Passage of Warp Yarn in a Loom

101 Power Phrases, Promotion Headers and Teasers

One of the things I have learned from being practical is the ‘alternative’. There are many problems can be solved, many needs be addressed and many dollars can be save by using ‘alternatives’.
It same is true with making print design for you business promotion; there are many alternative words and phrases which you can used besides from the word promotion itself. Instead of using, ‘Back to School Promotion’ or ‘Summer 2012 Promotion’ you can use other headlines that are more emphatic, attention grabbing and not worn out.
I have here a collection of power phrases, headers and teasers which you can use in promoting you products or services.

1. 100% Chance of Savings Better Buck Buys
2. A Sale that will Really Pick you Up
3. All the Best!
4. Bargain Blast
5. Bargain Blitz
6. Bargain Bonanza
7. Bargain Headquarters
8. Barrel of Bargains
9. Best Buy
10. Best Deals
11. Best Selling
12. Best Value
13. Big Bargains
14. Bilk Savings for Healthy Appetites
15. Budget-crunching Hits
16. Buy 1 Free 1
17. Case Closed. We’ve Got the Best Buys in Town
18. Cool Reductions
19. Discover the treasure that lies hidden in your lifestyle.
20. Dividend Days
21. Inflation Unmasked with These Halloween Markdowns
22. Early Bird Specials
23. Enter the Saving Zone
24. Exclusive at (place)
25. Fall Fiesta Values
26. Feed The Family for Less
27. Fill you cart with savings
28. Free 50g in every pack
29. Free Spree
30. Garden Fresh Produce
31. Garden fresh vegetables
32. Get extra 20% discount on your second purchase
33. Get More Green Back
34. Get off to good start with quality (product).
35. Gifts Galore
36. Great store-wide Savings
37. Great Values
38. Guaranteed Low Price
39. Harvest of Values
40. Harvest Time Sale
41. Haunting Halloween Savings
42. High Quality, Low Prices
43. Hot Days, Cool Prices
44. Hot Value
45. Hundreds of Specials
46. Hunt no further, the values are here.
47. Hurry while stock lasts.
48. If the rain won’t go away, Why not shop today?
49. Improve your outlook.
50. This is addressed to you!
51. It’s Half Time
52. It’s New
53. January Jamboree Savings Spree
54. Just Reduced!
55. Last Minute
56. Limited Stocks at Limited Time
57. Mad Moonlight Markdown
58. Make it a Bright Holiday Season
59. Many Happy Returns
60. Nail Down A Great Rate
61. New Arrival
62. Now featuring these great deals!
63. One Day Only
64. Plunge into the coolest prices this summer!
65. Price Melt Down
66. Prices Slashed
67. Prime Picks
68. Purchase With Purchase
69. Red Hot Offers
70. Rock-bottom Prices
71. July 4 Price Explosion
72. Save in Every Aisle
73. Save Now
74. Say No to High Prices
75. Shop on Our Lucky Friday the 13th Saving
76. Shower Yourself with Savings
77. Sizzling Sale
78. Smashing Savings
79. Soaking Up Summer Fun
80. Super Sale
81. Super Values and Selections
82. Supper Summer Savings
83. Take A walk Down Our Aisles and Save
84. Take Advantage of These Prices Now
85. The fastest way to get raid your dandruff.
86. The first class (service)
87. The Great Rebate
88. The secret of young-looking women
89. This Week’s Special!
90. Tight-budget Pleasers
91. Top Value
92. Treat Yourself to a Great Holiday
93. Unbeatable Price
94. Wall-to-Wall Values
95. We Go an Extra Mile for You.
96. We predict Unlimited Values
97. We’re Out to Shatter the Competition
98. Your Best Choice for Value
99. Suitable Choices
100. Rush In Today
101. See How Low We can Go!

Thank you for reading.

Sandblasting

Sandblasting is a technique to give the “worn-out-look” to jeans. Many brands sourcing denim from Bangladesh have declared that they no longer use sandblasting to fade their products. The ban had been adopted by scores of brands in the last year after the process was proved to cause fatal lung diseases, including silicosis. However our new report reveals that regardless of whether a brand has ‘banned’ sandblasting or not, sandblasting - both manual and mechanical – is still commonly used.

