History

Who are we? and what we do?

For the past 30 years, Saginaw Knitting Mills has been proud to provide our customers in Mid-Michigan—and all over the world—with quality products at affordable prices.

Our company began in 1979 as a knitted-apparel business, producing knitted hats, scarves, and other items in Saginaw, Michigan. Quickly establishing our reputation for fast and friendly service, SKM soon expanded beyond knitted goods to include additional clothing-related services like screen printing and embroidery.

As a result of these new services and increased demand from our customers, SKM relocated our production facility to Freeland, Michigan. This new location and our expanded facilities in the heart of Michigan’s Great Lakes Bay Region has enabled us to better serve our local customers in Bay City, Saginaw, and Midland, as well those across the country.

In 1996, current owners Terry and Marie Grenell, purchased SKM, and under their leadership, business has continued to grow. Today, in addition to screen printing and embroidery services, SKM is proud to offer additional product lines including stationary (letterhead, business cards, wedding invitations), promotional products (mugs, pens, give-aways), and vinyl-cut lettering (jersey names and numbers, signs, window decals). Now virtually any item that you are looking to customize with your organization’s logo, we can get for you!

Today, in addition to our Freeland office, we are pleased to offer a second location, SKM-Sports Numbering Center, located in the center of Saginaw Township. With this additional storefront, we are excited to re-establish our physical presence in the community where our company first started more than three decades ago.

Much has changed since SKM’s founding, but our dedication to providing our customers with quality products, friendly service, and reasonable prices has remained consistent. Call us today to see how our team of screen printing and embroidery specialists, on-site graphic artists, and personal customer service representatives can meet—and exceed—your work wear apparel, school event, or ad specialty needs!

Embroidery

You can trust SKM’s Embroidery Department to have you in stitches! Whether you’re looking to personalize an item from home or you need us to order an item just for you, our department can handle any size job, big or small.

In addition to our nine embroidery machine heads and 30 years of experience in the trade, SKM offers in-stock designs and a vast selection of thread colors from which you can choose. We can also embroider custom-designed logos!

SKM has perfect embroidery solutions for schools, teams, businesses, and other organizations too. Looking for hats, shirts, jackets, scarves, or bags with your logo embroidered on them? We can do it for you! Let our experienced staff help you choose your garment, digitize your logo, and embroider it to achieve that perfect, impressive look.

And if you want something that will really stand out, consider our appliquéd sweatshirts and hoodies. Ideal for high schools, colleges, sororities, and fraternities, SKM can appliqué your school letters, Greek letters, and other symbols in the fabric of your choice. It’s a stylish way to show your pride!

So, whether you’re looking to enhance your bathroom towels with a monogram, commemorate that special occasion (new baby, wedding, anniversary, baptism) with one of our keepsake blankets, promote your company on your work wear, or show your team spirit, SKM’s embroidery department will help you look great while doing it!

Things to Consider When Creating Your Embroidery Logo

Embroidery Size

In our experience, we have found that embroidered lettering should be a minimum of 3/16 inches high to be clearly visible. In addition, most customers find that it is best to select bolder fonts for smaller letters so that their logo has maximum readability.

For left chest logos, we suggest that your design be no greater than 4 inches in width and/or height. Again, past experience with customers has proven that a logo that is about 3-1/2 inches high and/or wide looks best for a standard left chest application.

Full back designs allow for greater variety in embroidery sizing. For this location, our equipment enables us to embroider designs and logos to a maximum size of 15 inches wide by 13 inches high.

Digitized Images

Our embroidery machinery is operated by a computer program requiring a digitized embroidery file format (file extension “.dst”). As this format is not standard to most computer graphic art programs, SKM is happy to have your image converted for you.

Please note that additional charges generally apply for this service. This pricing is based on the number of stitches required to complete the logo. For example, a left chest size logo may be a charge of $65, and a full-back design may cost $125 or more.

Graphic Arts

With over 30 years of experience, SKM’s Graphic Arts Department will be able to take your ideas from design concept to professional-looking reality.

Our full-time graphic artists are well-versed in a full range of design services. Whether it’s creating your new logo, composing eye-catching and informative brochures, or designing your full-color advertisement layout, our artists can offer effective solutions for you.

Things to Consider When Designing Your Artwork

Image Size

When creating artwork for screen printed apparel, please keep in mind that the maximum printable widths for standard garments are:

	Recommended Max. Print Size
Youth sizes with Full Chest imprints	8 inches wide
Adult sizes with Full Chest imprints	12 inches wide
Youth/Adult sizes with Left Chest imprints	3-4 inches wide
Youth/Adult sizes with Sleeve imprints	2-3 inches wide

Design Color

To ensure that your screen printed garments have the greatest visual impact, SKM suggests that you select ink colors and garment colors with high contrast to one another. (For example, printing navy blue images onto yellow apparel, or printing white images onto black apparel.)

When printing light-colored designs onto dark-colored garments, we may suggest that you use a white underlay (a white coat of ink that that is printed first and then covered by a “top coat” of your chosen light color ink). This underlay will help prevent the fabric color from “bleeding” through the printed ink and producing a final image that is muted.*

*Please note: if white ink is not one of your original design colors, this color may need to be added to your design and additional charges may apply.

Digital Artwork

While we are able to work with most types of digital images, our graphic artists have the greatest success working with customer-provided artwork that is “camera ready” and in vector or raster formats.* Examples of these formats include images that are saved using:

Vector Artwork	Raster Artwork
.pdf	.jpeg
Adobe Illustrator (.ai)	.tiff
Corel Draw (.cdr)	.psd
Encapsulated Postscript (.eps)

Whenever possible, we ask that font or supply font files be converted to one of these formats.

In addition, our artists find it easiest to work with customer supplied digital artwork that:

•     Is created using a pantone pallet (C or CV)
•     Maintains an outline point value of 1.0
•     Is provided in layers (for multi-colored rastered artwork)
•     Is created at 200 dpi or higher
•     Is not flattened
•     Is sent at 50% to size

If you have questions regarding your digital artwork, don’t hesitate to call or email us. Let us help make your ideas work for you

*Please note: artwork that needs to be created or altered may incur an art charge. Please contact us for additional details related to these charges.