I rarely write bad reviews. I am a big fan of small business, and I figure everyone has a bad day, why commit it to the internet when they do. I worked with DE in advance for what I hoped could be a great review, but it isn't going to work out that way. This is a bit long, mostly because I want you to realize I am not some Karen that gives out poor reviews for no good reason. I also hope that you and DE might learn something positive from the review. I want to start off by calling out Courtney for being a great person to work with. I feel like if I had been able to work out a solution to the deficiencies with her, this review would be better than its' going to be. I added a star to the review just because of her. I just started my own company. I've owned and managed others in my 35 year career, and having embroidered hats and shirts has always been something I enjoyed. Embroidery lasts longer than screen printing, and looks classy. I found DE via the web and their reviews were good, so I stopped by to talk to them. Courtney met me at the counter and we discussed whether they were OK with me supplying the soft goods and what format they needed the artwork in. A couple of weeks later I had accumulated both and dropped them off. When I dropped them off, Courtney and I looked at the artwork on their computer and adjusted the thread colors to match their equipment. She mentioned that my logo had a large stitch count, which to me meant that it would be costly to produce. It meant something else to them, apparently. More on that later. She told me that it would be a week and a half to two weeks, which was not a problem. Less than two weeks later they called and said the order was complete. I picked them up yesterday and the looked at the top couple of items, which looked good. Paid and left. When I got home and unboxed the whole order, I found about 1/2 of it was not so good. The sun-rays in our logo did not meet the outside border, especially in the lower right of the logo on many pieces. On the other pieces, it varied from meeting the border to the gap not being enough to bitch about. Not what I would have liked to have, but nothing to write a long, poor review over. The next day I took the order back to them and was told I would have to speak with the manager. OK, not a problem. She informed me that because the artwork had such a high thread count it could not be sewed consistently from piece to piece. She also blamed the artwork, indicating that if I had spent $35 with them to convert the artwork that it would have revealed the border wasn't big enough. She also indicated that different hats, unstructured especially, are hard to work with. I am not disputing any of these things. Where our discussion became uncomfortable is when I pointed out that while I brought the artwork, they reviewed it on their computer before accepting it. I get it, that sometimes you don't know something is going to not go well until you try it, so I am even willing to grant them dispensation on that. But when I mentioned that they should have stopped when the first one went bad, the manager asked me to leave. I was being calm, I wasn't argumentative, made no threats, and used no bad language. Literally all they had to do was call me and tell me that the artwork was not right or too difficult and offer solutions or simply state they can not handle this level of detail. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I would have totally spent another $35 to have them digitize the artwork if that would have prevented this. They have a big sign that says they take no responsibility if you bring your own soft goods, and I get it. Some material shreds under the machine, others pucker. And if this had been the issue, I wouldn't be writing this review. Fact is, about half this order is inferior quality, and the other half is OK. It all might have been great if they had told me to have their digitizer do the artwork. After the first just OK piece I would have made that call to my customer to suggest we re-digitize the artwork. I did ask for them to credit me for the half of the order that is inferior. Not for all of the goods that were ruined, but just half of what I paid them. The manager just pointed to the sign and said there was nothing she could do for me. It's disappointing as I was going to have them make me a few signs and a banner if this had gone well. In conclusion, I'm not saying don't do business with Digital Expressions. I am strongly suggesting that you have them digitize your artwork and supply the soft goods. From my experience I can't tell if they are capable of doing great work, but I think it is likely as not that they can. They do need to learn to communicate before things become unrecoverable. read more