STAMP your individuality

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to have your name on your T-shirt or jacket? You went to a shop, and the assistant picked the letters then ironed them on to it. You did not get a great result, the letters used to peel off quickly in a hot wash and they pretty much only came in one colour, but at least it was your name. I had one, in fact each of my siblings had one also, it gave you a special feeling of individuality and a ‘cool’ factor that what you were wearing was a true ‘one off’.

Anyway, what I am getting at is, personalisation is not a new concept. Certainly the amount of online T-shirt personalisation shops have grown in the past few years—and demand for it is growing and not just among youngsters. The biggest area for growth it seems is in customisation for corporate use—company fleeces, shirts, aprons, caps and much more. With the growth in accessibility to these products, customers are naturally also becoming more demanding, so the quality of customised goods is now expected to be as high as anything else on sale off-the-peg.

According to a recent study by the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, the supply and manufacturing segment of the UK fashion and textile sector is worth some £11.8bn and accounts for more than 79,000 businesses.



As with any growth area there are profits to be made by those willing to take the leap, and digital systems are now available which are opening up the apparel printing market to all comers. That is why it is so important to choose your weapon very carefully, and choose the right equipment to create the right products for your target market.

Hot off the press…

Xpres sales manager Damon Piall sees moving into apparel as a tempting proposition for sign companies. He says: “Sign-makers looking to diversify and extend their current range of services can capitalise on the huge demand for personalised clothing by integrating a digital textile transfer system into their business. 

“When personalising garments, a key benefit that digital technology has over traditional processes like screen printing or embroidery is that one-offs and low volume runs can be produced both quickly and profitably.”

Most sign makers, that is you dear reader, will already have a vinyl cutter or full colour printer/cutter so providing this service does not necessarily incur high set-up costs. In fact, according to Piall, the only additional items needed are a heat press and textile-specific media. 



 “A key component in any digital transfer system is the heat press as this is the device that applies transfers to clothing. All Xpres heat presses feature digital electronic time and temperature controls to provide absolute consistency of temperature and pressure that are so essential for successful results. 

“For simple single and multi-colour textile logos, transfer films are available in a huge choice of finishes and colours.  Each vinyl has unique properties to suit differing applications and fabric types including those with high temperature washability for workwear and vinyl that will stretch without cracking for sportswear.”

For detailed, full colour designs, Xpres offers a range of solvent and eco solvent media in varying finishes and widths that can be printed on machines such as the Roland VersaCAMM series and Mimaki CJV, so if you already own these pieces of kit, moving into the apparel market is a relatively straight forward and inexpensive leap.

Dye-sub domain

Roland DG say that over the past few years, the printwear and promotional sectors have seen exponential growth in the demand for personalised, high quality textile and promotional printing.  And this ever-increasing demand is creating exciting new opportunities across these sectors.

“There’s a lot of buzz out there at the moment about soft signage and textile printing and how it is set to help revolutionise the industry over the next few years, providing sign makers with exciting, profitable new revenue streams for their businesses,” says Joe Wigzell, academy and creative centre manager at Roland DG (UK), he adds: “And, at a fundamental level, there is no reason why this opportunity shouldn’t fulfil its true potential with sign-makers.


“But, beneath the ‘revolutionary hype’ and excitement, is the reality that any new technology adopted by a business requires a specific set of skills to fully maximise its potential, and soft signage and textile printing is no different.”

Towards the end of last year, Roland launched their latest offering for the soft signage and textile market, the Texart RT-640 dye-sublimation printer. Delivering superb quality and vivid colour across an extremely wide colour gamut, and with the choice of a dual CMYK or 8-colour ink configuration, including orange and violet, the Texart has already become very popular amongst sign-makers looking to enter this market. The RT-640 allows users to add value to their businesses by offering a wide range of profitable applications including apparel, soft signage, interior décor, fashion items, flags, banners and much more.



As part of Roland’s commitment to their diverse and progressive customers, they have recently added another series to their ever popular Better Business Bootcamp sessions—this time focused on helping delegates understand how to use this technology to diversify their businesses and increase profitability in the process.



By giving delegates an overview of all of the necessary elements surrounding the machine and the market, attendees are able to fully exploit the technology this machine offers, capitalising on all the applications available and the revenue derived from these.



“We hosted two short seminar versions of the Better Business Boot-camp at Printwear and Promotion 2015 in February this year to much acclaim from those who attended,” Wigzell continued.

He adds: “Each seminar provided a comprehensive overview of the market as a whole including both desktop and wide-format sublimation options, helping visitors to understand the role each plays and the opportunities each can offer. Examples of the extensive range of applications possible with sublimation printing were presented and discussed, and crucially, tips and advice on how printers and sign-makers could use their investment in sublimation technologies to carve out new, profitable revenue streams for their businesses.” 

Totally bespoke

Of course corporate and personalised clothing is only one element of the picture. When it comes to print providers that want to branch out in a different direction—into fashion or printing onto natural fibres to capture the lucrative DIY home sewing enthusiast, textile designer, graduates and fashion designers there are now options on the market that will help you do this.

