The Softer Side of Print

Wrapping up Smither’s Pira’s Digital Print Week in Orlando, Fl. in June was a two-day intensive look at the state of digital textile printing. This is a segment in flux, with the technologies getting to a point where mass-market customization is becoming a more viable option as speed and quality both continue to rapidly improve. At the same time, it is still an early-adopter market, with a lot of room for creative growth for those who are willing to embrace the risks.

Digital Textile Printing 2019 opened with Chris Bernat, chief revenue officer and co-founder of Vapor Apparel, who is a perfect case study of how an early innovator in the digital textile printing space has found success carving out a niche market. Five years ago, Vapor Apparel was a B2B sportswear company, with that side of the business accounting for 98% of the revenue, Bernat told attendees. Today, 35% of revenue comes from the B2C side, with a robust Amazon online storefront that was built around the capabilities of digital textile printing.

“We got lucky,” said Bernat, “we found a business problem to solve. Any time you can find a problem to solve for people who have money, you have the beginning of a good business.” That problem was that consumers were looking for garments to wear while engaging in sports and outdoor activities, and they wanted them to look as good as they performed. The major players in the space had the performance, but very limited choice. Vapor Apparel solved the problem by offering a range of design choices that customers can choose from and customize, with each piece being printed on demand, as it is ordered.

“It was not an easy task [to build this business],” said Bernat. “We have layered additional features into the model over time, and our products have evolved; today we sell to thousands of printers, and to hundreds of thousands of consumers on four continents.”

Beyond sportswear, fashion in general is beginning to see more of a shift toward digital printing, as well. Liz Logue, EFI’s senior director of corporate business development, noted that trends around clothing and apparel used to be on an annual cycle; today, she said, “new trends come and go in three to five weeks.” Ecommerce is part of that drive, capturing more than $713 billion of sales, Logue continued.

She went on to note that the presentation of apparel purchased online is another major opportunity that printers can — and should — be looking to take advantage of, matching packaging to textile prints, and coming up with creative ways for brands to truly push the limits of what digital technologies are capable of. “Why aren’t we leveraging the power of graphics throughout the entire supply chain,” she asked. “Brands don’t realize we can match patterns from textiles to corrugated, or they think it’s too expensive…. People assume quality and price are going in opposite directions, and they can choose one. But with digital printed textiles and packaging, that’s not true; it can be cost effective, high speed, sustainable, and high quality.”

The Glamorous Side of Print

John Otsuki, co-founder and CEO of Creative Cause Solutions, noted that throughout his career, he has found that garment and textile printing is “glamorous,” especially compared to the signage side of things. But where he has found the most success, and where there is a tremendous opportunity that is growing rapidly, is in textiles produced for home and office environments.

“Where we’ve found success so far … has been the home fashion side. Things like bedding, linens, etc. We have also found great success discussing [digital textile printing] capabilities with designers and architects, many of which have never had contact with printers before,” Otsuki told the audience.

The traditional market for home textiles, he noted, was produced with rotary screen or gravure presses, with minimum orders that could be in the thousands of yards. They are used to needing a high amount of printed overs, setup costs were tied into the color layers of the designs,” and many manufacturers produced wide ranges of color choices, many of which never sold and simply took up space in warehouses. All of these are issues digital textile printing solves, he said.

Another benefit is the savings. He said that the gross margins on most signage printing is around 49%, while the margins on roll goods — textiles printing in larger runs for use in garments, home goods, or other products — are around 46%. However, with roll goods, he said, the presses can be run at the full manufacturer stated speeds, making up time and allowing the shop to produce higher volumes in less time. And the labor costs for the average sign job is around 21% of the price — with roll goods it drops to just 2%.

“Signage relies on higher gross margins to compensate for [the cost of production], whereas roll goods have longer, faster run rates [for higher volumes,]” said Otsuki.

Green Isn’t Just an Ink Color

Digital textile printing doesn’t just provide faster speeds and the ability to mass customize products from shirts and pants to couches and wallpapers. It is also a far more sustainable process, especially compared to the traditional methods of producing textiles.

Several speakers throughout the event noted that traditional textile printing is the number two polluter worldwide, with only electricity production actually generating a higher degree of pollution in the manufacturing process. Digital textile printing, however, offers a way for brands “go green” without breaking the bank.

“There is a fine line,” said Jason Fannin, account manager at Sensient. “Brands want to be more sustainable, but the costs have to be balanced as well. They will accept prices that are a bit higher, but if you say it will be 80% more, they’re not going to use it.”

With dye sublimation inks, he noted, there aren’t nearly as many chemicals to be concerned about — there are still a few, he said, but it is certainly a much different conversation than with traditional processes. That said, he noted, “sustainability is a journey, not a destination. There are a lot of steps we can take to be more sustainable, including using recycled materials, using fewer materials and ink, creating less waste in production, shipping and packaging, etc.”

Tackling the Challenges

For anyone looking to get into digital textile printing, there are a few things to do up front to help ensure success.

1. Reduce your waste. Take a hard look at how the machines are loaded, how the products are transferred from machine to machine, and how designs are positioned on the fabrics. Every additional yard that can be saved on a project adds up quickly.
2. Streamline your workflow. For digital textile printing to work, shops will need to have an intelligent system that can pool orders and schedule jobs intuitively to get the most efficient and least wasteful print runs.
3. Watch your quality. Across the entire two-day event, quality was stressed multiple times. Designers, architects, and even consumers talk about things like color in a very different way than printers are used to. Use swatches to test colors both at the start and in the middle of the print run to ensure a roll is staying true; make judicious use of a spectrophotometer to keep an eye on color tolerances; and make sure to retain all color samples — if a customer returns for a reorder the next week or the next year, it has to be an exact match.

However, don’t forget that digital textile printing is still in the early stages of adoption. It is where digital printing was to offset printing in the commercial space ten years ago, with pioneers pushing the limits and stretching the bounds of print to see where it can go.

For textiles, Katelyn Lee, specialty Applications chemist, Textile Chemistry Research, at Cotton Inc., believes that the true tipping point is still a bit of a way into the future. “I foresee it will probably be a 20-30 year timeline,” she said as part of a panel discussion. “The driver will be rotary screen printers aging out and looking to invest in new equipment. That will prove to be a big drive to switch to digital.”

During that same panel, Ken Bach, business development director, Aberdeen Fabrics, noted that another thing holding back a more mainstream adoption of digital in the textile printing world is the lack of a pigment ink. “We will need to be able to do pigments like they do on rotary and flatbed printers to get the blends,” he said. “That’s what we’re all waiting for. … I agree that when things start getting older, they will look to replace the equipment with digital, but we will have to be in a print cycle, and I don’t believe that will happen until those pigments come full circle and give them a reason to switch.”

The major take-away from the event for attendees is that digital textile printing is an exciting, if still emerging, market. From garment and apparel printing, to home goods, to wallcoverings, to facilitating creative visions in new ways, digital adoption will only continue to pick up speed. Those who are willing to take risks and innovate today — such as the individuals who attended the conference in the hopes of finding new ways to grow their business — will be well positioned to dominate the businesses of tomorrow.