Mass digital production

Digital printing has been around for a number of years now. We’ve seen it slowly infiltrate the commercial print space with more and more of this technology taking on the traditional analogue machines. Promising production speeds that are looking more and more comparable to the traditional offset press technology. Then we look at the graphic sign and display market where screen printing once ruled the roost, but over the past 5 years we have seen digital completely dominate this industry with only a few traditional screen printers surviving. The interesting point with graphic screen printing is still to this day it’s quicker to print a long run on a screen printing machine vs digital, but digital has carved out a new standard, one that has benefits beyond raw production speed.

Can digital textile printing really compete with the well-established analogue screen printing systems we see all across our market today? Digital has been talked about for a number of years as the future, but we are yet to see the mass producers of our market adopt this technology. For sure there are some serious barriers to entry into the digital print space with the most obvious one being the initial investment. It sure is a tough decision to say goodbye to your beloved screen carousel, which you probably own outright, and decide to go to the bank to ask for them to fund you a new piece of digital technology. One that will produce less garments per hour than your current technology, it just seems absolute madness!

So why would you consider this technology? Lets look at this from a different point of view. If you were to setup a new business today, would you choose screen or digital as your production technology? Sure the initial printer investment would be higher for a digital device, but what about all of the additional accessories you need to purchase in order to run an analogue print facility? Emulsion coating machine, CTS machine, screen reclamation, ink mixing, then how much more room do you need to fit all of this equipment? How much more would the rent cost alone? Then you look at how many employees it takes to run an analogue business vs digital, would it be safe to say a ratio of 5:1 analogue vs digital?

I think if we were to look at these technologies from a business startup perspective, there is a strong argument to consider digital as the preferred choice, would you agree?

Then we look at the next issue, can digital actually produce medium to long runs? If we’re talking long runs of 10,000 then analogue is the winner, but do we live in a market that requires runs of 10,000+ shirts? What would the average print run be these days for analogue 1,000? 500? 250?

Kornit Digital regional manager Ashley Playford-Browne states that ‘Digital production speeds have come a long way over the past few years. To put this in context last year we launched the Atlas which is capable of producing 1,400 garments per day (almost double the previous system). Atlas has gained great traction into the mass producers all over the world from both a speed and quality perspective.

Now this year we are launching the new Vulcan Plus which takes the production speeds even further. The Vulcan Plus can produce in excess of 2,000 garments per day. I’m very pleased to say that we are now in a position where we can offer the market a full range of systems that can compete with analogue but also offer the benefits
of digital’

To put Kornits print speed in context below is what you could expect out of their DTG system:

Avalanche – 400-800 garments per day

Atlas – 500-1,400 garments per day

Vulcan Plus – 700–2,000 garments per day

And below is what you could expect out of their roll to roll system:

Presto – 400–2,000 linear meters  per day

(all daily volumes are based on a B2B style business model)

From a run length point of view we also need to consider what’s happening to our customers, the retailers. Their business model for a number of years now has been to drive pricing down to the lowest denominator and even look to Asia for even lower pricing. This is so they can fill their supply chain with as much variety as possible in the hope they sell it all. They have hedged their bets on the fact that production costs are so low it does not matter if they have excess stock. But the world we live in today is changing, the consumers are becoming more and more conscious of the environmental impact we are placing on the planet, with the textile industry being one of the worst offenders.

Oversupply is a major contributor to this issue. Why manufacture more than you need? The bigger problem of oversupply is leading retailers to offer more and more sale offers to get rid of excess stock. While on the face of it this is portrayed as a positive as retail is hitting reasonable sales figures (top line), but what’s the point if they have cut their margins by 50% (or more) in order to tempt the consumers to buy more textiles (than they probably need)? What impact is this having on their bottom line and more importantly what message does this send to the consumer? Why pay full price when you can wait one week and get 50% off for the same item! No wonder we are seeing more and more retailers struggling in the market. Sales is not the problem, profitability is and I suspect a bulging inventory has a lot to do with it.

The supply chain must change in order to preserve our customers' business – retail. If we look at the strengths of digital printing is there anything we can learn from the print on demand space? This is a sector of the market that is booming with more and more e-commerce businesses opening and offering clients customized fashion whilst running their business with minimal inventory. Rather than hold an infinite amount of SKUs, they simply hold a small range of base materials, all of which are transformed into a unique item with the addition of ink. While a traditional bricks and mortar store cannot adopt this method easily, they can however use this method to fill & replenish their supply chain, rather than guess what will sell, they can test the market and only replenish what’s popular, and the positive for us is this can only be fulfilled by local printers due to the tight turn arounds required.

Playford-Browne says ‘Kornit are committed to providing sustainable manufacturing, in an on demand world. Our digital technology is enabling print fulfillers around the world to achieve this through our market leading technology. Our process is simple; load, print & cure. Our inks have also gained global acceptance from the leading brands in terms of look, feel & durability, and the end to end process is far more sustainable than other technologies available on the market today’

In a challenging retail market there are certainly some tough times ahead but there are also opportunities to be had, consumers are demanding more sustainability, retailers are losing money, we as printers can benefit from this by offering a solution to
the problem.