Shirt Lab Austin, an education and networking event for apparel decorators, focused on automation on April 19-20 in Austin, Texas.
Attendees left the event with tools to automate sales, sales lead generation, sales strategy, order entry, inventory purchasing and pulling, and production KPI tracking.
Marshall Atkinson and Ali Banholzer, co-owners of Shirt Lab and Shirt Lab Tribe, hosted the event.
This year's speakers included Justin McKibben of The McKibben Group, Davis Slagle of BeeGraphix, Cole Lundstrom of Shirt Agency, Shane Snodgrass of Stoked On Printing, and Chris Bates of Deloitte.
Jeff Traen from Jerzees shared his top tip for shop owners: At the end of every Friday, take a look at the week ahead so you can prepare for any upcoming meeting or job you may have.
Justin McKibben’s session on Lead Generation Automation focused on leveraging virtual assistants. He suggested using ChatGPT to tailor messages to your own unique voice and then feed them to the virtual assistant.
Justin McKibben said “automation isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about consistency. There’s no set it and forget it.”
Davis Slagle of BeeGraphix started his session with this phrase: “Sell smarter, not harder.” He uses virtual assistants to communicate with customers and said “the business still has my personality, but I don’t have to be there.”
In Davis Slagle’s session, he focused on automating his online stores program. It took him and a coach six months to dial in the processes. He said if you’re overwhelmed by the many different ways to automate, you should “pick your biggest pain point and go find a way to automate that.”
“You are the expert,” said Davis Slagle of BeeGraphix. “You know what’s popular. Giving a ton of blank apparel options is too much for the customer. Show them what they want.”
Attendees received swag bags with branded event T-shirts, a utility case, a personalized notepad, and more. DTF Printing is a media sponsor of Shirt Lab.
Cole Lundstrom of Shirt Agency shared ways you can use AI and APIs to maximize the efficiency of your sales and support team. He suggested streamlining repetitive tasks with Zapier and using AI to transcribe your call with the customer. “If you respond quickly, your customers will love your shop,” he said.
“Throwing people at problems is a mistake,” said Cole Lundstrom of Shirt Agency. “Maximize efficiency with the people you have.”
Shane Snodgrass of Stoked on Printing shared ways to auto-order inventory and develop a pick system for your team to pull garments for orders. “You should leverage supplier data,” he said.
Chris Bates of Deloitte said you should “teach your production team to get an accurate understanding of production costs without impacting actual production. This will allow everyone to accurately forecast delivery dates and effectively schedule jobs to meet deadlines.”
At the end of the education day, attendees participated in breakout sessions with the speaker of their choice. Here, Ali Banholzer explains how Chris Bates from Deloitte worked with her production team at Wear Your Spirit Warehouse to build an automatic system to capture and track production KPIs.
The Shirt Lab breakout sessions gave attendees the opportunity to pick each other’s brains and gain 1:1 feedback for their shops. Here, Richard Greaves talks to apparel decorators.
Shirt Lab attendees gathered at Cover 3 in Austin, Texas, for food, drinks, networking, and the infamous Rock Paper Scissors contest. Carl Burghardt of Chipply won the annual tournament and received a free heat press from Stahls’.
Shirt Lab’s next event will take place this August in Nashville, Tennessee, and will focus on apparel decorator’s uses of Midjourney for artwork. Stay up to date with Shirt Lab news here.
