# Next Level and discharge printing problems



## Unik Ink (Nov 21, 2006)

I wanted to make aware to anyone that prints with discharge inks the nightmare our shop just experienced with Next Level Apparel shirts. One of our contract customers drop shipped Next Level 3600 in black for an order of 172 oversize discharge prints. We printed the neck labels with plastisol then moved to the back shoulder print after all were tagged. The shirts somewhat discharged, but not completely. We have printed this exact color on these exact shirts before, and only a few had this current problem. We tested the print on American Apparel, Gildan, Alstyle, and Pima Apparel, which all worked fine. The customer contacted Next Level, who said that you must specify if the shirts were for discharge printing or not, and they said that these weren't. He reordered the discharge black shirts overnight to us (rush order). We started this time with the shoulder print to test the discharge. It worked fine on all shoulder prints. Our next print was a long vertical back print. The shirts reacted the same way the initial batch of shirts did. Apparently Next Level shirts lose their reactive properties to discharge inks after going through the dryer. Just to be sure, we then took the same shirt and printed a 3rd print on the back as a test print. Again, the print discharged worse than before. We have scrap shirts from other manufacturers that have gone through the dryer 6+ times and still discharge, so this is new to us. To Next Level's credit, they are refunding the customer for all shirts + shipping, but his customer may be canceling the entire order now, since they were for a MMA fight this weekend.


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## corradomatt (Jan 16, 2007)

Wow! That's interesting.....I've never heard of that before. Was there an explanation from Next Level explaining why this might be the case?

When the shirts are run through the dryer do they seem to fade or lose any of their dye color?


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## Unik Ink (Nov 21, 2006)

Hey Matt,
They didn't give an explanation, only said 


> _"Going fwd we are not stating that our shirts
> are discharge so if that’s what you need we won’t be carrying any discharge items."_


The shirts don't fade at all, they just discharge less and less each time the shirt is run through the dryer. The shirts themselves look and feel awesome, but their printability is very poor at best. They certainly lost us this order which was several thousand dollars for us, which in turn lost them our business indefinitely.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> The shirts themselves look and feel awesome, but their printability is very poor at best.


The poor printability was just on the discharge prints though right?

The plastisol screen print on the neck label held up fine?


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## Unik Ink (Nov 21, 2006)

Correct. They haven't been washed yet, but I assume the plastisol print will hold up. It just seems to be an issue with the dye. They said that some are reactive dyed and some aren't, but both batches of shirts that they sent us did the exact same thing after the second trip through the dryer. The first batch was supposedly unreactive, and the second reactive.


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## Dan K (Nov 15, 2006)

Unik Ink said:


> We printed the neck labels with plastisol then moved to the back shoulder print after all were tagged.


Hey Justin. We learned the hard way once too, and now relabel prints are always the last print location. We also print plastisol relabels even if the rest of the shirt is WB.



Unik Ink said:


> The shirts somewhat discharged, but not completely. We have printed this exact color on these exact shirts before, and only a few had this current problem. We tested the print on American Apparel, Gildan, Alstyle, and Pima Apparel, which all worked fine. The customer contacted Next Level, who said that you must specify if the shirts were for discharge printing or not, and they said that these weren't. He reordered the discharge black shirts overnight to us (rush order).


We ran into the same issue with NLA once, only to learn that in their terms they disclose this stuff, and we need to ask for specific garments and/or individual countries or origin to guarantee the will discharge.

I agree it's troublesome, but good of them to refund the first batch.



Unik Ink said:


> We started this time with the shoulder print to test the discharge. It worked fine on all shoulder prints. Our next print was a long vertical back print. The shirts reacted the same way the initial batch of shirts did.


Also, since out debacle with this same issue, we have begun swab testing most garments, the only ones we don't are ones we're in close contact with the manufacturer and we have never had problems with. A finger dab of a charged ink on the inside of the lower waist seam before we start the production run. We're not quite there yet, but in some cases it may be best to do a swab test on each size.

Painful. Sorry you're going through this.


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## m_short (Nov 3, 2009)

In the past I've always made sure to pull in a couple shirts to test my discharge prints on before we ordered everything to make sure that they will work. I can't even tell you how many times we've found red shirts that we're dyed black just because the manufacturer was running low on black stock. That was before the discharge craze so I know that they all have been trying to stay away from that but i never like to be surprised so if I found a problem with the test shirts I always made sure to address hwta lot it was from and made sure I got shirts that would work.


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## Roxster (Jun 25, 2010)

Next level did have an issue with Black but that issue is gone. these guys make the best tee shirts by far!! check out their tri-blend it is insane. i just ran 5k pcs for Dave mathews and they loved it, you can see them in the merch tent. Also, Next level is expoding in growth and you need to have a good inside contact. We did a discharge job 7500 pcs of 3600 black and they are amazing. Dont kill a cool company, they are small and actually make a good shirt.


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