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Mass-Produced Decorated Garments
This segment includes T-shirts imprinted
with the kind of Las Vegas, Hawaii or Orlando themes one
finds in souvenir or gift shops. In general, these have
uninspiring designs that are made and sold cheaply. At the
next level are the T-shirts that sport the logos of various
athletic teams, sporting goods or footwear companies, or
shirts that feature the likenesses of famous entertainers,
celebrities or public figures. Many of these are licensed
products. Some even sport especially appealing-and copyrighted-designs
or logos. These shirts may be sold at big box retailers
or upscale department stores like Bloomingdale's. The common
thread is that all of these shirts are mass-produced and
mass-marketed. Such shirts are printed in volume through
screen-printing, which is often outsourced. These shirts
are definitely not for today's direct-to-garment digital
printers, and it's best for you to simply ignore them.
Spirit Wear and Fun Wear
This custom-decorated apparel type
is intended to identify members of particular groups or
to enhance team spirit. Often, such shirts are produced
more for fun than for any defined objectives. Such shirts
invariably have logos, custom designs or special messages.
Custom-printed shirts may be made for softball teams, to
identify a corporate marketing team at a trade show, members
of traveling groups, 10K race participants, family reunions,
etc. Or they may bear the photo of a loved one. Such shirts
are very important for direct-to-garment printers. They
are typically ordered in quantities of 5 to 100, rarely
exceeding 250. Screen printers usually refuse shirt orders
fewer than 50 shirts.
Due to the set up and clean-up costs, it is not economical
for screen printers to print smaller orders. Additionally,
customers usually do not want to pay more money just because
they ordered less than 50 shirts. Furthermore, these shirts
often have multiple colors, complex designs or photos that
cannot be easily reproduced through screen-printing. This
market thus represents fertile ground for digital apparel
printers.
Promotional Wear
This is an ideal market for digital
apparel printers. Typical promotional gift items from businesses
include T-shirts with company logos, pens, mouse pads, bags
and calendars. According to the Advertising Specialty Institute
(ASI), the U.S. promotional gift industry had revenues of
$19.4 billion in 2007. What's more, the industry has a compounded
annual growth rate of 4.7% over the last five years.12
Most promotional apparel orders are not large. The typical
order size is in the range of 25 to 250, which is an ideal
run size for direct-to-garment printers. A good half of
these promo-wear orders are less than 50 shirts -a quantity
that screen printers are likely to decline or for which
they will charge premium. Unlike screen printers, digital
apparel printing can produce brilliant full-color images,
a favorite among corporate marketers. Another advantage
of digital printing is its quick turnaround time. This type
of garment decoration is tailor-made for digital printing.
We devoted Chapter 13, Navigating the Promotional Apparel
Industry Successfully, to promotional product printing.
In summary, we find digital printing for garment decoration
to be a large and growing industry. Both established garment
decorating screen printers and aspiring entrepreneurs should
consider this emerging technology. Direct-to-garment
printing is most suitable for custom graphics in what we
categorize as fun wear and spirit wear, and promotional
wear. Although the "sweet spot" for run size is
currently below 250 to 500 pieces, this will change as higher
throughput printers are introduced. The digital printer
can handle short runs, and it can serve a number of other
purposes that screen printing systems simply cannot provide.
Due to the digital nature, the client base can expand beyond
the local market.
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