The Harvest ‘09 Tour was a great success! Thanks to everyone who came out to see Ronnie’s farm and hear about our plan to bring consumers back to the farmer of their clothing and everyone in-between.

Check out this video by the NC farm bureau to see a bit of footage of the tour; we have our own video on its way!

THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED
TS Designs is looking for a full-time sales rep for custom print t-shirts to expand its customer-base. The position will be mostly in-house, with occasional travel.
Requirements:
• At least 4 years sales experience
• Experience with a Green organization
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize work with minimal supervision
• Ability to structure customer desires within the framework [...]

TS Designs is proud to help sponsor Vote for Land 2009, a $3000 grant program put together by our friends over at Great Outdoor Provisions to aid in the protection of the lands, water, and wildlife of North Carolina.

This year’s winner is the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust. Coastal Land Trust works with the state and other organizations to permanently protect Masonboro Island, the largest undisturbed barrier island along the southern part of North Carolina’s coast and host to a vast array of wildlife.

Wes Morgan of Rolling Hills Gin was kind enough to send us some early photos of the Cotton of the Carolinas Harvest ‘09 up-and-coming crop. The photos were taken at Ronnie Burleson’s (Wes’ uncle) farm over in Richfield, NC.

According to Wes, so far this year’s crop is right on track. Now we just need a hot damp summer, which in North Carolina is a pretty good bet!

Great Outdoor Provisions, a Raleigh-based outdoor clothing and equipment retailer and long-time sustainability partner of TS Designs, is now offering Cotton of the Carolinas t-shirts in all of their retail outlets. To see GOP’s own blog post about this exciting new offering, click here.

If you’re in the area, drop by one of Great Outdoor’s several NC locations and pick up a 100% local t-shirt today!

On March 24th, TSD was honored by Apparel Magazine as one of five Sustainability All-Stars at its Tech Conference West in Irvine, CA. The winners were chosen based upon having taken significant steps toward incorporating sustainable best practices in their businesses.

TSD won this honor alongside sustainability innovators American Apparel, Greensource, Levi Strauss, and Patagonia.

TS Designs is looking for a fulltime operations coordinator

Responsibilities:

• Providing support to salespeople and customers for active orders including quoting orders, advising scheduled deliveries, and process limitations
• Acting as liaison between sales and operations to ensure art, print, and dye schedules are in sync and address customer deadlines
• Occasional order entry & paperwork organization
• Occasional weekend travel to trade shows to support sales efforts

Requirements:

• A four-year degree
• Knowledge of and experience with general PC applications including Microsoft Office 2007
• Type 40+ wpm
• Good organizational skills and attention to detail
• Ability to multi-task

Send résumé to Eric Henry at eric@tsdesigns.com

Below are some comparisons of standard plastisol ink contents compared to TSD water-based ink contents. As an obligatory disclaimer, this information is to the best of my knowledge based on what I researched in early 2009.

It’s important to know that not all water-based inks are environmentally friendly and not all plastisol inks are terribly detrimental to the environment. If you’re not printing with TSD, make sure to investigate and verify the composition of your printer’s inks in order to make an enlightened decision. Make sure to get full ink content disclosure from your printer!

There are four basic components of a screenprinting ink:

Pigment – the color. Pigments can either be powders or liquids. Pigments, as opposed to dyes, are not water-soluble.

• Plastisol and some water-based inks often contain heavy metals in order to make them heavier and more opaque or to increase the light- and wash-fastness of the print. Certain Azo-based pigments contain structures that are suspected to cause health problems.
• TSD pigments contain only trace heavy metals by design (less than 100ppm, the same as drinking water), but maintain good light- and wash-fastness because of the printing methods used.

Carrier – the vessel for delivering the pigment to the shirt

• Plastisol inks use a solvent, typically petroleum-based with high VOCs (volatile organic compounds), as a carrier to dissolve the pigment and the binder.
• Our inks use potable water as a carrier, which suspends the pigment in the mixture rather than dissolving it.

Thickener – keeps the ink from bleeding out onto the shirt after being printed

• Plastisol inks typically use a synthetic, petroleum-based plastic polymer as a thickener. The most common thickener for plastisol inks is PVC (poly vinyl chloride), which contains phthalates and other chemical additives that can leech out over time.
• TSD inks use a cellulose-based thickener; in other words, made from wood. It is completely biodegradable.

Binder – binds the pigment to the fiber

• PVC is the standard binder for plastisol inks. The thickener and binder are often similar PVC chemistries.
• TSD inks use a synthetic acrylic binder. While it is not rapidly biodegradable, it contains no vinyl structures or functional groups (e.g. chlorine or fluorine), and is entirely inert (thus non-toxic). Elmer’s Glue® is another example of an acrylic binder, one that is chemically almost identical to our binder.

TS Designs is looking for a fulltime press loader.

Responsibilities:
• Setting up a press for production
• Loading t-shirts onto screenprinting press pallets
• Coordinating a 3-person press team

Requirements:
• Can handle repeated rapid movement
• Good hand-eye coordination
• Detail-oriented

Preferred, but not required:
• Prior screenprinting experience

If interested, contact Shannon Clark at 336.229.6426 x242 or shannon@tsdesigns.com.

Envision Smart Green Episode 1 Featurette: TS Designs from Envision Smart Green on Vimeo