DSF

Well I ordered two boxes of 'different' mugs from another supplier hoping to find a print worthy mug. I'm sure the retailers will solve any customer care issues as they have a good record, but the fact remains that the standard of ceramics is very poor.

Besides the patchy coatings, the brown stains, the pin holes and embedded dust, they can all be seen before being printed. But the ceramic used for Listawood's Duraglaze and 'budget' mugs currently suffer from large dents and bulges in the same part of the mug. The prints which are successful, could then bleed 10 minutes after printing. BMS premium 10oz mugs are also misshaped with transfers not wrapping parallel to the mug. You then have a print looking badly crooked. So I haven't found a consistent quality mug with Listawood, Xpres nor BMS over the last year or so. It shouldn't take me 3-4 mugs to get one good print?

So I contacted Subli, and today printed a box of 10 oz Orcas and 10 oz Rhino mugs. The 10 oz Orcas look really nice and are identical to Listawood's two Durham mug offerings. Appear straight, nice bright white and the transfer grips quite nice around the mug. Everything was going fine and then again the same misprints came back with the big smudge in the same spot at the front of the mug as well as the diameter issues mentioned earlier.

So then onto the Rhino coated mugs, they are not as white, slightly higher at 92 mm and 1-2 mm thicker in diameter. Apart from one smashed mug, one visibly misshapen mug, these have been printing great. Not a single misprint and I actually got through my orders, I've still have half a box left, but I think I might have found a mug worth using. The irony is that I was planning to use this mug a year ago, but was reluctant to buy a pallet's worth so tried every other premium mug on the market. I've lost hundreds of pounds in the process. If these work out I might actually have a business for Christmas as I was for closing this part of the business until January.

So there you go, we shouldn't be putting up with these poor ceramics and the retailers should be putting pressure on the manufacturers to actually have some degree of quality control.

Equipment used: Adkins Studio and budget Chinese presses, new blankets, problems exist with both presses. 10+ years mug printing experience.

Raja use Rhino coating, and assuming it is theirs alone, or that they are the main/exclusive user, they have the advantage that they make the ceramic mugs in their own factories and do the coating as well, rather than being a factory which buys in the cheapest blank ceramic mugs they can that week to then coat.
Their factories not only produce sublimation blanks, but make all sorts of ceramic products to custom spec for companies worldwide. I have the figures somewhere for pricing and MOQ for them doing custom molding. They will also do the base printing for you, or the full print onto the mug (again to MOQs)

Yeah Raja not only produce a good mug, but they are very good to work with. I've got those MOQ details and were even willing to drop the quantity for an idea I had.