Decoration Diaries: How Overture Promotions Pulled Off a Tricky Branded Mask Order

Overture Promotions, Waukegan, Ill., launched 19 years ago with three employees, but already had a vision to build in-house services in order to gain supply chain control. No. 19 on Promo Marketing’s 2020 Top Distributors list, Overture Promotions now totes a 200,000 square foot headquarters/distribution center that includes embroidery and screen printing equipment. While the distributor continues to outsource heat transfer and direct-to-garment projects, its internal capacity allows it to embroider more than 1,000 pieces and screen print 25,000 pieces each day.

“In-house decoration services help us reduce costs and turnaround time while improving accuracy,” Rolando Puck, production manager at Overture Promotions, said. “They have also allowed us to more dynamically include our clients in the decoration process, ensuring the end-result transcends the request.”

Read on as Puck tells us how Overture Promotions’ in-house capabilities allowed the company to quickly produce a face mask order in less than a week—a feat not possible without internal decorating—for a local law firm at the onset of the pandemic. But that task didn’t come without a minor setback when the screen printers had to figure out how to keep the masks from moving on the automatic presses.

One of the masks Overture Promotions produced for Chicago Law Partners. | Credit: Overture Promotions

The client’s need: Our local client, Chicago Law Partners, was seeking branded masks to include in an employee appreciation kit to be distributed to employees working from home during the pandemic. The task was to brand a comfortable, reusable cotton mask with a one-color, screen-printed logo.

The execution: With a turnaround time of less than one week to distribution and a backlog at the vendor, all imprinting was completed by Overture’s in-house screen-printing team. We were able to meet the tight deadline, including testing several masks before determining the most effective method of printing, so that the end-result exceeded our client’s expectations.

The obstacles: In addition to the time restrictions that our internal screen-printing team was able to navigate flawlessly, there was the additional difficulty in printing on a mask with multi-layer construction on an auto-press. As a result, the Overture team tested the process until the desired result was elegantly achieved.

The outcome & advice: As is a running theme with our internal screen-printing team, Chicago Law Partners paid their sincerest compliments and admiration for the expectation-exceeding results. We are always confident in the team’s unparalleled knowledge in regards to tackling any difficult or complex screen-printing project. The client was thrilled and optimistic about future promotional product orders with Overture.

For details on how to participate in a future edition of Decoration Diaries and share your apparel decoration project success, email Amanda Cole at acole@napco.com. Click here to read more Decoration Diaries, or click here to download "The Promo Distributor's Guide to Apparel Decoration," a free resource from Promo Marketing.