Embroidered Christmas Stockings - $9.95

Decorations go up right after Thanksgiving in most households, so the time is now to get brand new stockings.

Have you ever longed for custom embroidered stockings, but were waiting for the right time and the right price? You know... the kind of Christmas stockings that you see in the designer catalogs that you get each month. Now is the right time!

RockSports is offering personalized stockings for $9.95. Bring in your stocking in before December 15th and for $9.95 we will put your name on it. Pick the font and the thread color that will work best for your stocking. We will do the rest!

This offer is not available online and you must visit one of our locations to receive the discount.

Online Designer - Design your own t-shirt at rocksports.net

At RockSports, our goal is to give our customers the best experience when shopping for decorated apparel. One of the best ways we have improved our screen printing and embroidery services is by improving our technology. Last year we launched our Online Apparel Stores, which gives our customers the ability to sell their products online easily. This year we are unveiling our new online t-shirt designer.

Have you ever wanted to design a custom t-shirt and order it online? RockSports brings you the convenience of ordering custom t-shirts online coupled with the dependability of professional, local screen printing.

Step 1: Select A Category - Do you want to digitally print your order or use custom screen printing?


Step 2: Choose Your Garment - 50/50 vs 100% cotton, or do you want 4.5oz ringspun?

Step 3: Choose Your Garment Color - Did you know that there are over 25 color choices for 100% cotton t-shirts?

Step 4: Design Your Shirt - Upload a design, use art from our library, or add text.


Step 5: Add Names and Numbers - Yes, you can put all your teams names and numbers on the back!


Step 6: Checkout or Save for a Quote - Order online and be done, or save the design and have a RockSports professional discuss your design with you. When you are ready to place your order you can log back in to pick up where you left off.


Think you are ready to give it a try? Use this coupon code - RSNOV09! and receive 15% off your first online order of custom designed tees.

More Shows. More Specials!

We have sold out of popular designs at many of the conferences. Have no fear! Order online and save! Use the following coupon - RSNOVS09 - when you order $50 or more and receive 25% off and free freight! Expires 12/31/09

We are going to be on the road quite a bit in November. Here is where we will be:

This Week:
CAST - Cruising the Currents of Science
LAHPERD - Louisiana Physical Education Recreation and Dance

November 12-21:
ASAHPERD - Alabama State Association for Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance
NCAAHPERD - North Carolina Alliance for Athletics Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance
IAHPERD - Illinois Association for Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance

December 2-4:
TAHPERD - Texas Association for Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance

We hope to see you there!

To go straight to Shopping - PE t-shirts and Science T-shirts.

Louisiana Physical Education Convention

RockSports will be in Louisiana starting tomorrow for the annual LAHPERD convention. For all those that read the RockSports blog, or happen to be attending the conference, we have discounts for you:

• 25% off any order - PELA09
• $50 purchase receives 25% off and free shipping - PELA09S

Simply find your favorite PE t-shirt from RockSports and in the final checkout screen you will have an opportunity to place the code. When you place the code in the appropriate field you will then see your discounted price.

Colorado Physical Education Discount

New discount for all of our physical education teachers in Colorado. Thank you for visiting our booth at the COAHPERD Convention.

25% off any order - COPE09
$50 or more purchase receives 25% off and free shipping - COPE09S

RockSports teams up with RRISD

RockSports is proud to sponsor RRISD employees that are participating in the Komen Austin Race for the Cure.

Join the fight by making a donation.

Read about RockSports:
Impact News
RRISD

Oklahoma PE Convention

RockSports is on its way to Norman, Oklahoma. No, not to check out a football game. We are going to the OAHPERD convention!

OAHPERD stands for Oklahoma Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

Why are we going there? To show off our line of physical education t-shirts.

If you happen to be going to the show and see something you like, then use coupon code - PEOK09 - and get an additional 25% off your online order.

Want to order in bulk? Order $50.00 or more of PE t-shirt products using code - PEOK09S - and get 25% off and free shipping.

Click on the following links to go directly to your t-shirt category: PE tees or all shirts category.