MTEX Solutions recently launched its new 1.85m wide Vision, which offers sublimation for knitted and woven fabrics. Available with disperse inks for polyester with in-built fixation, or reactive dyes for printing onto cottons, linens and other natural fibres, the Vision is one of these ‘revolutionary’ products mentioned above and a lot of buzz surrounds this new printer, recently seen for the first time at Heimtextile in Germany and soon to have its UK debut at Sign and Digital UK.


  Designed to run on disperse inks, reactive inks as well as pigment ink (coming soon we are told) the MTEX Vision has an adhesive belt built to stabilise the stretch textiles whilst printing.

The fixation system also means that the print process for drying/sublimation when using disperse/dye-sub inks is an all in one process, without the need for a separate calendar.

“The benefit in terms of production is clear”, Bell continues, adding: “The quality of direct printing will allow deeper penetration of the textiles rather than the superficial dye-sub paper transfer process, the saving in terms of paper process and time is significant which is hugely important as the volumes increase and the market grows.”

The Vision is powered by a Mimaki print engine and manufactured to industrial levels by MTEX in Portugal, with the Ricoh print heads printing up to 1200dpi.

Of course, the one thing to remember when printing with reactive inks onto natural fibre fabric, is you still must finish and ‘fix’ the dyes by steaming. MTEX has developed a machine to complete their turnkey solution, the MTEX steamer, which is designed specifically for steaming digitally-printed short run textile jobs.

Revolutionary trends

Epson also had a large presence at the Printwear and Promotion show with its Epson SureColor SC-F2000 direct to garment and SC-F6000 dye sublimation printers. These printers feature heavily in a lot of reseller offerings to get into this market place so they are important pieces of kit to include in your research.

The SureColor SC-F6000 was developed specifically to produce quality sportswear, apparel, accessories, customised promotional items, decorated gadgets and soft signage. It provides high quality output at up to 720 x 1,440dpi on all leading transfer papers.

The SureColor SC-F2000 was awarded the ‘Best Direct-to-Garment textile printer’ by the European Digital Press Association. Fully designed and built by Epson to print directly onto T-shirts, hoodies, jackets, bags and hats, as well as other garments, the SC-F2000 is also plugged as a powerful production printer. The company says it delivers maximum quality, productivity, flexibility and total reliability—alongside low running and maintenance costs.



According to its spec sheet, it can print a T-shirt in just 27 seconds and features Epson's MicroPiezo TFP printhead, with a resolution of up to 1440 x 1440dpi for accurate dot shape and placement.  It does have a wide colour gamut which produces vibrant colours and smooth gradations and the printed area on fabric is soft from what I have seen, making T shirts comfortable and hard wearing.

The machine is supplied with Garment Creator software, which is very intuitive and really helps to simplify production. It is compatible for both Mac and Windows operating systems.  In addition, the SC-F2000 comes with a wide range of quick-change platen accessories including a special sleeve platen to make decoration even easier.

One of the companies showcasing the Epson at Printwear and Promotion was DTG Solutions. Maneesh Patel, managing director of DTG Solutions, said: “Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing is revolutionising the market for apparel printing. Previously, with screen-printing, the process for printing onto material meant holding stock of specific designs, a wide range of different equipment to make the system work and longer lead times on orders, particularly when turning custom designs around. Now, with the advent of direct-to-garment printers, businesses have the opportunity to add apparel printing to their business models quickly, deliver fast turnaround on orders, on-demand printing on custom or pre created designs and healthy profit margins.

“DTG Solutions have been working in the printing sector for over 20 years. Partnering with Epson, we have been listening to different businesses, both existing garment printers and new entrants to the market, to devise a series of packages which will help people start earning money from the direct to garment process.”

O Factoid: According to a recent study by the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, the supply and manufacturing segment of the UK fashion and textile sector is worth £11.8bn and accounts for 79,000 businesses O

DTG Solutions has created three packages catering for different business requirements, all based around the recently launched Epson Surecolor SC-F2000 printer.

“In addition, we have created finance packages so that businesses can purchase the equipment up front or over time, depending on their business requirements,” states Patel.

She continues: “Apparel printing presents excellent margin opportunities and a great way for businesses to offer new services to existing clients. The people we talked to at the recent Printwear and Promotion show, saw DTG printing as one of two things: a new margin opportunity, or a way to improve customer service through on-demand printing. Existing apparel printers are adding DTG printing to their business models, but our experience shows us that the new technology available is giving new entrants to the market increased opportunities.”



Xpres has also partnered with Epson to offer the SC-F2000, further testament that DTG technology has becoming an increasingly popular method of garment decoration in recent years. They package it with an advanced range of DTG specific heat presses and pre-treatment machines from Sefa.

Temptation, temptation….

Overall, DTG and apparel printing seems to be one of the most easily integrated forms of diversification for sign-makers to make today for their businesses. The manufacturers seem to recognise this and have come up with solutions that enable and empower sign makers and print providers to utilise their existing creative skills to grow their businesses in other markets.  So, with trade exhibition season well underway, will apparel printing have your name all over it this year?


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