Recently I wrote a blog about the fact that one of The/Studio’s core offerings is True Customization. At the core of our company is our desire to make manufacturing simple no matter how complicated the customer’s design is.
This cap was for the fans of a soccer club that wanted to express their support for their club in a unique way. Check out the leading blank cap websites such as blankcaps.com, and http://www.lids.com/blanks. You can use those websites if you are looking for a simple black or grey cap. However, this customer was looking for much more. They were looking to create a true fashion statement, that expressed their unique loyalty to their soccer club.
Our designers worked with the customer on creating a truly unique and custom idea. The idea was to create what we at The/Studio call a half and half cap. To represent the soccer clubs colors, half of the cap would be navy blue and the other half would be light grey. The customer wanted to do something way out there, so our designer suggested that the customer write “Fanatics” across the top and back of the entire cap.
As you can see literally every aspect of the cap is customized and there is absolutely no way that anything similar could be produced without manufacturing the cap from scratch. This is when The/Studio’s value proposition of True Customization truly shines. Because of the limitations of embroidery machines on blank caps all you would have been able to do with a normal blank cap is have a normal one colored blank cap with perhaps the logo of the soccer club on the front of the cap (and don’t forget you would be limited to only 2.5 inches in height and 5.5 inches in width). Maybe you could have also had embroidery on the back, and that would have been the end of the day. That is not The/Studio’s version of True Customization.
Every last aspect of this cap is carefully manufactured and customized. The most obvious customization is the fact that half the cap is grey and the other half is navy blue. Furthermore, there is white piping that runs along the tip of the brim to the back of the cap. Custom piping is of course another option that you cannot get with blank caps. Then of course there is the embroidery that reads Fanatics which drapes itself across the entire cap. Even the smallest embroidery on the bill wouldn’t be possible if the cap was not manufactured from scratch. Once the cap is assembled it is impossible to embroider on the bill, because the hard material in the bill will break the embroidery needle.
With our method of constructing a cap, the embroidery is done on the material first, and then the cap is sewn together. However, this technique requires great skill, because “Fanatics” is sewn onto 4 separate panels of the cap. If the embroidery is done incorrectly the word “Fanatics” will not evenly spread across the cap. For an extra measure of customization this cap includes embroidery on the side which encompasses two panels of the cap, again something that would be impossible for a normal embroidered cap. There is embroidery on the right panel of the cap, and to top it off the eyelids are customized in white to match the white piping and white embroidery elements.
Another one of The/Studio’s hallmarks is a no minimum order requirement. We don’t claim to be the only company in the world that could have pulled this off (although there are very few), but we are definitely the only company out there that would have considered doing only 25 pieces for such a complicated cap. The customer only needed 25 caps, and that’s exactly what we produced. Our closest competitor would have most likely required an MOQ of at least 500 to 1,000 pieces, and I’m not confident that they could have pulled off the “Fanatics” embroidery as well as we did. When we say True Customization at The/Studio, that’s what we mean.
