BACKGROUND

Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.

Global garment industry is valued approximately at $278 billion while the US garment industry is estimated to be worth $45 billion. In large segments of the garment industry profit margins are small, that is, cost of manufacturing, packaging, and shipping are important aspects to manage. Even small reductions in manufacturing, packaging, and shipping costs may impact profits, and thereby, survivability of an industry segment. Conventional packaging of dress shirts typically includes packing of each shirt individually in a flat rectangular plastic or similar bags or boxes.

For appealing presentation and out-of-the-box use, each shirt is folded into rectangular form on a sheet of flexible cardboard or similar material, and the shirt collar is supported by a collar board interposed between the collar and the collar band, frequently with additional collar stays and supports at the front of the collar. The collar board may be a folded portion of the shirt board. To maintain the integrity of the folded shirt package, mechanical fasteners such as pins or clips may also be used. The shirt packaging process, typically including folding, fastening, and so on, is a complex operation, generally performed manually and involving a number of different steps. In case of manual labor, considerable skill, experience, and coordination may be needed. Considering the pressures to keep cost of packaging low, the conventional packaging approaches present challenges to the economics of garment industry. Thus, there is an existing and continued need for improvements in manufacture, packaging, and shipping of garments.

SUMMARY

The present disclosure generally describes collar support strap for shirt packaging.

According to some embodiments, a single piece of collar support strap may be used to package collar portion of a shirt. Shirt collars are traditionally packaged in a way to reflect the collar's positioning and shape in actual use. Conventional methods employ multiple pieces of support items placed in different locations. A collar support strap provides the positioning of the collar in a packaged shirt not only through a single piece item, but also provides ease of packaging by avoiding multiple steps of operations to package the shirt. The collar support strap enables adjustment to varying collar sizes, anchoring to the collar button, and accommodation of the different collar types.

The foregoing summary is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. In addition to the illustrative aspects, embodiments, and features described above, further aspects, embodiments, and features will become apparent by reference to the drawings and the following detailed description.

