According to Jackson, a daily average for throughput can be in the neighborhood of 600 shirts. The company uses a batch system from which employees can pull a specific quantity of orders to print. Spreadshirt takes all of its apparel orders via the Internet.
And if it continues to deliver, we’ll add more as capacity is needed,” Jackson explains. We didn’t want to dive in headfirst, but we’ve been happy with it and have been adding machines. That was our first venture into the technology and we developed with it. “We started with the Kornit 932, the smaller unit, and we currently have two. The business then branched into direct-to-garment digital printing in 2007. Luke Jackson, Spreadshirt’s manager of quality and innovation, says the company got its start in garment decoration by heat-applying plotter-cut vinyl designs onto apparel. Spreadshirt is headquartered in Boston, MA, but the company also has branch offices in England, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, and more. Rinnig reports that the Brother has printed more than 88,000 garments since QRST’s put it into action. Even though the digital garment-decorating equipment is isolated from the rest of the production tools, a full-time employee keeps the machines company 40 hours a week, operating them exclusively. The Brother GT-541 printer and the Geo Knight DK20SP heat press dedicated to it stay in a separate room, shielded from the exposure to dirt and dust they might experience on the production floor. “So if I say that up front, and it doesn’t fade, they love it even more.” I think in almost three years I’ve had one person complain,” he says. “I say after the first wash, the color is for the life of the shirt. Rinnig says he tells clients that they may see a loss of color saturation of 5-8% on the first wash so they won’t be scared when they launder the garment. And there’s good and bad: good, you get the full-color photo with no setup charges and you can do as little as one piece and get soft hand bad, it doesn’t pop like a traditional print.”Īnother caveat Rinnig issues to customers involves the vibrancy or saturation of the digital garment print once it’s washed.
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“I explain that you can do full color, low numbers, and photos.
“Or, if they want more than 24 but it’s a process-color print or color photo, I might also tell them it would be perfect on the digital printer,” he notes. Run lengths on Rinnig’s GT-541 typically are two dozen or fewer, and he says his policy is to automatically put any incoming order for fewer than 24 shirts on the Brother. He decided on the Brother after six months of investigating, including obtaining printed samples and visiting trade shows. He says he made it his mission to understand from day one what would and wouldn’t be possible with the digital printer. Rinnig attributes part of his success with garment inkjet printing to research. I already have it, so they don’t need to buy one.” “And when you’re first to market in something like that in my area, you end up with 15 or more of your competitors who don’t have one and who come to you to get their digitally printed shirts. “It was about 8% of our gross the first year, then 10 or 10.5%, now it’s at 12%,” he explains. Rinnig says being an early adopter of the new technology has paid off in a variety of ways. QRST’s bought the Brother GT-541 two and a half years ago. Now, he says, it accounts for a substantial portion of his business’s gross revenue. For him, digital garment decoration represented a way to complement the shop’s screen capabilities.
QRST’s was founded in 1989 and purchased seven years ago by Peter Rinnig. The Somerville, MA-based garment shop uses six- and eight-color M&R Gauntlet garment presses, a Brother GT-541 direct-to-garment inkjet printer, and, after re-cently acquiring a company called Cambridge Embroidery, a couple of Barudan single-head machines. The following profiles demonstrate the ways in which a variety of companies have successfully integrated garment inkjet printing into their operations. Companies that specialize in signage, graphics, and promotional items also are getting in the game, as are entrepreneurs who set up seasonally at sports events, amusement parks, and shopping malls. The demand for DTG inkjet printers isn’t coming solely from garment screen printers who need a solution for short runs and one-off jobs. Now, almost two years after we last covered DTG systems, the manufacturer count is at 17. The playing field had more than tripled nearly two years later, with offerings from 13 companies showcased in a follow-up article in Screen Printing’s March 2007 issue. When Screen Printing first covered the technology in its September 2005 edition, only four companies offered DTG printing systems. The market for direct-to-garment (DTG) inkjet printers has grown steadily over the past few years.
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