Tote Bag Contest: Winning Designs

September 27, 2010 by 2 Comments

Apart from the quarterly contests, we frequently have other design contests for employees. (That’s how our company logo was developed!) The most recent contest was for tote bag artwork. The idea was to present the message of eco-friendliness while staying true to our company brand: apt because the winning design is being used on reusable cloth tote bags that are meant to replace paper or plastic ones.

We gave away three cash prizes, but only one lucky winner–the one whose design the judges liked best–got to see her designs on the bags!

This design won third prize. Read more of this post

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Annual Strategy Meeting in Pune, India

September 22, 2010 by 1 Comment

Our Senior Business Team has just returned from a great trip to India.  The purpose for us coming together from three different countries and many U.S. states was to participate in the Affinity Express annual strategy meeting.  Every September, we hold a series of sessions in which we share plans and opportunities and come to agreement about our direction for the next year and beyond.  In addition to segment leaders, the heads of production, finance, marketing, human resources and technology all play an important role.

Affinity Express Senior Management

The Senior Business Team and Board Members

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What Customers Say: ASI Member on Working with Affinity Express

September 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

David Quas, President, Excell Print & Promotions Inc.

David Quas, President, Excell Print & Promotions Inc.

I want to share some glowing feedback we recently received from a customer.

David Quas, President, Excell Print & Promotions says:

You guys are amazing. Fast turnaround, artwork comes out perfect. I could not be happier with your service. I will make sure I spread the word about you guys. Keep up the good work!

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Designs of the Quarter: Email Design, Image Editing and Menu Design

September 15, 2010 by 8 Comments

Designs of the Quarter is a regular contest that celebrates the best work within our company in various categories of products. Last quarter’s categories were HTML emails, image editing, and menus. Take a look at the winning designs.

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Affinity Express Completes Ten Years

September 13, 2010 by 3 Comments

That’s right. Affinity Express was incorporated in 2000, which makes this our tenth anniversary year. There’s no doubt about it, this is an incredibly exciting time to be at Affinity Express.  

Embroidery Digitizing - Affinity Express Pune Office

Affinity Express Pune Office: in Embroidery

Let me take you down memory lane.  

Take off Your Shoes  

Way back in 2000, Affinity Express had around 125 people. We had one production location in an apartment complex in a residential suburb of Pune: a less-than-ideal spot for high-volume, fast production work. To avoid using unreliable landlines, a radio modem was installed on top of the building. Power outages were frequent, so the company bought a genset. To appease other occupants of the building for the noise of the genset, we provided reliable power to the building. Plus, all the employees took off their shoes to go up and down the stairs during shift changes.  

However, things improved quickly. Later in the year, the company took space at our current location in Pune (yes, that lovely building in the image on the right that our designers have digitized) and grew to 237 employees. Over time we have gone from 400 to 1,400 to 14,000 square feet.  

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Embroidery Digitizing: Tips on Creating Designs with Letters

September 7, 2010 by 2 Comments

If you work in embroidery, you know that embroidering intricate or small patterns is tough. Our digitizing team deals with a lot of text-heavy designs, and these can be very tricky to embroider. So I’ve put together some tips on digitizing text from our experts.  This information should help you with your own embroidery projects for customers and will give you some knowledge for working with vendors like Affinity Express when requesting digitizing files.
 
Size of Letters
 
We follow some rules of thumb for sizes:
  1. In general, capital letters should be at least 6.4 mm* high.
  2. If your design has both capital and small letters (that is, regular sentence or title case), the minimum height should be 5 mm.
  3. If you are using all caps, which are easier to read, you can have the letters smaller, though no smaller than 3.8 mm.
  4. The minimum column width (width of each bar in a letter) should be 0.8 mm.

In this design, the capital N’s are too narrow to punch.

Embroidery Digitizing Sample: Thin Font - Before

Before

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Get to Know: Mariel Go, Quality Lead for Ad Services

September 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

Affinity Express Quality Lead Mariel Go

Mariel Go

Mariel has been with Affinity Express since September 2007, which means she just completed three years here! Yay, Mariel!

Mariel serves as the quality lead for the Advertising Services Quality Group, a pool consisting of production assistants (PAs) supporting multiple newspaper properties. Her day begins when she gets updates on any quality issues, new client protocols, feedback or meetings. Then she meets with the PAs for team discussions or does hands-on quality analysis by getting involved in various teams’ ad production activities. She provides feedback to operations directors, managers, team leaders and PAs, as well as to upper management. Essentially, Mariel is a communications hub for Affinity Express and clients.

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Price Versus Value in Embroidery Digitizing and Artwork

September 1, 2010 by 1 Comment

One of the most common questions prospects ask me is about our pricing. During tough economic times, price is extremely important, and prospects frequently seek to compare us with extremely low-cost providers. This makes me question:  is price all that matters?

Let me clarify: Affinity Express prices for embroidery digitizing and vector artwork are very favorable. In fact, when we had our customer survey earlier this year, 40% respondents rated us 5 and 31% rated us 4 on price (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best). Many customers also commented that we provide great quality compared to the cost, and that our prices are one of the aspects they like best about us.

On the other hand, our prices aren’t the lowest either. And to prospects who are only considering price - who haven’t tried our services and don’t have experience of our quality and reliability to judge us by– this can be a problem.

But in a way, I understand where these prospects are coming from. It’s easy to compare price among vendors: it’s a number. Evaluating and comparing other indicators of value is much more difficult.

So, instead of insisting that your vendor reduce prices, here is a list of recommended questions you can ask them. Read more of this post

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