Direct-to-garment printing is changing the apparel industry. Market demand is different from a few years ago, with buzzwords such as fast fashion and sustainability at the forefront of the new movements.
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One of DTG printing’s great strengths lies precisely in these application areas, making this technology ideal for all the new opportunities in the B2B and B2C sectors.
Especially when you integrate direct-go-garment printing into a digital and automated workflow, it can take the entire production process to a new level. With high quality, full-color printing, no minimum quantities, and exciting design possibilities, DTG printing helps change the industry.
This article will go over five reasons why dtg is causing this change and how you can benefit from this new development.
These days, shoppers are spoiled. Modern customers don’t want to wait weeks for their products, so things have to happen quickly.
To make matters worse, many of these orders are often based on an average size of just one or two pieces. Each order has a different design, on another garment, in a different color.
With direct-to-garment printing, each piece can be customized. Unlike other textile printing methods, you don’t have to deal with rigid setups. Place your garment in the dtg printer and print the design. It doesn’t matter if you print hundreds or thousands of pieces of the same design – or just one. That means you have a lot of flexibility. You can print larger quantities or short runs. Both are profitable and equally doable.
Today, the market wants unique designs, and it wants them fast. There is a high demand for customizable apparel not only from end customers but also from retailers themselves. For many retailers, the trend is to have a small warehouse or no warehouse at all.
Thanks to the ease of printing unique items and individual orders, there are usually no minimum order quantities with DTG printing. That enables new possibilities for mass customization and a fast turnaround.
One of these new business models is print on demand.
Besides, many brands, creatives, and influencers are trying to build an online business with print-on-demand. POD platforms offer them a unique opportunity to experiment with new designs and concepts without much risk. They work with a production partner who produces and ships custom garments to order. Usually, the entire process is integrated into a web-to-print workflow. Thanks to direct-to-garment, many designers can start a business with minimal investment without owning their own infrastructure, such as a warehouse.
Managing such direct-to-garment print production is not easy. There is often a point where the manual process reaches its limits, significantly when a company is growing, which is usually intentional.
When the process reaches its limits, it’s not just chaos and inadequacies that occur. The output of fast DTG printers is often limited by all the organizational overhead around it, which means you’re not producing as much as possible.
Automated workflows can help a business when the volume of orders grows. They monitor and speed up work processes in all areas, from ordering – with the option of automatic order transfer from an online shop – to printing and shipping, including invoices.
Most automated workflows use barcodes that are printed on a sticker and placed on the garment. These contain all the parameters needed for production and shipping, such as the order number, customer information, type of garment (item number, size, and color), design (image file, print size, and correct positioning), and shipping instructions.
This information can be taken directly from an online store once the customers configure their garments and place their order.
This code, which is attached to the textile, is scanned in the relevant department, and employees receive all the information they need in real-time to do their job quickly and efficiently.
To illustrate this with an example, let’s take the printing workflow as an example. In a manual workflow, the worker must manually select the correct file and position of the print, set the print’s size, and select a color profile. Then he has to send the design to the machine, put the suitable garment in the machine, and print it. You can already imagine that this process is very error-prone and time-consuming.
In an automated workflow, the employee receives a T-shirt with a barcode. Without needing any further information, he scans this code, and all necessary data such as design and position are automatically loaded into the printer. So it can be printed immediately.
The barcode usually remains on the textile, from the beginning to the end of the process, and can therefore be used at every production station.
Also, an automated process can provide a real-time overview of the current status of the order. The customer can also be automatically notified, for example, when their order is being processed or shipped.
Individual parts of an order that have been printed and processed separately are combined before shipping and can be packaged as a single shipment.
Besides, an automated solution can manage inventory and reorder products as needed.
Why not take advantage of this opportunity?
At the same time, however, there is a solid counter-current to fast fashion. A growing proportion of consumers attach great importance to the environment.
The textile industry is undoubtedly one of the biggest polluters in the world.