Our research clearly shows that not only manual but also mechanical sandblasting poses a deadly risk to Bangladeshi garment workers.

One factory owner interviewed stated that it was impossible to produce some of the designs requested without the use of sandblasting. Indeed workers said they are told to switch to using sandblasting, even if a buyer has said it is not be used, in order to meet production deadlines. Others stated that production was often carried out at night to avoid detection by inspectors and auditors.

Workers interviewed suffered from constant coughing and breathing difficulties. They were using old machinery, and were forced to work up to twelve hours a day in dusty, poorly ventilated rooms, without adequate health and safety protection. Most interviewed had colleagues who had fallen ill. The report highlights the lack of medical care provided to workers and the difficulties they face in getting adequate diagnosis and treatment.

The Clean Clothes Campaign and partners are now calling on brands to take more action to end all forms of sandblasting. This includes ceasing production in any unit which carries out either manual or mechanical sandblasting production, making changes to the design of the jeans and working with local trade unions and workers' rights organisations to ensure the ban is being respected.

CCC is also calling on national governments to ban the process and for the EU to introduce an import ban on sandblasted products. The CCC also wants to see the garment industry included in the World Health Organisation/International Labour Organisation work on the elimination of silicosis and to develop a national programme in Bangladesh.

The report was released at a press conference in Geneva on 29th March. Just prior to the release CCC held an experts meeting on the continued use of sandblasting in denim production and the need to develop proper models of compensation workers affected or potentially affected by silicosis. The ILO was present at the meeting as were several CCC partners and former sandblasting workers from Turkey and Bangladesh

77 Visual Merchandising Guidelines and Techniques [PDF]

Five basic tips on merchandising and conversion

Merchandising a website takes many forms and is often considered separate to conversion management, but they are in fact deeply integrated.
If you're selling a physical product which requires delivery then merchandising activities could evolve around the category, product, range, accessories and indeed delivery itself.
If you're merchandising a less-tangible product like a service or piece of software, you could merchandise a need, benefits, the service, related products as well as payment options.
Having been asked a few months back to create a presentation on basic merchandising tips I felt compelled to share them with fellow marketers.

Price, Place, Promotion, Product.

The tried and tested 'marketing mix' plays an important role in online merchandising. However, knowing what to do with this and how to translate this into an effective trade plan will differentiate your offering from your competitors.
Knowing how to complement this will help you stand out, and conversion management will provide the edge you need.

Before I start out, this isn’t intended to be a nitty gritty in-depth guide to online trading, but instead a view of merchandising and conversion management basics I’ve found useful over the years.

1. Perceptive propositioning

Between your product and marketing is the proposition. Selling ice to Eskimos is all well and good to prove you're a great salesperson, but in reality it'll not generate brand trust or when reality hits and they discover the product’s not right for them.
Getting the proposition right isn't as easy as it sounds. The first touch point is usually through marketing; online, in-store, TV, direct mail to name but a few channels.
Understanding that your online merchandising journey doesn’t necessarily start online, let alone start on your website, is a significant first step to getting the proposition right.
The message must carry itself consistently and clearly across the customer journey. And even then there are multiple messages being carried by your marketing yet one website to deliver this, not 10 sales assistants in your store.
Consider the selling of a hotel stay. Are you selling a place to sleep or an experience? Is it functional or aspirational? How does your website make the customer feel? How do they want to feel? Does this carry across your marketing message through to the website?
A low-cost budget hotel sells on price and functionality. The hotel room the customer buys into is the end goal. Conversely the high-end hotel is selling an experience. Sleeping in the room is only part of the experience.
The proposition in both cases is what you’re ultimately selling, not the product. It’s rarely as clear-cut as this though. Brands serve many types of customer and so getting the proposition right in the way you merchandise your products or services requires a deep understanding of your customer and product affinities.
Getting into the mindset of your customer will also help you get into the forefront of your customer’s mind.

