering system and all that kind of stuff.
Marty Hartman:
And that website is Ensign Emblem?
Kristine Shreve:
The website is www.ensignemblem, and it’s ensign like I always say an ensign in the Navy, E-N-S-I-G-N. And then emblem like emblem.com.
Marty Hartman:
Great. So what else do you want our listeners to know before we sign off?
Kristine Shreve:
I think the big thing I want everybody to know is that we’ve been around since 1974 and this is really all that we do, is we work with uniform rental companies, industrial laundries, that kind of stuff. And it’s what we’ve done since the very beginning. So we are really dedicated to this industry and we have a lot of experience. I mean I love to just sit with the owner of our company and hear stories because she’s been with the company since the very beginning. So we have a real love for the industry and we really want to serve the members and the people who are in it. So we’ll go above and beyond for you.
Marty Hartman:
That’s great.
Kristine Shreve:
So definitely contact us. We’re more than happy to help.
Marty Hartman:
I hope our members do. Thank you very much, Kristine, for your time.
Kristine Shreve:
Well thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Infinite Laundry