Direct-to-garment printing is in itself one of the most environmentally friendly printing methods available. There is a minimum of waste, and the inks are usually water-based, and Oeko-Tex and Gots certified.
Depending on what garments you print on, you can create a very environmentally friendly production. Please pay attention to what garments you use and how they are sourced and manufactured.
If you do, fast fashion can be very sustainable at the same time, thanks to DTG printing. You get the best of both worlds.
Thanks to the speed and customization of direct-to-garment printing, it is possible to minimize production time.
Instead of producing and storing large quantities in advance, you can now create your products with an extremely fast turnaround time.
You will get efficient and thoughtful service from PO-TRY.
Thanks to the technology’s speed and the ability to produce different products without changing the setup, it is possible to produce after the products have been ordered. This way, you can spend your time and energy on the products that are demanded by the market.
Just store your blanks and produce as needed. Another benefit is that blanks don’t become a waste when a trend goes out of style or a holiday is over.
You don’t have to predict what customers will want to buy weeks or months in advance.
When you incorporate just-in-time manufacturing, you only print what sells. And if the design ends up being a flop with customers, you don’t have excess inventory.
Thanks to this, direct-to-garment printing can help you take the guesswork out of textile production, minimize risk, and optimize your supply chain.
Direct to Garment Printing is still one of the newer kids on the block in textile printing. Many people claim that it is not yet mature and is inferior to other printing methods. But that has changed in many ways.
And thanks to the explosion of e-commerce, the direct to garment industry will continue to grow in the coming years.
You may have heard how easy direct-to-garment (DTG) printing is, how DTG is the future, and how you can earn as much as $1,000,000 a year from DTG printing alone. However, the advent of direct-to-film (DTF) printing – where you print designs onto a transfer film, then transfer it to the garment by heat press – has largely overtaken DTG printing because of how easy and affordable it is to start with DTF printing compared to DTG printing.
You could still think about jumping onto the DTG bandwagon since it still has a lot of advantages to offer, but before you get to buying a DTG printer of your own, here are five reasons why you should not get a DTG printer.
First, let’s talk about the setup costs.
A DTG printer can cost at least $20,000 for a reliable mid-range printer. Industrial-grade printers, such as those sold by Kornit, can cost at least $200,000, depending on the scale of your business. You can keep costs down by looking for printer starter packages, which come with a printer and some consumables, but these usually apply to some entry-level or mid-range printers only.
DTG requires pre-treatment; therefore you’ll also need a pre-treatment machine ($3,000-$4,000) and pre-treatment solution ($50 – $100 a gallon). You would also need to buy a heat press ($500-$1,500, depending on your needs), a computer and the RIP software for your DTG printer to work (about $500 or more).
Then you have the DTG inks. 20 oz of DTG ink costs around $220 per cartridge, while you can get 5 gallons of plastisol ink for the same price. This will significantly affect your pricing, as DTG printing inks is much more expensive than screen printing inks.
Altogether, if you’re going for a mid-range DTG setup, you may need an initial investment of approximately $26,500 in equipment and consumables – and that is before your business has even been set up! When you finally get your printing business up and running, you still have other things to take into consideration.
What your DTG salesman may not tell you is that your DTG machine needs to run cleaning cycles daily, even when your machine is not running. No exceptions. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of an ink clog happening more frequently than they should. There are other daily maintenance tasks you may also need to do to prevent long downtimes when your machine breaks down.
For example, if you don’t clean the print head(s) daily, the inks can end up clogging it up, and you will have to spend hundreds of dollars on replacing them altogether.
Another thing to note is that the white ink bottles need to be shaken before usage. This is because white ink contains titanium dioxide that doesn’t stay emulsified for long, and the solids will sink to the bottom of the bottle. If you don’t shake them well, the solids will be pulled through the print heads, and it will cost you a lot more than just ruined print heads. We’re talking about wasted shirts with streaky or muddy prints, inevitably costing you time and money.
