Producing Out of This World Dye-Sublimated Textiles

Brothers Tej and Pratt Pande of SAI Netcom in Alpharetta, GA, believe in the personalized touch. Their business uses dye-sublimation printing to offer a wide variety of customized textiles and gifts, which are sold directly to consumers via SAI Netcom’s website as well as through a range of retail outlets.

“Dye-sublimation lets us capture the true essence of photos or artwork on textiles, at costs far below traditional textile printing methods,” Tej Pande says. To provide quality dye-sublimated products, SAI Netcom relies on its 64-inch Roland DGA (Booth 1137) Texart RT-640 and VersaArt RS-640 dye-sublimation printers.

“Without the high setup costs of traditional textile printing, we can operate with no minimums,” Tej continues. “That means we’re able to service small retail customers with small orders, and larger customers with larger orders — in other words, we can help everyone who needs our products.”

SAI Netcom uses its Roland machines to produce both short runs and prototypes. Dye-sublimation printing allows them to tap into several markets whose clients require custom-printed goods that make an impact, including retail personalized gifting, the advertising specialty industry, and licensed artwork prototyping and fulfillment.

SAI Netcom has three divisions producing a variety of dye-sublimated products, such as fleece blankets, coral plush blankets, fleece and linen pillows, floor mats in custom sizes, neckties, beach towels, textile banners, aprons and imprinted fabrics for T-shirts, mousepads and more.

“Our prints extend over the entire surface of the product — edge to edge. Exact color-matched output is essential. Our customers really appreciate the true photorealistic quality our printers produce on products like blankets and towels,” Tej Pande says. To ensure accurate color matching, SAI Netcom uses Roland’s dye-sublimation inks exclusively.

One popular line of products features large images from the Hubble space telescope dye-sublimated onto blankets. These 50-by-60-inch stock blankets are offered through retail channels. SAI Netcom also produces a wide variety of licensed artwork with famous characters such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the cast of the animated television show Bob’s Burgers.

SAI Netcom appreciates the ErgoSoft Roland Edition RIP, which has software tools to help manage each stage of dye-sublimated production. “With Roland’s software, we are able to manage the traceability of each print down through the production, finishing and shipping stages,” Pratt Pande says.

“The impact of having quality, full color production is massive for our customers,” Tej Pande says. “It’s a very direct relationship: higher quality print means better sales numbers.”