ASPA Member Story - The Story of Sylvania Custom Apparel, Sylvania, Ohio.

Sylvania Custom Apparel

7060 Sylvania Ave.
Sylvania, OH 43560
Telephone: (419) 885-1167
Website: www.sylvaniacustomapparel.com
Services: Screen Printer, Custom T-Shirts, Contract Screen Printer, Graphic Artist,
Custom Embroidery, Embroidery Digitizing
About: We are a decorating business with both screen printing and embroidering capabilities.  Both divisions do custom work as well as contract work.  We work closely with customers on design and apparel selections to make sure that what they purchase will look good for the long run.  We offer the ability to set up custom team stores for online sales for our high school and youth sports customers.

We are primarily an athletic management corporation located in Northwest Ohio.  Due to the Pro Shop we run as a part of our operations the owners of both our screen printer and embroiderer independently approached us regarding the acquisitions of their companies, so we were faced with either finding someone to replace them as our service provider or to try to learn the industries. We opted to learn the industries while keeping their staffs in place. It's been rocky at times but interesting as well.

Seven years ago when we acquired the screen printing company we  inherited two Riley Hopkins manual presses and added one M&R Diamondback automatic in the screen printing operations.  Our goal is to increase production rates while maintaining quality product.  We recently upgraded our graphics computer to an Apple and use both AI and Corel software (due to the backgrounds of our previous printing managers), as well as purchasing an Epson vinyl cutter for custom names primarily.

Our entry into embroidery occurred in the fall of 2018 with a 6 head SWF embroidery machine. Since November, we have purchased a second 6 head machine and a single head unit for personalizations and sew outs.  The process of adding embroidery to our customer base and product lines has been much smoother, so maybe we learned some lessons along the way.

- Tom Cline

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