The waste tank is where all the ink goes from print head cleaning. The tank fills up pretty quickly throughout the day, and given that ink is expensive, you can spend up to $1,000 of wasted ink per month.
Make sure that you read the included manual on troubleshooting common printer problems, or contact your printer’s manufacturer for live customer support where needed.
While DTG’s “no setup required” perk is great for small orders, it has diminishing returns when you use DTG for larger orders. DTG printing is actually much slower than traditional screen printing. Setting up for a screen printing job can be quite time-consuming, considering the screens, emulsions, and other equipment you’ll need to prepare before the job even begins. However, once you’re ready to start printing, screen printing can quickly output up to a hundred garments in a few hours.
With DTG printing, you still have to think about pre-pressing garments and pre-treatment. With the right equipment and an ideal setup for a team of two, you can pre-treat and print a shirt within 6 to 8 minutes. Assuming it takes 8 minutes, you’ll have seven shirts ready in an hour. Note that it’s only seven shirts, compared to the hundreds you could have printed through screen printing.
Combined with the high ink costs, doing larger print runs is not an economically viable plan for your print shop. You’ll find that the more orders you take, the lower your profit margins will be. The only way to overcome this is to invest in larger, more expensive industrial printers with better outputs – but if you’re a fledgling print shop, this is obviously not a worthwhile investment. This strongly limits DTG to print-on-demand, retail, and for low-volume customers – which leads us to our next point.
DTG and screen printing customers are fundamentally different. Screen printing customers generally have high-volume orders, simpler designs, and a few colors for the design. DTG customers lean towards orders that are print-on-demand, retail, and low-volume, excelling in its ability to print out complex, multi-color designs.
If you own a DTG and have more high-volume customers looking for screen printing prices, you will end up losing more money than earning due to the slow production speed and high operations cost. You have to consider the type of customers you have and decide which printing method is more suitable.
Most DTG customers are looking for a unique, custom-made garment that they can order for a small group of friends or even for their family. Given the lower output speed and high-quality prints, DTG printing is meant to provide this niche with options for small custom runs. After all, DTG was originally conceived as an additional method to supplement the high-volume production of screen printing with something capable of efficiently handling short print runs.
With the high cost of equipment, consumables, labor, and customer acquisition, it does become tricky to scale your DTG business. It can be a huge financial risk for a fledgling business to take on, especially if there’s uncertainty in your future customer base and the expectations from the services your shop provides (among other things).
DTG’s slow production time means that labor will be a significant factor in determining how much revenue you can generate with your first DTG machine. To increase production speed, you may consider buying another DTG machine or hiring more employees to help you work around the clock to keep up with demand. Purchasing new equipment is the most logical way to boost productivity, but it does come with a hefty price tag. You’ll need to make sure your financials are in a strong position before you can actively think about expanding.
Customer acquisition will also be difficult. Unless you already have your own brand and have a wide customer base with sufficient demand to cover your costs, you are going to find yourself split between generating sales outside and running your DTG business while also staying competitive.
Plus, your production distribution will be uneven throughout the year. There are weeks where you will not have any orders coming in, and then suddenly you have eight high-volume jobs that need to be done by the end of the week. It’s just how business works in this fast-moving industry.
If you are just starting a print shop and think that DTG is a surefire way to make an easy profit, we’ll have to disappoint you. The biggest obstacle to running a new DTG printing business is the high entry cost ceiling, compared to something like screen printing that only needs at least $1,000 for an entry-level setup. Add to the fact that DTG requires more maintenance than even screen printing, and its inability to take on large print runs, and you can see that it’s a real challenge to successfully start with DTG printing.
However, if you already have an established print-on-demand business, with a low volume of customers needing small print runs which can cover your overall costs, or if you’re looking for a DTG machine to supplement your existing printing/design business, you can reap the benefits of owning a DTG machine. It’ll still take time to get it right, but you’re in a much better position to work with DTG printing than if you were just starting.
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