(Image courtesy of Texintel.)
Digital printing has long promised speedy delivery, customization, and short-run print capabilities for the textile industry. Yet successful business models originally proved elusive because ease of entry to the sector has driven selling prices down as more and more printers competed in a finite marketplace. Small-scale producers seemed to dominate the field as machine prices tumbled, creating a proliferation of suppliers with low overhead who were prepared to work at very low margins simply to keep their machines turning. As the market has evolved, and driven by the unique production algorithm of digital textile printing and the inexorable rise of ecommerce, a new and vibrant business model now offers exceptional commercial opportunity.
B2B and B2C Print-On-Demand
In this model, digital printing is now seen as a service, as a component in a broadly based textile offer, an offer that incorporates digital design, production speed, and superfast logistics.
In this new model, the digital print enterprise offers a managed virtual shop for the designer, where their designs and styles are presented online to the public, but where all the shop functions, including order handling, payment processing, digital printing, and drop-ship delivery, are handled by the digital printer.
This market shift has fed perfectly into the dynamics of the global e-commerce market where apparel and accessories—with a value of more than US$759.5 billion (Statista)—has become the number one e-commerce sector in the world. Undoubtedly the silver bullet that delivered this fulfilment business model was the inexorable rise of direct-to-garment printing.
The Role of DTG
Direct to garment (DTG) technology prints on pre-sewn garments and offers customized designs created from digital files. Garments can be ordered, produced, and dispatched within 24 hours.
Pre-sewn blank garments are widely available in the world market, and organizing supply is not a difficult proposition.
This has created a vibrant unique selling proposition (USP) for clothing designers, who historically had to wrestle with finished goods and supply issues from third-world suppliers, and then had to manage viable inventories that walked the tightrope between customer service and economic viability.
DTG printing has enabled fulfilment enterprises to bridge the gap between service and inventory and to provide an economically successful service for apparel designers, who now sell their products through the printer’s webshop using API technology. This has generated a substantial increase in production volumes, as creativity and business opportunity harness the benefits of on-demand, digital production.
DTG Technology
Driving this revolution in the supply chain is DTG technology. A number of pioneering machine manufacturers have continued to double down on machine developments, ink research, and software innovation.
Kornit Digital, who almost 20 years ago at the 2004 SGIA Expo in Minneapolis presented their first DTG machine to the trade. Since that launch, Kornit has continually advanced their penetration of this emerging sector with extensive and impressive machine, ink, and software developments.
Kornit now has a wide range of DTG printers comprising their Avalanche, Hexa, Storm, Atlas, and Vulcanmachines. These use HD6, XDi, and Max technologies to widen the spread of products and surface effects that can be printed.
Their new systems print on polyester, cotton, and blends in a unique one-step process that has contributed to Kornit Digital’s financial success in the last two decades (since 2004).
Another early starter in the DTG field was Brother. In 2005, at the ISS Atlantic City show, Brother International introduced the GT-541 Garment Printer to the market, making it the first “ground up” DTG printer offered. This printer had printheads, ink, and electronics developed specifically for DTG printing.
The latest Brother GTX Pro Direct-to-Garment Printer is equipped with an industrial white printhead that allows for internal ink circulation inside the printhead as well as throughout the machine, greatly reducing white ink wastage.
At the Chicago PRINT 2013 show, Epson introduced the F2000 printer. The release of this printer was notable as it addressed many of the issues prevalent in DTG printing at the time. One of the most important features of the Epson F2000 was its ink set, as it had a two-year shelf life and did not have the settling or clogging issues of previously introduced DTG inks.
Epson’s latest offering, the SC-F3000, is an industrial-level DTG printer that’s designed for high volume. This production-level printer has incredibly low running costs while speedily delivering high volume and top of the range quality.
Across the board, technology has driven print fulfilment enterprises’ capabilities upwards, and currently all eyes are on the advent of direct-to-film (DTF) technology which threatens to provide another upward twist to the tech spiral.
The Players
With the conditions right, the combination of print technology and e-commerce has generated a host of success stories among the print fulfilment enterprises.
Leading the way is Printful, an on-demand printing and fulfilment company that helps people turn their ideas into brands and products. The company fulfils and ships custom clothing, accessories, and home and living items for online businesses.
Printful is the first unicorn company (valued at over $1 billion) with Latvian roots and, in 2021, the company hit a revenue milestone of $289 million. Since its founding in 2013, Printful has been trusted to deliver 50+ million items and has scaled to a team of 1,600+ people across 10 in-house fulfilment centers around the world.
Beyond Printful, print fulfilment has also been taken up by blue-chip ecommerce players such as Amazon, whose Merch By Amazon offering encourages the trade to “Share your designs” with the world by creating graphic tees, accessories, and more, all printed on demand. “Let Amazon handle your printing and shipping so you can design while we deliver.”
Successful print fulfilment businesses abound, and their success is founded on offering digital printing as a service.
In the UK, Inkthreadable, T-Shirt and Sons, and Go Custom Clothing have made their substantial mark, while in Europe Shirt King, Spreadshirt, and Print Logistics show a successful way forward for print fulfilment enabled by DTG printing.
In conclusion, digital printing is an indispensable element in the successful print fulfilment business model, providing speed of response, attractive garments, and profitable production that underpin the economic accomplishment of the model.
