| THE STONE STENCILS STORY - FROM THE 'KING OF BLING' By Craig Mertens, President of Digital Art Solutions. USA. A few years ago, one of my co-workers began experimenting with our laser engraver making rhinestone heat transfers. It was a pretty simple process, you engrave holes into a sheet of wood, dump in some rhinestones, lift them off with transfer tape and you had a rhinestone heat transfer. We made some trendy “Las Vegas” style shirts with martini glasses and frivolous sayings. I thought it was cool, but we stored it away as a nothing more than a neat idea. Since our company develops art content for the apparel decoration industry, we are always researching the latest apparel decoration trends. While conducting research for our upcoming Design Studio collection, we all began noticing the popularity of rhinestone apparel. Many major fashion lines were incorporating rhinestones into their decoration processes. Some of these garments were selling on T-shirts for over $100. We are generally the busiest booth at any trade show we attend. Our product line is very specialized and we have built a huge customer base over the last 17 years in business. All of a sudden, we were not the busiest booth anymore. The companies selling stock rhinestone heat transfers were three deep at their booths. What if we could create a system that would allow our clients to create custom rhinestone heat transfers? We had seen systems using rotary engravers making stencils using the same method we had done with our laser. I couldn’t help but think, why would anyone want to use a rotary engraver to make stencils? They are expensive, have small engraving areas, slow, messy, are prone to mechanical problems and very complicated to operate. What if we could figure out a way to make rhinestone heat transfer stencils with a vinyl cutter? Easier said than done. This began a year long process of research and development. At first, most of our staff thought I was crazy. As development continued, people gradually began to catch the vision. We began interviewing key clients about the opportunity and the consensus was that this was going to be a big deal and they couldn’t wait to purchase a system. All good ideas start with input from clients and we put this project on the development schedule and rolled up our sleeves. THE CHALLENGES We faced several big challenges creating our system. - We had to have user-friendly software to make the patterns.
- We had to have stock designs and fonts that made the process easier.
- We had to have a material that we could cut with a standard vinyl cutter to create a heat transfer stencil.
- We had to have a system that was easy to use and not difficult to train and support.
The first challenge was creating a material that we could cut into a stencil with a vinyl cutter. After trying many different materials, we soon realized that we would have to get material manufactured to our specifications if this was going to work. After extensive testing, we were able to dial in the right combination of properties to create Stone Stencil Material. We knew that our SmartCutter line of cutters would cut it, but could other cutters cut precise circles in this material? In fact, we were all a bit surprised that we could cut the material on many low-end cutters. Not everyone has high-end cutter like a SmartCutter Pro that can cutter perfect circles in a very thick and dense material. We had developed a material that worked on most cutters. Sweet! NAILING DOWN THE EQUIPMENT Recently at a trade show, several competitors that sell rotary engravers for producing rhinestone stencils approached me. They had watched the crowd around our booth, and when we had a break in action, they began asking me questions about reselling our system. Their observation was that our system was much easier and more effective than the current rotary engraving system solution they were selling from a major equipment supplier. This was a great compliment, but like everyone else, they only focused on the equipment. We have always focused on solutions. This is why we do not open our system up to resellers. Without the human touch of our support and training, we cannot provide a solution that insures the success of our clients. Owners of engraving systems often tell us “I wish I had know about your system before….”. The really uncomfortable situation is when someone has just laid out $40,000 on a rhinestone setting machine and they see our system at a trade show. We keep a Kleenex box around for these situations. Seriously, you can produce the same transfers with a Stone Stencils system using a cutter as you can with an expensive and complicated setting machine. In fact, a Stone Stencil System is faster than many setting machines on simple designs. A cutter based solution has many advantages over engravers and setting machines. Since we had been selling cutters for years, we already had the perfect equipment line up with our SmartCutter series of vinyl cutters. The ability to go back to our existing cutter clients and offer them a system was an exciting opportunity. DEVELOPING A SOFTWARE SOLUTION The next challenge was the software. Having taught CorelDRAW for years, I first thought that we would be able to create patterns in CorelDRAW. Wrong! This was a huge hassle. We tried all kinds of techniques, even consulting the experts at Corel Corporation. Creating a circle pattern with the Artistic Media tool stunk. The circles would always be the same spacing. Using the Interactive Blend tool to blend circles along a path worked a bit better, but was still a huge hassle as you had to create every line segment separately and you still had to do a manual adjustment of each pattern. Finally, we figured out that the easiest way to produce rhinestone patterns in CorelDRAW was to copy circles along a path manually. What a drag, this was not going to fly. Fortunately, we had been selling our CoCUT Pro and SmartCut pro cutting programs for years. We had thousands of happy clients that were cutting every day with these two programs. We knew that SmartCut Pro had the ideal feature set for outputting rhinestone patterns to our material, but it lacked the features to easily create rhinestone patterns. This is a very tricky programming problem. A software needs to anchor circles at every intersection point on a vector outline. The software has to be able to determine where the intersection points are, and blend circles between each anchor point. The problem is that the distance between each anchor point is often different. This means that the software needed to change the spacing for every line segment. This was a giant math problem for our programmers. Add fill patterns to the mix, and we had a bit of a development nightmare on our hands. Fortunately, we had developed some tool sets for the routing and milling industries that gave us a huge head start. The net result was the best rhinestone pattern design features on the market with our latest version of SmartCut Pro (version 2.0). The fact that we had thousands of existing users of CoCUT Pro and SmartCut Pro was an added benefit as these clients would have an upgrade path. We are really proud of SmartCut Pro 2.0 and the development