Offer is good until 1/1/10.

Embroidery vs. Screen Printing

When ordering small quantities is it better to go with screen printing, digital printing, or embroidery?

This is a questions that we often come across for new customers, especially when they are ordering for their business. The answer is - it all depends.

Screen Printing is not always cheaper than embroidery.

Example of when embroidery is the cheaper option
- When there is a low quantity and their are several colors in the design.

Let's say 5,000 stitches (which means it is a fairly simple design).
20 sports shirts with four colors in your logo.

Screen printing price - Around $17.50 per sports shirt.
Embroidery price (set-up fee included) - $15.50 per sports shirt.

- When you want to personalize a garment.

Let's say you want to put your name on your shirt.

Screen printing price - minimum of 12 per name - around $2.00 per print.
Embroidery price (set-up fee included) - $7.50.

When price is not the only determining factor, here are a few qualifiers that will help direct you toward the best decorated apparel option:

1. What color garments will you be using?
If it is any color other than white, then you can eliminate digital printing.

2. How many apparel products will you be ordering?
If it is less than 12 than you can eliminate screen printing.

3. What apparel products do you want your logo on?
RockSports does not screen print on hats. If you want to get caps, you're better off going with embroidery.

4. The all too obvious - Which do you prefer?

Simple Recommendations:
For casual garments, such as: t-shirts, shorts, long sleeve t-shirts, and hoodies, I would recommend screen printing.

For corporate apparel, such as caps, sports shirts / polo's, woven's & oxfords, I would recommend embroidery. Also, for personalized gifts, such as baby clothes, blankets, towels and pillows.

For gifts, such as: birthday shirts, baby onesies, I would recommend digital printing (sometimes embroidery for onesies).

Embroidery Pros:

• Embroidery looks professional.
• The price for embroidery is not effected by the number of colors in your logo.
• Once your logo is digitized there are no set-up charges and no minimum orders.
• Embroidery is often perceived as more formal.

Embroidery Cons:

• There is a one time set-up fee for digitizing your logo, which is a minimum of $35.
• Embroidered thread will never look as detailed as a screen printed design.
• Background fills and large, detailed artwork require large stitch counts, which means a higher price.

Screen Printing Pros:

• Most of the time it is cheaper for large quantities.
• The artwork will be a higher resolution and higher quality than embroidery.

Screen Printing Cons:

• Minimum of 12 garments is required.
• Colorful artwork requires more resources and will be more expensive.

Digital Printing Pros:

• No minimum orders
• No price change with the number of colors in the design.
• Turn around times are quicker than screen printing or embroidery.
  

Digital Printing Cons:

• Print colors are not as vibrant as screen printing
• There are only a few colors that you can print on and get quality color match (White shirts are the best).
• Dark shirts are not an option

Personalized Jerseys and Personalized T-shirts

Football season is here! That means it is time to brush off the Terry Tate videos and bust out your favorite team jerseys. At RockSports we love football; especially, our local Central Texas high school football teams. RockSports wants to get you into the game by offering you custom football jerseys and custom football t-shirt jerseys with your favorite players name and number.

Personalized football jerseys come with a two color 2" mascot name, a single color 2" name on the back of the jersey, and 10" numbers on the front and back. The price for the custom football jersey is $40.00.



Personalized t-shirts are similar to the jerseys, but offer a 2" single color mascot name, a single color 2" name on the back of the t-shirt, and 8" number on the front and back. The price of the custom t-shirt is $25.00.




Volleyball T-shirts Jerseys are available too!

RockSports Garage Sale 2.0

At the end of June RockSports kicked off its first ever garage sale at the NW location. We had incredible feedback, and we decided to do it again. But this time we are going to make our sale even better! Along with incredibly discounted prices on blank apparel, we will also be giving away free RockSports t-shirts, hats, and koozies. Come by Friday or Saturday and pick out some trendy blank apparel for yourself or for screen printing/embroidery - Perfect for back to school shoppers!

