In early December, nearly 140 textile industry professionals gathered in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., for the Digital Printing Conference 4.0, the fourth annual conference hosted jointly by industry associations AATCC and SGIA. Attendance included designers, brands, retailers, a wide range of suppliers to the industry, print providers, educators, and journalists. The conference was comprised of a mix of panel discussions, individual speakers, networking opportunities, and plenty of time to visit with the sponsors in the exhibit area.

You might ask why these two associations have banded together in this way. Ken Bach of Aberdeen Fabrics pointed out that digital printing already had a foothold among a variety of substrates in the signage industry, and adding soft signage (signage printed on fabric) was the next logical step. He noted that in signs and display graphics, production is close to 100% digital these days. And in textiles, the hope is that we are nearing the tipping point where digital growth will take off. Today, most industry experts report that only abut 6% of printed fabrics are printed digitally, and while the volume has stalled in single digits for some time, many of the barriers are now being swept away—quality, speed, repeatability, ability to print on a wide range of fabrics—these are table stakes for suppliers to the industry, and digital printing has made huge strides in all of those areas in recent years.

That’s not to say that digital doesn’t still face challenges, nor does it indicate that analog production will be going away any time soon. One attendee, a printer who has both analog and digital printing, noted that rich black and grays are the most commonly used colors in the world, and digital still has challenges with these. Like many other industries that have undergone or are undergoing an analog-to-digital transformation, there are hybrid analog/digital solutions that are bridging the gap, such as the Digital Squeegee option from M&R that replaces one station on a flatbed screen printing device, or the analog stations that can be added to EFI Reggiani’s BOLT.