continues to make the software even better. We have big plans for adding and improving outline and fill patterns as well as adding specialized features for improving workflow and decreasing design time. This been a very challenging development cycle, but results have been well worth the effort. PRODUCING STOCK PATTERNS AND FONTS The last challenge was stock rhinestone patterns and fonts. We have been producing production-ready clip art and templates for over 17 years. You would have thought that this would have been a slam dunk for us. Not that fast. Not every vector outline is suitable for a rhinestone pattern. You have to have the right outlines to start, and you have to balance the stone counts to make the transfer practical. It is much easier to create great big patterns with high stone counts. Making smaller patterns with reasonable stone counts is quite a challenge. Fortunately, we received some technical assistance from several clients that were already in the rhinestone business. With a little trial and error, one of our lead graphic designers, rapidly picked up the technique and became the resident rhinestone design expert at DAS. We storyboarded a terrific art volume of rhinestone patterns and fonts, and Stone Stencils Volume 1 was born. We had a vast collection of vector artwork from our various art volumes and so we pulled the most suitable artwork and began production. We figured out a method for creating interactive rhinestone fonts and we quickly figured out that this was going to be a huge benefit to our clients. Clients could just type in some text using one of our rhinestone fonts and a perfect rhinestone pattern would be created, ready to cut. No conversion process. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER All the pieces had come together for our rhinestone system. We already had several stock libraries of graphics that were ideal for custom rhinestone production, including Ready Art Volume 1, Design Studios 1 and 2 and SmartCuts. SmartCuts is a great story as we had first produced this art volume for cutting simple outlines in paper for scrapbooking. It has proved to be an excellent library of simple stock outline for producing custom rhinestone patterns and appliqués. This product has become a client favorite and part of nearly every Stone Stencil package. By combining our art volumes with our popular Smart Designer add-on software for CorelDRAW, we had the ideal system for creating multi-decoration designs that combined rhinestone patterns with other processes including appliqué, embroidery, vinyl heat transfers, sublimation and direct to garment printing. This whole system was coming together. OFFERING A COMPLETE SOLUTION The last thing in the world I ever wanted to do was sell rhinestones. We had looked into selling Swarovski rhinestones. They were very expensive and it looked like there were plenty of sources available. After talking to clients that were already in the business, the consensus was that there were two markets. The Swarovski transfer market was a premium market for bridal parties, boutiques etc… The money was being made selling Korean cut crystal apparel. The Korean stones were much less expensive, and did not erode profit margins like the Swarovski designs. They had a high perceived value, had great margins for our clients and had more “bling for the buck” for consumers. Clients begged us to bring in Korean stones, because quality Korean stones were not readily available. There are a lot of poor quality Korean stones on the market that are not very “blingy” and have a tendency to fall off. Our only solution was to test a variety of stones and import them directly from Korea. We found a great factory in Korea with awesome quality and great adhesion. I would have never guessed that we would be importing Korean rhinestones by the millions. If you walk into our offices, the first thing you see is our receptionist weighing and bagging rhinestone packages. You would think we were drug dealers with all of the scales and baggies. The bottom line is that we wanted to offer a complete solution with hardware, software, artwork and supplies. It was quite a process putting this all together, but this has been a key to the success of our clients. PROVIDING TRAINING AND SUPPORT The last piece of the puzzle was training and support. We have been industry leaders in CorelDRAW and art production training for years. We knew that if we did not produce an easy to follow training guide and interactive videos, our clients were going to struggle. This is why we dedicated so much attention to our Stone Stencils Training and Marketing Guide plus our video tutorials. We have already found out that this has made a huge impact on the initial success of our Stone Stencil System owners. Teaching “what button does what” in a software is the easy part to train. Teaching new clients how to produce, price, sell and market rhinestone apparel is another story. Our family owned the largest apparel decoration company in Arizona prior to founding Digital Art Solutions. We know a little bit about selling and marketing decorated apparel. We poured our expertise into the training materials to give our clients a big jump start in their new rhinestone businesses. THE STONE STENCIL SYSTEM ADVANTAGE Many of our clients had already proven their business model by selling stock rhinestone designs and ordering custom transfers. They did not like the high minimums, high prices, long lead times and lack of control of relying on outside companies to produce their heat transfers. We also know that thousands of our clients already own vinyl cutters. The ability to repurpose an existing machine to turn it into a rhinestone heat transfer system was huge. Few of our clients were willing to invest in a $40,000 rhinestone setting machine, $15,000 laser engraver or $6,000 rotary engraver to test the market. Our cutter based system is relatively inexpensive to get into, is much more versatile than a setting machine or engraver. A cutter based system is much easier to learn, maintain and operate. Producing rhinestone apparel with a cutter is a major advantage of a Stone Stencil System. We have put together a complete solution that can get a client into a profitable business without a huge expense and learning curve. THE ASSET CONCEPT Artwork, + Software + Support + Equipment + Training = Success We believe that we have created the most cost effective, easy to learn and profitable rhinestone apparel solution on the market. Seeing the huge re-orders for rhinestones that flow through our offices is the confirmation that our clients are experiencing massive success. I am very proud of our team for putting together this awesome system. We are not selling parts and pieces, but instead we are providing a business opportunity to help our clients grow their revenues in new markets. We focus on solutions, not just products. The solutions concept has always been the key to the success of Digital Art Solutions. I want to personally thank all of the supporters of this project and especially our loyal clients that inspired us to create this system. It has been a huge endeavor, but the success of our clients makes it all worthwhile. | 