When - August 14th and 15th
Where - RockSports NW
(Our RockSports NW location offers screen printing and embroidery services to Northwest Austin, Cedar Park and Leander, TX.)

RockSports provides custom screen printing and embroidery for small businesses, schools, and sports teams in central Texas. In 2008 RockSports printed over 250,000 garments. From time to time RockSports will stock popular garment styles and occasionally, after ordering our blank apparel, our customers will change there minds, which leads to excess blank apparel inventory. Over the past few years we have accumulated quite a bit of extra inventory. This month we decided to do our small part in stimulating the local economy by providing the MOTHER OF ALL GARAGE SALES!

All blank apparel in our store will be sold at $2.00 per piece. We will have thousands of garments and hundreds of styles to choose from. Our RockSports NW location will be lined with boxes, organized by size, for customers to rummage through and find the perfect items. Our suggestion is to come early!

5 ways to become RockSports Favorite Customer

At RockSports we love and appreciate all of our customers. Our goal is to put out the best looking products, to show off our capabilities, and to make our customers happy. Just like any business relationship there are customers that are easy to work with and there are those that ask you to run a marathon in snowstorm (not our blog readers :)). Most of the time the more difficult customers do not even know that they are putting us through the ringer. I thought it would be great to offer our caring customers a breakdown on RockSports love languages.

Keys to becoming a happy RockSports customer:

1. Know what you want - At RockSports we are pretty good at knowing the latest trends, but unfortunately we cannot read minds. Having a general idea on artwork and garment styles can save you and us time and money. Additionally, when you make last minute changes on garment styles or artwork it costs us money. Imagine you ordering a cheeseburger at a local restaurant and then right before the waiter brings out your food you tell him you would rather have a ceaser salad. The restaurant is probably not going to charge you for it, even though it cost them money to meet your request and the food, though cooked, is not re-sellable. Which probably means the staff will get to eat it. We do not like eating t-shirts.

2. Do not wait until the last minute - Our normal turn-around-time is five to seven business days from the time you place your order. This is not to be confused with five to seven business days from the initial conversation. Only when we have artwork approval, counts, pricing agreement, and the verbal or written agreement to move forward, does the five to seven business day clock actually start ticking.

4. Review your order & artwork with vigor - We've found it is better if our customers take a couple hours and get several sets of eyes to look at their custom artwork. Then, create and email us a list of the changes that need to be made. It is better to have everything in writing and it saves quite a bit of time in the back and forth communication to have all of the changes done at once.

5. Be ready to pay when you pick up - That's a given, right? You would be surprised to hear, "oh, I left my wallet in the car"; or, "I haven't collected the money yet"; or "My purchase order is not ready yet". We keep our prices low, and want to keep them low, to provide the best value for our customers. The only way we can continue doing that is if people are ready to pay at the time of delivery.

If you have read this far, take 10% off your next order by bringing in a printed copy of this blog.

RockSports Garage Sale

RockSports provides custom screen printing and embroidery for small businesses, schools, and sports teams in central Texas. In 2008 RockSports printed over 250,000 garments. From time to time RockSports will stock popular garment styles and occasionally, after ordering our blank apparel, our customers will change there minds, which leads to excess blank apparel inventory. Over the past few years we have accumulated quite a bit of extra inventory. This month we decided to do our small part in stimulating the local economy by providing the MOTHER OF ALL GARAGE SALES!

When - June 26 & 27
Where - RockSports NW
(Our RockSports NW location offers screen printing and embroidery services to Cedar Park and Leander, TX.)

All blank apparel in our store will be sold at $2.00. We will have thousands of garments and hundreds of styles to choose from. Our RockSports NW location will be lined with boxes, organized by size, for customers to rummage through and find the perfect items. Our suggestion is to come early!

Here are a few examples of the blank apparel items that will be available.

Assorted Ladies Apparel

Girls Camo Tees

French Terry Drawstring bags

Outside stitched girls v-neck t-shirt

Assorted girls shorts

Blank Sports Shirts

Pigment Died Shirts

Assorted Tank Tops and much, MUCH more...