2. Pricing and promoting effectively

Cornered a niche? Playing in a competitive field? High-end? Budget brand? No matter where you are, getting the price and promotion mix right is critical.
Consider a subscription site. If you overcharge, you may lose business to a competitor. Undercharge and you may have reduced your revenue potential, yet possibly claim more market share. Are you growing a long-term business or short-term profit?
This is as much about your business and trading objectives as much as the products and target consumers. If you’re a high margin retailer, then you may have more bandwidth with price and subsequently offer more price based promotions.
This certainly has its drawbacks, especially when you discount so often that customers refuse to pay full price knowing that if they hold out they’ll grab a bargain. If not, a competitor will jump in. Do you act first? Or wait for a competitor to gain the early advantage.
For a low margin product or business, reducing price becomes the last resort and promotions pivot around added extras. Loyalty schemes often drive repeat business through additional rewards for ongoing loyalty, deferring the hit on margin. Or perhaps you focus on high profile loss leaders, creating a perception of price competitiveness.
If you’re in a competitive niche, with a limited set of suppliers you’ll need a unique selling point to stand out or strong brand advocacy to attract and retain customers.
Another point of differentiation is effectively packaging your price. From experience in travel, this has certainly come out as a key concern for customers over the years in not knowing or understanding the full price of a product until they pull out their credit card.
Pricing effectively takes on many forms yet one of the most common, overlooked aspects for e-retailers is the final price. I won’t attempt to try and explore the nuances and annoyances of pricing and checkout abandonment - there's already much written about this.
The key finding I’d share from over the years is that no matter how good or bad your user experience, in a price sensitive economy, customers will more often than not persevere.
This is certainly not a good excuse to skip over a good online experience but optimising your site without getting these two P’s right may well leave you spinning your wheels. Get the other two P’s right in Product and Placement and you’re well on your way.
My tip would be to ensure you remain competitive within your market as much as decreasing attrition.

3. Context is king

Here’s the end goal of online trading: to sell the right product to the right customer at the right time at maximum profitability.
Merchandising within the right context is as much about the position within the conversion funnel. Taking a potential customer from prospect to customer to advocate is a key fundamental of conversion management.
Merchandising is concerned with getting the right message or product to the customer, presenting the product in the right way and at the right time.
Merchandising should pivot around the customer's needs, but can also be based on what the customer doesn’t think they need. They don’t need the latest touch screen gadget but they may like one, or may not even know they'd be interested until you show it to them.
Merchandising doesn’t directly concern itself with the user experience, yet this is the foundation of good merchandising. Matching a customer’s needs, whether apparent or not, to your product.
As digital marketers we realise consumers shop in many different ways. Some dive straight into a product, others will take a more general browse.
Merchandising context can take into account many aspects of the user journey. Here are a few examples:

• First visit? Second?
• Prospect? Existing customer?
• Time of day – important if you’re targeting at-home mums during the day.
• Demographics – this could include affluence or life-stage.
• Geographic location – think of local targeting.
• Source of visit - such as search engine, email, direct, landing page.

I’ve known businesses that employ a role to simply merchandise the company’s various homepages and nothing else, such is the importance placed on the 'shop window', or teams which literally update offers and prices throughout the day based on demand and availability.
Consumers are savvy creatures. I certainly am. I should be, after all, I know the tricks of the trade right? Yet I'm still duped into buying things online that I don’t need or didn’t intend to buy because it was surfaced at just the right time.
That’s clever contextual merchandising. And I love it.

4. Lubricate your path to purchase with a good user experience

A good user experience lubricates your purchase funnel, merchandising provides momentum and direction. This is where the lines of traditional merchandising and conversion rate optimisation can blend into an awesome user experience.
You could argue that Amazon doesn’t offer a great user experience yet it somehow drives phenomenal sales. I’d disagree. The experience is efficient. The one-click add-to-basket is addictively good as a consumer.
It’s actually far easier to purchase on Amazon than many of the leading e-commerce sites. Yes, there’s a lot of clutter and as a usability practitioner it goes against many recommendations, yet the impressive sales figures suggest otherwise.
Have you visited Jacob Nielsen’s web usability website? I’ve been an avid follower for over a decade yet the design has barely changed. His principles have endured. However, I'd argue Jacob is not trading his website.
If the user experience reduces friction, strong merchandising guides them through your site, motivating and inspiring customers. Many websites suffer from fragmentation when it comes to merchandising.
It is extremely difficult to fully merchandise and tailor a website for each consumer. But you can get pretty close. Which leads me onto the next point…

