Digital Art Solutions

Stay away. We have spent a lot of money on software and rhinestone supplies with this company.
The first sign there is a problem is when you call for support and they have a salesman help you.
My hard drive crashed and I needed help reloading some of their software. Guess what the response I got was…
«We can’t provide activation codes for Smart Designer v 3, 4 or 4.5 because we no longer support them.»
«The only alternative I can offer is to upgrade your current software if you wish to continue using those products»
Those are direct from the companies email to me. What a joke.

Ok, I don’t want to get into a Unilocal pissing contest with a snake in the grass, but his response was a total fabrication.
We weren’t looking for rhinestone software, we were looking to upgrade our art software to the newer version. When we originally bought the software we were told that we would get a notification when an upgrade came out. We never received a notification and we’re going to pay for the upgrade and additional artwork. This jackass didn’t like the discount the salesman was offering, so he ripped up the quote just like I said in my original review.
We walked away pretty pissed off, went right to Action Illustrated’s booth and bought new software and artwork from them. In fact the salesman there told us that he used to work for this idiot, and agreed with my assessment of his ethics and lack of professionalism!
I wish Unilocal notified the reviewers when there was a response, I would have responded sooner.

As the co-​owner of a embroidery screen printing business, I have been on the hunt for a rhinestone software program for over a year. After going to their ‘class’ at the Indy trade show, my mother and I were convinced these were the guys to go with. As the innovator in the industry (he developed the process) it seemed the only choice. The other guys (TRW and the poser Easy Stone) had evidently copied his software and ideas. Now, the price… its not cheap. This is not for the weekender with the cricut. This is serious, professional software. They are a pretty hard selling bunch of salespeople. I already had a cutter and a heat press so I bought a moderate package. After getting the software, I struggled to get it to do what I wanted right away, which is no real surprise. You don’t normally install CorelDraw or a professional software program like that and instantly know how to work it. After going to the training session in my home state, I was convinced to come to Arizona for Bling Camp. This has increased the total price of the software about $ 800 for flights and the class cost. Thankfully I had reward miles for the flights or it would have been more.
The class was great. Very informative. When Craig says they can get your cutter dialed in to promise 100% weeding on their WonderFlock (which is great) they really can. They tuned my Roland and really improved the performance. Having said that, I wound up buying their Jaguar cutter while at camp. if you are on the fence over what cutter to buy… WAIT and see the Jag cutter at a trade show… I wouldn’t have bought my Roland if I had seen the Jag cut in person. The Roland is a great machine-​but the Jag, for only $ 400 more, is a wonderful machine. Well worth the extra money and now I have one cutter to leave at the shop (the Jag) and one to leave in the trailer for shows (the Roland)
Back to the class– I really learned a bunch. They do a great job of explaining «why» you need to do things a certain way in the software, and also there is about 3 ways of doing EVERYTHING in the software!
BOIL-​IT-​DOWN The software is expensive… but worth it. You want to be serious with your business and your rhinestones, buy from them (specifically buy from Lucas!) The quality of their products from the software down to the stones is top notch. No junk. Quality costs. If aren’t concerned with quality and don’t want to pay for it, this place isn’t for you. If you want top shelf… this is the place.

I have been doing business with DAS for over 10 years now. It really is the go to in the industry for production ready artwork and now rhinestones and hardware. Craig is the owner and has always been friendly and educational to myself and others in the industry I know. Pricing is pretty much the industry average. They also do training here at their office which is nice if you’re wanting to take your business to the next level.

I must say I was shocked by the only other review of this business on Unilocal.We have been dealing with DAS for a few years now and have never experianced anything close to the other reviewers experiances. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, it just hasn’t happened to us.
I would like to say that our experiance’s with DAS have been very positive, as well as those with Craig himself. The quality of the materials and supplies have been excellant and for the few times issues have evolved they took care of them without any questions.
My biggest complaint is that the last couple of times I’ve placed an order, my message was never recieved by the sales department. Once I can understand, but twice, I’m a bit sceptical about. As we are located within driving distance of DAS the convienance for us is a big advantage. However, there is compatition in the wholesale rhinestone business in Phoenix and DAS might want to take this fact seriously.

The smart designer software did not work for us day 1 as promised. Have been using it for a year and it has been nothing but problems. CPU’s run slow, clip art from corel and smart designer won’t load, tech department is slow to respond to help ticket, and were quoted $ 100 per hour to fix their software if we drove over an hour to bring our cpu’s in. We could not concentrate on designs because we were too busy trying to manually repair software issues. We are graphic artist not techies. Don’t stand behind their product that we paid over $ 1000 to make our lives easier… quite the opposite.