T-Shirts and Technology Meet at ISS
The old adage that image is everything certainly proved true at the Imprinted Sportswear Show, held Jan.14–16 at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, Calif.
The decorated-apparel show brought together legions of screen printers, embroiderers, equipment providers and blank apparel manufacturers such as Hanes and American Apparel. All were driven by the desire to reproduce images on apparel with maximum quality and minimum cost.
Run by VNU Business Media, ISS Long Beach boasted a 10 percent increase in attendance, with approximately 13,000 verified buyers attending over the course of the weekend, according to Art Ellis, group vice president of apparel.
“This show is a barometer for how the year is going to be,” Ellis said. “The increase would typically mean that this industry is going to have a strong year.”
Four hundred and sixty exhibitors showed, he added.
Image quality was not the only issue looming over the decorated-apparel market. The industry is awaiting an impact from the lifting of trade quotas with China, said Chris Casey, publisher of Impressions, a trade publication for the imprinting industry and a cosponsor of the show.
“It’s a scramble to figure out what the impact is going to be,” Casey said. “What drives the bulk of this market is the basic white Tshirt that gets screen printed, which already costs one-third of what it cost 10 years ago.”
Outsourcing to various overseas manufacturers has dropped the wholesale price of the average cotton T-shirt to 90 cents, and it remains unclear, with shipping costs and duty taxes, if Chinese manufacturers could drop that price even lower, Casey said.
Whatever the effect, Casey noted it is primarily a sourcing issue that is at stake. “Our brands will stay our brands,” he said.
The Chinese are also channeling more embroidery machines into the market. “They’re establishing whole new price points to get into this business,” he added.
The booth of Tajima, the industry’s leading manufacturer of embroidery machines, buzzed with activity. While there are no new groundbreaking technologies in the field, said spokesperson Jimmy Lamb, there are ample refinements.
Tajima’s latest machines, which sell from $12,000 to $59,000, now incorporate a feedback system to verify commands and ensure greater sewing accuracy. New USB ports allow designers to work on a laptop, plug it into a machine and start stitching garments immediately. Speed has increased by 30 percent on newer machines, which are designed to run continuously without needing to be shut down.
Though still a small segment in the market, sublimation printing clearly generated the most excitement at ISS. Sublimation is a relatively low-cost way to print any computer graphic on an apparel garment. It allows easy changes and graphics customization. Because the image is fused to the fabric at the molecular level, the print will not fade, no matter how many times the garment is laundered.
And sublimation is relatively cost-effective. “It allows short runs that are super-personalized and individual without a huge amount of start-up cost,” said Beth Santilli, marketing and communications manager for Sawgrass Technologies, which develops special digitally transferable sublimation inks.
With a computer, printer and heat press, a new designer can start making sublimated apparel, Santilli said. And with just a minor tweak of the image on the computer, each garment can be unique.
That is leading to a “democratization of decorating technology,” said Christopher Bernat, who left Sawgrass Technologies to form Source Substrates, a provider of polyester performance apparel for sublimation graphics. “The market is pushing towards sublimation because we’re dealing with this whole customization trend.”
The performance apparel market is expected to rise from $200 million to $450 million this year, Bernat said.
Sublimation’s main drawback is that it only works on polyester fibers. That limitation has created a mad rush to develop techniques that mimic sublimation for cotton apparel.
“Everybody’s chasing the black cotton T-shirt decorating solution,” Bernat said. “Will 2005 be the year that it happens? I don’t know.”
One company that offered a solution was The Paper Ranch, which unveiled a product called Photo Trans Image Clip, designed by Neenah Papers. The product, which Paper Ranch distributes, allows the closest thing to digital screen printing on cotton garments currently available, according to the company. Paper Ranch’s booth was packed throughout the weekend with young designers.
“This technology is wonderful for people who need customization and want to take full advantage of digital technology,” said Paper Ranch President Linda Buettner. Like sublimation, the technology allows minor changes in color and design that are normally costprohibitive in screen printing.
“There’s nothing more better, durable or more vibrant than sublimation,” Buettner said. “But there’s a great demand for cotton garments, and this is the best thing to use on them.”