5. Choose the right tools, but moreover, the right people

The range of tools available for your website right now is quite mind-blowing thinking back a decade. Just take a look at this small, but useful list:

• Automated merchandising. Let a mixture of automated rules and commercial input decide on which piece of content or product to surface based on various aspects of the user and their experience within your site.
• Click to chat. Perhaps the next best thing to a sales assistance if used in the right way. It can provide the edge your website needs to improve your customer experience especially when your operators are trained to aid and close sales and not just field general queries.
• Multivariate testing. I’m a huge advocate of testing. It’s so easy to test your site as long as you've got the right team creating those tests. I’ve been asked a number of times what happens when there’s nothing left to test. I’ve yet to encounter that scenario.
• Online customer surveys. Not only will it provide candid insight into what your customers truly think of your site, you’ll learn so much more about how to improve your offering.
• Real-time user tracking. Again another underused tool, is replaying user sessions. Find out what customers didn’t do, which is just as insightful as what they did.
• Search and faceted navigation. A good search experience goes beyond the tool you’ve chosen, it’s also about the active management of your search experience. Customers expect to find what they want with your search box and narrow down their options. If not, you may well be losing 20% of your revenue.A small merchandising tip: look out for your search keywords that return zero results; you may well find new product ranges which customers think you stock that you don’t… perhaps you should?
  
• Targeting and segmentation. The ability to split your traffic into pre-defined blocks of attributes and behaviour and target content to them comes close to offering a tailored web experience. Segmentation by definition groups clusters of customers and is not one to one but does provide an edge over spray and pray approaches to merchandising. For example, a simple male/female segment split based on logged-in users gives an instant merchandising opportunity to effectively double the merchandising space on your homepage.
• User reviews and testimonials. Let your advocates sell your product for you. User reviews do a great job in surfacing low quality products that are not fit for purpose. If average reviews are constantly low, will you persist in selling it? Or feed back to your buying team to enhance it? Or push back on your supplier?
• Videos, 360s and visual merchandising. With broadband speeds increasing over time, video and other bandwidth intensive media are becoming less of an issue for consumers and can add an extra dimension to your toolset. In-depth apparel zooms and detailed swatches have certainly provided consumers with a more realistic view of what they’re buying, coming closer than ever to physically having the product in front of you.
• Web analytics. This still remains the central source of information for many businesses yet some of the examples above demonstrate that data sources are far more abundant. Is data the new oil? I certainly think it will last longer…

With so much access to data and insights, websites continue to struggle with conversion. Whilst you can debate the exact split, for me it falls back to the 80:20 rule of resourcing,  your emphasis should certainly be on hiring the right number and expertise of people to operate those tools.
I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had about companies struggling to create insight due to a lack of resource. It can be difficult to justify costs but if you’re trading a medium to large website you’ll soon hit barriers in keeping the user experience together; you can’t put a price on experience and knowledge to turn insights into revenue.
Finally I’ll end with what has been the theme for the past few years. The days of silos are in the past. Online and offline marketing is continuing to diverge.
If you run a bricks to clicks business, glean insights from your stores. If you run a sales call centre alongside your website, listen to calls, understand why they’re calling. Complement the experience across your channels and indeed devices.

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7978-10-basic-merchandising-tips-to-increase-sales

Bangladesh: Labour rights activist tortured and killed

Aminul Islam, a Bangladeshi labor rights activist and former apparel worker was tortured and murdered last week in Dhaka. His body was dumped outside of the capital city and was found by local police last Thursday. According to the police report, Aminul Islam's body bore signs of brutal torture. It is most likely that Aminul was murdered because of his labour rights work.

Aminul Islam worked for the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). He was last seen on Wednesday evening 4 April, 2012, when he left for a meeting with a worker who had called him seeking assistance. Earlier that evening, after having observed a police van parked outside, Aminul and a colleague had closed the local BCWS office fearing harassment or arrest. Aminul's family and friends searched for him until Saturday, when his wife recognised a photograph of his body, published in a local newspaper.