James and Amy

This Friday RockSports is celebrating a momentous occasion. Our very own James Payton is getting married this weekend! James is an essential part of the family business that is RockSports. He has worked as a sales rep for the past five years and is a core contributor to RockSports' success.

If we are slow to answer the phones on Friday, it is because most of us will be getting ready to celebrate!


Now that Amy is joining the family we are all curious to find out whether Amy will be joining the RockSports staff :) ...

Grand Opening of RockSports Northwest Austin on May 21st

RockSports Northwest is having its grand opening on May 21st from 10:00am to 9:00pm. We invite everyone out to see our brand new showroom! Join us on Thursday and help us reach our goal of giving away 1,000 RockSports items.

To celebrate our grand opening RockSports will be giving away free swag:

• Free T-shirt: Available in a variety of colors (some American Apparel)
  
• 25 free tickets to the May 21st Round Rock Express Baseball game
• Free RockSports Polos
• Free RockSports Caps
• Free Koozies
• Free Bumper Stickers

RockSports Northwest (map)
11301 Lakeline Blvd STE 105
Austin, Texas 78717

RockSports live on Fox 7 Good Day Austin

Cheaptweet.com and RockSports on Fox 7's Good Day Austin

RockSports will be hosting a team from Good Day Austin, part of Fox 7 news, at the Round Rock location for a live feed as part of Wednesday's broadcast.

How it all came about...

Hayes Davis and Jenn Deering-Davis, founders of CheapTweet, were asked to be featured on Good Day Austin in response to the incredible success of CheapTweet. As part of the segment, Good Day Austin requested to speak with a local small business and consumer that uses CheapTweet on a regular basis. Cheaptweet tweeted that they were looking for volunteers and RockSports jumped on the opportunity.

The Opportunity:

Last week Good Day Austin's reporter came out to the new RockSports location and interviewed John Payton about how RockSports uses CheapTweet (curious you can see some of our older Cheaptweet tweets).

You can view that segment and the live feed on Wednesday morning, sometime between 6:30am and 9:30am.

Fire Sale!

Recently a fire fighter friend of RockSports ordered some T-shirts for his fire station. In passing, he suggested that we visit the other fire stations in town to offer our artwork, screen printing, and embroidery services. What a great idea! In fact, why not try to personally visit every fire station in Central Texas. Why not do it in one week. Why not hit all of Austin in a 24 hour period. The challenge was set.

In a 24 hour period Stephen Pugh of RockSports will attempt to visit every fire station in Austin (44) to talk briefly about our services and to offer our special fire fighter pricing. Monday is the big day. Do you think he will make it?

Follow along on his progress by following us on twitter. He will be marking his progress along the way. We wish you the best of luck Stephen!

map of all the City of Austin fire stations

RockSports Northwest - Completion

After 15 trips to Home Depot, four trips to Ikea, two bruised shins, and one smashed finger, RockSports Northwest construction phase is complete. We are still getting new samples in everyday as we continue to fill out our showroom. Our doors are now open and we would love to see you walk through them!

The last few construction projects that we knocked out:
1. Install baseboards.
2. Install display racks.
3. Ikea + 1,000 tiny pieces of hardware + directions + patience.
4. Polish up.









More news to come about our grand opening celebration!

Day 5 - RockSports Northwest is coming together!

Tile comes in and goes down:

Working with the existing floor was a challenge. We had to research and track down the company that made the existing tile. Thankfully we found something that we thought was really close. When it arrived, we were pleased to find out that it matched perfectly. Not only that, but we ordered just the right amount.

Step 1: Remove existing carpet glue :(
Step 2: Sweep and Mop the concrete.
Step 3: Prime the floor - gas masks included.
Step 4: Lay the tile :)

Check out our handy work! Also, don't those walls look nice!

Yes, you are looking at peel and place tiles.

Day 3 & 4 - Let the painting begin!

We sanded down the walls and wiped them clean. The time had come to say goodbye to the incredibly bright blue and red walls. With a couple gallons of primer, we got to work. What color did we decide for the walls??? We decided to save the pictures for our next blog post. Ahhh the suspense!

