As the year progresses, awards and personalization members face no shortage of challenges: supply chain delays, inflation, labor strains and more. In this climate, making the most of the equipment you already have isn’t just helpful—it’s vital. If costs rise elsewhere, after all, greater in-house efficiency can help pick up the slack.

Sublimation has been a revolutionary development for imprinting personalized products. Dye-sublimation printing originated in the 1950s, but has only become widely used in recent years as computers became standard equipment and technology costs decreased.

Among the many products JDS offers that are perfect for personalization, cutting boards have been an amazing option for customers to engrave and personalize for their own clients. The downside of many engravable products is that they usually are made only for that purpose and not for specific printing processes to add multiple colors—and although there are many options out there for this purpose, most of them are not cheap.

I’ve often wondered how it happens. How does a person or business become known for specializing in a particular product or service? Does the idea come from within, or the consumer? Is it random, or does it occur by a more organic nature? And the most important question: Can a decent living be made through a niche profession? As always, I think the answers are many and the road to a niche is a winding one.

Where’s the beef? It’s in this very beefy project that, among other things, will detail a process for creating table tents with call numbers on them like those used by many fast-food locations.

Large franchise operations order these by the millions at a super cheap price, but smaller, local establishments often require quantities that can be profitable for laser owners, UV printers, sublimators, and other smaller-run personalization professionals.

There are so many options for gift giving using sublimation. Although it soon will be the holiday season, with the versatility and ease of sublimation, you can encourage customers to give personalized gifts for any occasion. After all, what better to bring to a housewarming party then a personalized color-themed gift box?

I tried out this impressive dye-sub trend with gorgeous results. Luckily, I took photos along the way to ensure you could try it, too! With this step-by-step guide to dye sublimation, all you need is your imagination.

When the Awards and Personalization Association heard about a new sublimation product that debuted in October, we wanted to know more. JDS Industries is the distributor for SubTHAT!, so we spoke with Sublimation Specialist Colin VanLint to find out more about the new product—and to see how the process works.

In the first half of this article in the October issue of Insights, I explained that customers want to be able to give you the words or art they need and expect you to “make it look cool.”

Do you have a laser and sublimation equipment? With inspiration and creativity, there is no limit to what you can create using this substrate. The question to ask is whether you can sell the product you’re creating. I’ll get to that. Here are five ideas.