The textiles industry is one of the biggest in the entire world, and it’s responsible for making the world’s clothes and personal accessories, bedding, and linens. After all, everyone needs some clothes to wear, from everyday clothes to formal wear to military or work uniforms, and the United States in particular is the world’s single largest consumer and producer of clothes alike. In fact, the average American consumer today buys twice as many clothes today as they did just 20 years ago, and the typical American woman owns one outfit for every day of the month, much more than the average nine outfits in 1930. Clothing today comes in a dazzling variety of colors, fabrics, accent marks or features, printed visuals or logos, and much more. Clothing may b e a warm jacket or hoodie, an evening gown, a pair of designer jeans with sequins, a baseball cap, a polo shirt, and much more.

Some clothes are a plain, solid color, and the owner might want to customize them a bit. Many Americans make use of heat press transfer machines, or custom transfers, to add new graphics onto shirts, jackets, or even hats, and custom transfers can be found in specialized textile shops across the United States. Many of these customers may also want, aide from custom transfers, the expertise of a tailor who can modify clothing with expert hands. The industry of personalizing and modifying clothes is a robust one, and custom transfers are a part of that.

Clothing Today

This is a big industry, as explained above. As of 2016, the American apparel market was worth $315 billion or so, and projections show that it may climb to $385 billion by the year 2025. A lot of clothing is bought in person at department stores, which often use sales and discounts to attract customers. But clothes sell well online, too, as part of the e-commerce industry. Many clothes sell well online, from ordinary clothing to kids’ clothes to expensive designer cloths or formal wear. In August 2017, for example, women’s apparel was the #1 best selling item category online. In particular, organic cotton has proven itself popular, and yearly sales of organic, cotton-made textiles is nearly $5 billion. Finally, this huge industry supports not only many jobs for producing these clothes or working in department stores, but many skilled workers are employed, too. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that nearly 7,880 tailors, dress makes, and custom sewers are working across the United States today, doing work not so easily replaced with automation. Clothes are made for people, and the handiwork of these skilled employees may delight many customers.

Customize Some Clothing

Many clothes have printed graphics, buttons, sequins, lace, and more to make them decorative, but others may be plain and consumers will want to add some flair to them. A t-shirt, for example, is a prime candidate for having a custom graphic put onto it, and this is almost as easily said as done. Custom transfers, or heat presses, are simple machines that can use heat and pressure between two plates (hence the name) to permanently fuse graphics onto fabric, such as on a shirt. Many of these custom transfers are meant for shirts, but some may be engineered to work on hats instead.

These heat presses may be found at many custom clothing shops across the United States, and a customer there may either buy a shirt to have a logo printed on, or bring a shirt. Either way, the store associates and the customer may put the graphic logo onto the fabric, place everything between the plates, and close them. Then, once the settings are adjusted just right, the machine activates and uses simple heat and pressure to fuse the graphic onto the shirt. This doesn’t take much time, and doesn’t even require any adhesives or glue either. If the customer hasn’t done this before, a store associate can help them out; after all, using the wrong settings might burn the shirt.

On a final note, some customers like to have monograms sewn onto a formal piece of clothing, such as a suit jacket or even a silk handkerchief. A monogram is the person’s initials sewn onto the clothes for style and identification.