Repression against trade unionists and labour rights activists in Bangladesh is a serious problem, and worker protests have been met with violence many times over the last years. In particular, the wage protests of 2010 resulted in hundreds of arrests of workers and trade unionists, including Aminul Islam. In June 2010 Aminul had been detained by officials of the National Intelligence Service (NSI). According to Aminul, he was subjected to severe and repeated beatings, which his captors said would stop only if he agreed to give false testimony against his colleagues at BCWS. Dozens of labour leaders are still facing charges of instigating riots and related activities; charges regarded as baseless by international labour and human rights organisations.

CCC is calling for the Bangladeshi authorities to launch an immediate and impartial investigation into the killing and for them to work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice. We are also calling on supporters worldwide, including EU missions and other organisations to generate similar pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities in order to stop the culture of impunity that has led to this tragic murder. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Aminul’s family and friends at this time.

What is AQL (Acceptable Quality Level)

The “AQL tables” are statistical tools at the disposal of buyers (for product inspections). They help determine two key elements:

• How many samples should be inspected?
• Where is the limit between acceptability and refusal, when it comes to defective products?

The need for an objective measurement of quality
In virtually every production batch, there will be defective products. It is true even after the manufacturer has checked each individual product and has repaired the defective ones.
Thus, in a supplier/buyer relationship, the supplier cannot be expected to deliver defect-free goods. However, the buyer wants to control the quality of purchased goods, since he does not want too many defects. But what does “too many” mean?
How to set the limit between acceptability and refusal in a way that can be agreed upon and measured?

Definition and application of ‘AQL’

The limit, as described above, is called the ‘AQL’. It stands for ‘Acceptance Quality Limit’, and is defined as the “quality level that is the worst tolerable” (ISO 2859 standard).
For example: “I want no more than 1.5% defective items in the whole order quantity” means the AQL is 1.5%.
In practice, three types of defects are distinguished. For most consumer goods, the limits are:

• 0% for critical defects (totally unacceptable: a user might get harmed, or regulations are not respected).
• 2.5% for major defects (these products would usually not be considered acceptable by the end user).
• 4.0% for minor defects (there is some departure from specifications, but most users would not mind it).

These proportions vary in function of the product and its market. Components used in building an airplane are subject to much lower AQL limits.

Getting familiar with the AQL tables

Before using the AQL tables, you should decide on three parameters:

• The ‘lot size’. If you ordered different products, the quantity of each product is a lot size, and separate inspections should be carried out for each lot. If you ordered only one product, the lot size is your total order quantity.
• The inspection level. Different inspection levels will command different number of samples to inspect. In this article, we will stick to the so-called “level II”, under “normal severity”.
• The AQL level appropriate for your market. If your customers accept very few defects, you might want to set a lower AQL for both major and minor defects.

There are basically two tables. The first one tells you which ‘code letter’ to use. Then, the code letter will give you the sample size and the maximum numbers of defects that can be accepted.
First table: sample size code letters

How to read this table? It is very easy.
If you follow my example, I assume your ‘lot size’ is comprised between 3,201pcs and 10,000pcs, and that your inspection level is ‘II’. Consequently, the code letter is “L”.

Second table: single sampling plans for level II inspection (normal severity)

How to read this table?
Your code letter is “L”, so you will have to draw 200pcs randomly from the total lot size.
Besides, I assume you have set your AQL at 2.5% for major defects and 4.0% for minor defects. Therefore, here are the limits: the products are accepted if NO MORE than 10 major defects AND NO MORE than 14 minor defects are found.
For example, if you find 15 major defects and 12 minor defects, the products are refused. If you find 3 major defects and 7 minor defects, they are accepted.
Note: in quality inspections, the number of defects is only one of the criteria. It is sometimes called “quality”, or “quality findings”. The other criteria are usually on the inspector’s checklist, which typically includes:

• Packaging conformity (barcodes, inner packing, cartons, shipping marks…).
• Product conformity (aspect, workmanship…). If all the products are in red color instead of orange, there is no need to count each sample as a defect. It makes more sense to refuse for product conformity.

