Colorado Timberline B2B Garment Printing

Project Background

Colorado Timberline is a B2B American garment printing service with hundreds of affiliated print shops nationwide.

Back in 2005, growing demand for custom apparel printing jobs had put Colorado Timberline into a corner. Dan Green, the company’s founder and CEO, couldn’t figure out how to handle the large amount of requests the company was receiving. The traditional handling process was long and tedious, and required several steps, including receiving an image by fax, calling the customer back to confirm details, printing samples, and sending them for verification. The absence of a proper order-placing system resulted in order fulfilment errors and low productivity — especially when taking affiliated print shops into account. A challenge was put out to Sibers and we were glad to accept.

Solution

After consulting with the client, we developed a completely customized software platform that allows users to design their own apparel. To meet logistical demands, we also created distribution and warehouse management software that makes same-day delivery possible, even for bulk orders. We developed an online image-on-garment design software and integrated it within Colorado Timberline’s existing website. The software is so simple to use that even users with no graphic design skill can upload files, choose a layout and typography, and design high-quality apparel. A “save and resume” function lets people save their design and finish it later. Various garment types are supported — for example, the system automatically handles serial production of clothes featuring small variations, such as numbers and names on a soccer team’s uniforms.

To cope with order increase, Sibers built a full “web-to-print” system (ERP) consisting of an order processing module (processing, POS-system order support, and order status tracking) and a warehouse management module, as well as shipping and financial subsystems.

Tech highlights

• PHP
• ImageMagick
• Java (Tomcat)
• C++
• Flash
• Action Script
• PureMVC
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• GDlib
• cURL

Results

Colorado Timberline’s facilities are now shipping over a million units per year. Sibers’ platform has helped the company position itself among the custom apparel design field’s top players, turning it into a wholesale print-on-garment enterprise offering inkjet printing, sublimation, laser etching and embroidery. Through the API we developed, hundreds of affiliated print shops can seamlessly connect with Colorado Timberline.