Sales Opportunities

by Roger L. Jennings

Opportunity is knocking on the door of the decorating industry. Both decorators and their suppliers need to look at the new ways they can expand their sales and profits.

There are new geographical markets, new printing technology, and changes to the market structure that will drive revenue growth. The developments occurring in each country compared to other countries illustrates the opportunities to be pursued.

All countries manufacture apparel, but the growth in apparel manufacturing is particularly dramatic in areas like Eastern Europe, Ireland, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. At first, the work is cut and sew at low labor rates to deliver low cost apparel to world markets. Now larger embroidery and screen printing decorators are adding value to blank goods in the same countries. Costs are low, order sizes are relatively large and delivery time does not have to compete with decorators located closer to consumers. The popularity of decorated apparel is increasing in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean.

The low labor cost countries at first export, but increasingly will become customers for their own products. Local customers, low capital investment to screen print, and access to world-class printing technology via computer will foster the growth of small shops that will be customers for screen print suppliers.

Everywhere people want an improved standard of living and the opportunity to pursue their dream of owning their own business. The example of the U.S. will certainly spread to Europe and other countries around the world. In the U.S. there are at least 80,000 screen printing shops, 85% of which employ 10 people or less. Most employ 5 people or less.

This is a cottage industry composed of teachers printing after school, firemen on their days off, stay-at-home moms and many others. Their orders are relatively small. Customers are local. The speed of delivery is important. Large companies cannot compete with the small shop operated from an apartment or garage. Many of these small operators deal in cash to enhance their standard of living by not paying taxes.

The growth of the decorating industry has been helped by changes in dress codes. Again, the U.S. serves as an example of changes to come in other parts of the world. Many companies have replaced suits and ties with “corporate casual” golf shirts and collared shirts, even in sophisticated cities like New York City and San Francisco.

Americans are becoming more free in their choices of apparel colors and styles. People are able to have more choices in apparel and reduce their costs by purchasing “corporate casual” rather than even one suit that is so expensive. The economic pressures for lower costs and movement to recognize individual expression is a trend free countries will continue to experience. In addition, more companies are providing decorated shirts, caps, jackets and lab coats to employees like service counter employees, waiters, construction workers and more for corporate image, to identify employees, and for team building.

New technology is also making a contribution to sales growth. Many of the corporations demand textured fabrics like pique for their corporate apparel. There has been an explosion of choices in textured fabrics. Until recently only embroidery served this market well. However, the combination of very tight mesh on a retensionable frame coated with capillary film and a 3-D ink allows production of photographic quality images and new textured effects as shown in the Sierra Nevada image to match advertising, packaging and more.

This new technology commands selling prices as high as embroidery, but is much less expensive to produce. So suppliers and decorators that belong to FESPA should be looking at this trend just starting in the U.S.

Although the image quality is stunning, the work can be completed by the smallest shops on simple manual equipment. Large shops that have used their size as an advantage might find their business moving to the small shop with the low overhead of an at-home worker with this cutting-edge, low cost, technology discovered on the internet.

3-D printing requires simple line art that can often be photocopied rather than be composed on a computer by a technical or sophisticated process. So initial investment costs are very low. The technology process from start to finish is simple. Press set up and production are quick, and customers are very impressed with the results.

The combination of very tight screens (30-60 N/cm depending on mesh count), capillary film and 3-D ink offers four advantages to the shops that employ this method of printing. First, a stencil thickness can be selected to bury the fabric texture, seams, stitching and even corduroy with one pass of the squeegee without sacrificing opacity.

Second, the print, flash, print routine when printing white ink on black or dark shirts can be changed to one pass with a squeegee and an increase in productivity of 300-400%. Rather than produce 30-40 shirts per hour with a flash between prints, 100-120 per hour can be printed without a flash using 3-D ink and capillary film to control the thickness of the ink deposit and opacity with one pass of the squeegee.

Third, three dimensional images are now possible as shown in the Sierra Nevada image. Fourth, operators of presses often with more than 6 print heads will produce textured images. A textured print could require multiple passes of the same color ink with intermediate flashes, but with each ink deposit printed in a different dimension.

So a rose blossom will stand off a garment, or a wild animal head will have a deep socket eye surrounded by a protruding brow and other features. The hair of a horse will appear to stand off the neck in fine detail while the belly of the horse has a rounded dimension created with puff ink printed through half tone dots that are largest where the ink will puff the most.

In sports a basketball can be printed with only 2 screens, but the second screen will provide the half tone dots to create the realistic effect of bumps on a real basketball. Artists will be creative in ways never seen before.

The new geographical markets offer opportunities for new people to be decorators. These decorators are new customers for their suppliers. The new technology, however, creates new profit opportunities in more established markets. Market structures change with technology. Heat transfers of 20 years ago were replaced in the market by direct screen printing, because of product quality and costs. Consumers then demanded more upscale textured fabrics like pique that did not print like T-shirts. So the embroidery community responded and grew by offering a top quality product.

The next phase of change to the market structure will be a demand for photographic quality images on textured fabrics. This is an exciting time to be a decorator or a supplier benefiting from the many opportunities.

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