Specific tests defined in the inspection protocol (they might not be performed on all samples).

How To Control Shrinkage And Twisting In Fabric

What Causes Shrinkage and Twisting?

During spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing and the various finishing processes, yarns and cloth are under a continuous tension that causes Shrinkage And Twisting in the fabric. Yarns and/or fabrics are not fixed materials. They consist of separate, stretchable fibers which submit to the tension. In other words, fabrics do stretch in length and width. The tension within the yarns, which is caused by
This stretching, can be eliminated when the friction within the fabric is reduced. This reduction in friction occurs during laundering where both water and soap act as a lubricant. The lubricant, along with the mechanical action of the washer, helps the fibers relax and contract to their original length before the elongation takes place. This means that the fabric shrinks and recaptures its original equilibrium.

Controlled Comprehensive Shrinkage and Twisting Process:

The internationally well-known and most important shrinking process today dates back more than 70 years. Though the correct expression for this process is Con-trolled Compressive Shrinkage, the average person knows it as SANFORIZED. The process is a purely mechanical treatment without any addition of chemicals. The word SANFORIZED is derived from the first name of the inventor of the compressive shrinkage process, Mr. Sanford L. Cluett. The Sanforized Company, a division of Cluett Peabody & Co., Inc., New York, USA, is sole owner of the registered trademarks Sanforized, Sanfor and Sanforizado. The Sanforized label means dimensional stability for
garments made up of Sanforized labeled fabrics. The purpose of the process is to shrink fabrics in such a way that textiles made up of these fabrics do not shrink during washing.
The amount of potential wash shrinkage must be determined prior to shrinking. A full width sample is wash-tested according to the test method. After the lengthwise and widthwise shrinkage has been deter-mined, the compressive shrinkage machine can be adjusted accordingly.

The shrinkage and Twisting Control Process Can be Described by the Schematic Below:

Fabric (F) passes through the skyer (S) or other moisten-ing device and is moistened by water and/or steam. This will lubricate the fibers and promote shrinkability within the fabric. Normally, a fabric must be moistened in such a way that every single thread achieves a moisture content of approximately 15%. This allows compression of the fabric with very little resistance. When the fabric passes through the clip expander (C), we obtain the required width. The clip expander also trans-ports the fabric to the most important part of the machine: the rubber belt unit (indicated by arrows in above figure). In the close-up of fig. 1, we see the endless rubber belt (R). By squeezing rubber belt (R)
between pressure roll (P) and rubber belt cylinder (RB), we obtain an elastical stretching of the rubber belt surface. The more we squeeze the rubber belt, the more the surface is stretched. This point of squeezing is known as the pressure zone, or the nip point. Fabric (F) is now fed into the pressure zone. When leaving the pressure zone, the rubber belt recovers itself and the surface returns to its original length carrying the fabric with it. The effect of this action is a shorting of the warp yarn which packs the filling yarns closer together. At this actual moment, shrinkage occurs. After compaction within the rubber belt unit, the fabric enters the dryer (D). Here the fibers are locked in their shrunken state by removing the moisture from the fabric. After the compressive shrinkage process is completed, another sample of the fabric is taken. This sample is also wash-tested. The final result of this test must meet the Sanforized Standard in length and width before it may carry the Sanforized label. All Sanforized Licensees are contractually obligated to follow the required test method and meet the standards set forth by The Sanforized Company.

Shrinkage and Twisting Standards for Woven and Knit Fabrics

Standards for Shrinkage of Sanforized Labeled Woven Fabrics: Woven fabrics shall not either shrink or gain in excess of 1% in either the warpwise or the weftwise direction when subjected to the wash-test method of the United States Federal specification number CCC-T-191A or ISO 675.
Standards for Shrinkage of Sanfor-Knit: Labeled Knit Fabrics Knit fabrics shall not either shrink or gain in excess of 5% in either the longitudinal or the cross direction when subjected to the wash-test AATCC 135-1987 or ISO 6330 (60 degree, tumble dry).

http://www.garmentsmerchandiser.info/shrinkage-and-twisting/