Manual vs. Automatic: Cascade Design’s Leap into ROQ Printing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z_WD_466lY

My name is Mason. This is Sydney. We are in Heber City, Utah. The name of our shop is Cascade Design. Sydney and I had learned early on that we are a good team and we wanted to start a business together.

We didn't know exactly what that was and then we kind of learned about the apparel decorating business and ultimately we just felt like it was something that we could be successful in that we both would enjoy that was needed in our area and something we thought would be fun and has been.

The best piece of advice that I think someone ever gave us, especially in the beginning, was if you're going to buy it, buy the nicest thing because you're going to outgrow anything small. You're going to not love anything that isn't high quality. So, just go for the best. If you're doing it, go all in. And so, we got a six head machine, which is, if you're familiar with embroidery, it's a very nice machine. So, we got that. We did some more research.

We were like, "Yeah, we for sure want to do screen printing." And we kept that piece of advice. If you're gonna do it, do it right. Do it the best.

So, we got some Bazec equipment and pretty soon after we got that, we were like, you know what would be really nice is an automatic and we were at we were just at our house out of our garage at that time and there was no way that this could fit in our little twocar garage. So, we waited. We made sure we were in a good shop where there was space for it where we could, you know, order it and get it in and keep it there.

That's when we really got going on the ROQ train and we've been on it ever since. We knew this is what we were getting. Well, we knew we saw the booth at Long Beach. We went and saw another ROQ machine. We knew if we're doing it, we're going right. We're going green.

We knew or starting to have or were starting to have inklings that we needed to move from manual to automatic for a couple different reasons. I'd say the biggest one was time. Spending so much time in the shop manual printing and the time it would take to be able to just get jobs done. We feared certain jobs because of the time it would take either just because of the number of items or the complexity of the job, how just difficult and timely it would be on the manual press.

So that'd be the first thing. But then that also moves into the second thing is also the certain complexity of jobs. But the I'd say the biggest thing that I've been so excited about having a automatic press is the just the the consistency and the quality that specifically the rock press is going to be able to help us with.

I feel like we had two work days, especially when we were working out of our house cuz we have a toddler. So, you know, we'd work during the day. He'd be out in the garage, out in our embroidery shop, going all day. I'd be trying to entertain our kid, trying to get work done. Our kid would go to bed and it was like the second work day started and he'd be on the shirts. I'd be trying to organize jobs, doing more stuff. So, I feel like, you know, that it was,

"Oh my gosh, this is so much time. This is such an investment of time. There were big drop. We were right across the street from an elementary school and they wanted to use us." Like, "Oh man, we want to be able to do this for them." and not have it take a whole week because then everything else in the line is just waiting. And so I feel like even when we were in our garage, it was pretty early on.

Like if we could get rid of that second workday, then it would really help us. And I think that the automatic is going to help get rid of a workday and a half.

We didn't know a ton about automatic screen printing before buying a press. And I really appreciated the whole ROQ team helping us understand, help understand our business and our clientele and what that clientele hopefully grows into to be able to make sure that we got the right press even though I didn't quite understand the the differences.

So I was really thankful for that. So now that like I'm on the press and I'm starting to see some of these different things um that we paid for basically and I'm so glad that we did. I just feel like the whole pro like everybody just feels very helpful. They want us to succeed. They want us to do well. It's not just like we want to give you this press and then you're on your own and we made our money selling you the press.

They really feel like they take you in, feel kind of a part of the ROQ family, if you will. As far as the training, you're still kind of in the middle of that process, but I've really appreciated it. It's been really good to be on the press, doing jobs, touching, feeling, seeing my own press now for the first time. It's something I'm most excited about.

And this is obviously one of the reasons we got the press is the speed at which we're able to get through jobs, the the consistency of the prints.

I've been pleased at my ability already to be able to run and use the press. That's exciting to me that it already feels user friendly to someone that I feel like kind of struggle with learning. So, go green.