RockSports Northwest - Day 1 & 2

Day 1 and 2 - Demolition days.

What Stephen and I lack in construction experience we make up with sheer determination and overall good attitudes. You'll notice in the pictures below that we got quite a bit done in 48 hours. We moved the wall and counter tops back to the far side of the room, which was quite a task for two people. We also removed the bottom chair rail (the big white streak in between the red and blue paint. A big thanks to Chris White, who helped us patch up the walls after our tour of destruction. We also ripped up the carpet and cleared the random room from the wall and the floor. All in all it was a very productive two days.

- John Payton

Spike and RockSports team up to help find a cure for MS

Richard Tapia has been a good friend of RockSports for some time. This weekend he will try to do what no mascot has done before, pedal more than 160 miles fully out-fitted as part of the 2009 BP MS 150. All of us at RockSports wish you the best of luck in your race!

Here is the latest update from Richard before the big race:

Everyone in Austin, be sure to tune in tonight (4-16-09) to Fox 7 in Austin at 9:00 for a story that is being done on Spike riding in the MS 150. Also, tune in to KVUE (CBS) after that at 10:00 for another similar story on Spike and the MS 150. The media in Austin has been great about this and we’re really starting to gain some steam to bring awareness and raising funds for this event.

Some of you have expressed an interest in meeting Spike and my spot rider (my cousin, J.R. Thomas) at the finish line on Sunday. If you’d like to do so, the finish line on Sunday will be at the Bob Bullock History Museum located on Congress between MLK and 18^th St.

Something new that we’re doing is selling Spike bike ride merchandise. Our good friends and t-shirt company, RockSports, have signed on the help us out with the ride and to raise some money. I realize this is last minute, but you can click on the link below to see the t-shirt, towel and bandanas that are available for purchase. The money for each item goes to cover the cost associated with producing the item, while the rest will go to the National MS Society.

http://store.rocksportsoutlet.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=RRXP&Store_Code=2008&Category_Code=RREXPRESS

There is a tradition on the MS 150 where riders tie bandanas to their bikes in honor of someone who is affected by MS. If you know someone that have been affected and would like Spike to ride in their honor, you can purchase a bandana before Saturday and I will write their name on it and tie it to Spike’s bike. After the race is done, Spike will autograph it and send it back to you to have as a keepsake.

If you’d like to buy a t-shirt to wear at the finish like to cheer on Spike, J.R. and the rest of the riders in the race, RockSports will be doing a run of t-shirts that will be ready in time for Sunday. In order to get your shirt in time, you need to order by 10:00 AM tomorrow morning. You can choose to pick it up at RockSports in Round Rock (Address at www.rocksports.net), the Express offices (Address below in my signature) or my fiancé, Nicole, will be at the finish line and you can get it from her there. She’ll most likely be the only red head wearing a Spike shirt! You can also e-mail me back if you need to make special arrangement. Again, a good bit of this money is going back to the charity.

Also, if you haven’t donated, it’s not too late! We can still accept donations on the fundraising site through May 19. To donate, go to http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/TXHBikeEvents?px=6239177&pg=personal&fr_id=10222

Thanks again for everyone’s support. This has been a lot of work, but an absolute blast to be a part of and I’m extremely excited about the ride this weekend. Wish me and J.R. luck!

RockSports Northwest - Construction Phase

As part of introducing our new location, RockSports Northwest, we thought we would give all of our readers a day by day recap of our construction efforts.

Day 1: Get the keys, take pictures and get ready for day 2!

The biggest criteria, in moving into a second RockSports, was location. We need a great location for our current customers like Westwood High School, Cedar Park High School, Leander ISD, Texas Stars, etc and for new customers. Parkline Shopping center is very easy to get to from 620 and 183. We decided to take an existing space so that we could move in quickly and set up our new showroom.

Here are some of the before pictures:

That's us, Next to the QuiznosSub, where you see the blue letters.

The view from the front door.

The view from behind the counter display and wall.

John Payton stands in the front of the "AS IS" storefront.