About

Hi, my name is Lou Robin. I am known on the Apparel Decorators Forum and the Tee Shirt Forum as badalou.. I know funny name. My grandson started calling me bada when he started recognizing me and talking.. Well the name stuck.. I added both together to come up with badalou..

What is important here is how I decided to build this web site. What makes it different and how do I know so much.. lets take the last part first.. I don't know a lot but the knowledge that I have comes from teaching myself the basics of this business. Add that to what I learned in many years in business management as I was in retail and restaurant management for over 35 years in one way or another. I developed skills in training employees which I knew would help them do a better job. I use my videos on YouTube to try to show you how to do things that I do www.youtube.com/badalou and this and other websites including the NEW www.appareldecoratorsforum.com and to try to help others get an understanding of how things work or don't work and passing this on so others don't make some of the costly mistakes I made.

How I started was crazy. After retiring I spent a few years trying to find something to do that would keep me busy and keep me from going nuts. When you spend that many years in business it  is not easy to just stop. I won't tell you the things I tried. But this business for me started when my daughter was going to have a birthday and I wanted to give her something with a picture of her son, my grandson on it. So I bought a tote bag from a local store and I bought some transfer paper and made this little book bag with Zach's picture.. My daughter loved it, my wife loved it so I made one for her. Them my other daughter wanted a shirt with a picture of her cat on it. So I made a shirt for her. Now, I did this with an iron. What did I know of heat presses? Nothing.. zip.. nada.. Well it was getting late in the year and I thought that I would try something. I was selling a few things on eBay so I found some cute pictures and placed them on a tote bag and sold them as knitting bags. Then I found some teacher stuff and nurses stuff and placed them on bags.. Well in about 6 weeks I sold about 50 bags.. All the same bag, just different themes. I bought a small press. That was my first mistake. I also continued to buy transfer paper from local office supply. Buying retail paper made the endeavor costly. so I went looking.. I found suppliers and started learning.. eventually I bought a bigger press and my business started to grow. I found this to be fun and filled that void in my life.. I know,  why did I not take up golfing?. It just was not me.  As I wanted to learn more I found the t-shirt forum.. I think I was about member 1500. Well there were questions I found I could answer from having done a lot already.. That was 5 years ago. In August 2006 I was rewarded with a special prize called the MHM (Most Helpful Member) I found it to be quite an honor. I was the first ever to receive it.

At this point I also need to have some assistance in what I was doing so I developed a tool called the TEE SQUARE IT a transfer alignment tool. I am happy to say I have been selling these all over the world. I never dreamed at my age that I would be doing what I do. I also just added other products tohelp the garment decorator. All can be found at www.heatpressessentials.com New Garment Decorator Forum www.appareldecoratorsforum.com

Now in reviewing all the forums a lot of what is going on is jumping from one subject to another. People tend to start a new thread instead of following older ones where the information may have already been answered because they don't do searches. An example is "Can someone tell me where to buy a heat press?" So I decided to try to place as much information in one place to make it easier to get the answer. We will be adding to each section as this site grows. I hope to extend this to A FAQ section. But it will be kept under the topic. All in all I hope the  tbiz101.com and Apparel Decorators Forum helps you and gives you information you find useful and if it does, please let me know. Thank you.

Lou Robin

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