Weaving a Future in Fabric Printing

Few areas of the printing world have changed more dramatically over the past few years than textile and fabric printing. Demand for faster turnarounds and larger formats are just the start. Also part of the metamorphosis have been huge advancements in automation, giant leaps forward in ink and print technologies, and an enormous increase in the variety of fabric items print service providers (PSPs) can offer customers.

This sounds like a terrific way to generate profits along with printed textiles, but experts stress proceeding cautiously. Textile and fabric printing can be a great sales generator, but PSPs entering the marketplace will have to find their own niches in this increasingly crowded field. Success, as one very successful Midwestern textile printer says, may come down to figuring out ways to make your customers' lives easier.

Leading trends

Among leading trends in textile and fabric printing are moves toward grand format and tension fabrics. So says Neal A. Zucker, president of Southern Tailors Fabric Imaging in Atlanta. “If you look at displays, what looks bolder, what looks brighter, what allows you to get ahead of the crowd and noticed? That's grand format,” he said.

Meantime, tension fabrics have become very popular at trade shows and at college and university auditoriums, Zucker reports. Southern Tailors does many projects for universities, producing banners eight or nine feet wide and 30 feet tall. “These would be done in sections, and placed in such a way that you have good registration between sections,” he noted. “You have to be able to understand the engineering of the piece.”

From his perch as regional sales manager for Inx International Ink Co., Evan Lyons says the trends include specialty and stretch fabrics, backlits and tents, and better flags for signage and point-of-purchase applications. 

“In addition, we are seeing rapid growth in the fashion clothing-sportswear and décor-home furnishings sectors of the digital textile market,” he added. “[This] is opening up new revenue opportunities for PSPs looking to scale their digital businesses. For the fashion and décor market, these growth opportunities are driven by the artisanship for unique design and the business opportunities they provide.”

Retail and point-of-purchase jobs have expanded sales this year for the company’s Triangle branded DT7 ink, Lyons says, adding that the days of soft signage trade show printing are over, as soft signage textile printing captures a significant portion of the digital output market. “It is easier to ship, fold up, and reuse, takes up less space and is not as heavy,” he reported. “And the material offers a more artistic, higher-quality look.”

At Mimaki USA, product manager Tommy Martin feels the key developments in the field center on actual consumables. The diverse and improved ink available for just about any type of fabric available, along with better, faster, and affordable textile print solutions, has led to significant market evolution, he reports.

Another expert, Dan Ward, vice president of sales at Olympus Group says much has changed in textile and fabric printing over the last half decade. Olympus handles everything from trade show exhibit graphics to the mascot costumes worn by the sausage racers at Major League Baseball’s Miller Park in Milwaukee.

“Five years ago, grand-format was still a differentiator,” he said. “Today, if you aren’t able to produce at least 10-foot seamless, don’t bother getting in the game. [In the same period] lead times went from five days to five hours.

“So much of the print industry went instant that buyers now expect to pick up a 10-by-10-foot backdrop in the same time they would pick up 50 copies from Kinko’s. While that was unthinkable five years ago, it is common now. You have to learn to cut out the waste in your process to be able to deliver in this environment.

“Buyers are stretched thin, challenged with last-minute add-ons and growing up in an on-demand environment. As digital vinyl and litho learned, fabric printers must react to the shortening lead times without adding additional cost.”

Keys to success

The key to success in his world, Ward says, can be summed in five words: “Make your customers' lives easier.” Olympus Group long ago trashed its traditional mission statement and replaced it with two core beliefs, he added. “We exist to enrich the lives of our employees and we do so by making our customers' lives easier. Every employee in each of our various facilities knows, believes in, and lives those two things.”

Making customers' lives easier might be accomplished by responding to quotes in under five minutes, asking five questions instead of 15, predicting issues that will come up before they take place, or going so far as to bring along customers' dry cleaning for them when delivering a backdrop. “Whatever way we can make their lives easier we will do,” he said. “We believe there is a change in today's purchasing environment that is requiring our customers to take on more than in the past. This means they are asked to do more, in less time, with tighter budgets and more options. It is overwhelming when we think about it. So our goal is to take as much of that burden from them so they can go on to any one of the other hundred tasks they have to get done that day.

“Our team uses that approach to make sure they are constantly putting themselves in our customers' shoes in making decisions, recommendations, or investments.

Ward cites the example of a recent customer. The customer needed a banner for an event being staged almost immediately. “They called early in the morning and needed to install it later that afternoon,” he explained.

“In listening to the request, it dawned on our finishing team that the customer was probably going to be in a rush on site, and might forget some of the things needed to get the banner up. Without checking with the client or worrying about the few extra dollars it would cost, they put together a small install kit—zip ties, scissors, clean wipes—and included it in the shipment. As it turns out, the customer did run into an issue and forgot to consider how to secure the banner. And the install kit saved them a trip to the store on a tight timeline. For our employees, it wasn't an effort to go above and beyond or get brownie points. It was just them thinking about what they would need and what they would want if they were in our customer's situation.”

Lyons says there are a number of ways for PSPs to stretch profits. His company’s Triangle branded DT7 textile ink offers savings without sacrificing ink performance, allowing PSPs to quote more jobs than before. “Depending on the quality of printing, they can go after bigger markets, such as large retail point-of-purchase rollouts.”

Martin believes PSPs can utilize multiple smaller units for more flexibility and redundancy. “Or they can get a large, faster, single-scan solution for large-volume production runs with faster turnaround,” he said. “With different ink solutions available, the PSP can provide a wider selection of fabric at a faster and high quality than [can] overseas analog printers.”

In addition, customers have a wide array of textile choices, from economical to higher premium, depending on the application, he adds. “The new growth opportunities in all sectors of the textile and fabric market supports PSPs selling at higher premiums, increasing their profit margins.”

Advice to others

Zucker believes the most vital advice to others is to “pay your dues, understand your product, and comprehend all the manufacturing aspects of the product. I have to understand the sales approach, the financial approach, the marketing approach, the arts aspect of it, the dye sublimation aspect of it, and final finish.”

PSPs either need to commit to doing textile printing correctly, or avoid the field totally, because customers will be able to tell whether it is a good or poor product, he believes.

Ward feels the soundest advice is to understand that textile printing is not paper or vinyl. While textile printing features potentially greater margins and an influx of new clients, it also delivers challenges not witnessed in most other print areas.

Customers pay a premium, and expect nothing less in return. “This means navigating through new challenges like material stretching, dye-lot variations, sewing machines and a lot of scrap,” Ward said. “[Lowered] barriers to entry have made it easier to get in and get started, but you have to throw out some of the traditional things you knew about printing and learn a process foreign to most. Find your niche and place in that market. 

On the horizon are high-speed single-scan direct-to-fabric print solutions, Martin says. “The PSPs that are prepared with the pre- and post-treatment solutions will be able to adapt to this technology easier, and be able to provide more fabric solutions than just dye sublimation solution providers,” he reported.

For his part, Lyons believes “the sky’s the limit.” He envisions improvements coming along in textile coatings, as well as in expanded color gamut due to the inexorable progression of ink technology. In addition, he’s convinced textile prints will become easier to finish, and will showcase better overall detail through direct-to-fabric printing.

”As the technology in textiles improves, so will the printing technology,” he said. “The better the equipment, the better the result, which will bring even more growth than we are seeing today.”