T-SHIRTS & TECH
In Search of Newness at the ISS Show
The name of the game for the T-shirt crowd this year is discovering a fresh take on blank tops.
Buyers were hunting for new colors, new fabrics, new silhouettes and new ways to imprint their T-shirts.
“Customers are excited about anything, even a new fabric,” said Young Shih, operations manager of Pima Apparel, a T-shirt company based in Ontario, Calif., that has been adding linen to the fabric mix of its T-shirts.
Pima Apparel was just one of some 350 exhibitors taking part in the annual Imprinted Sportswear Show, held Jan. 17–19 at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, Calif.
The exhibition features everything that has anything to do with the blank T-shirt business. Need a spangle machine? You can find one here. Planning to buy a rhinestone- transfer machine? There were several.
Wondering what’s the latest and greatest in silk-screen printers? This was the place to be.
Particularly popular on the exhibition floor were companies selling direct-to-garment printing machines. Think something that looks like a desktop printer capable of printing images on T-shirts using several ink colors.
Today’s direct-to-garment printers are faster and capable of printing on black fabric, not just white fabric. Printing heads are more durable.
“It is a fairly new niche,” said Tom Hopkins, regional manager at AnaJet Inc., a Costa Mesa, Calif., company founded in 2004. “The turning point [in the industry] was being able to print on black T-shirts. Now the machines have become better and faster.”
A desktop-sized AnaJet Sprint machine can print about 30 light-colored T-shirts or 15 to 18 dark-colored T-shirts an hour. At the show, it was selling for $9,950 for a used model to $13,950 for a brand-new machine. The company’s newer MPower5i model whips out 50 light-colored T-shirts and 25 dark-colored shirts an hour. At the show, it was going for $15,950 for a used version to $22,950 brand new.
Other companies at the show offering direct-to-garment printers included Bordeaux Digital Inc., Brother Intl. Corp., Epson and Kornit Digital.
Texture on top
T-shirt companies were busy touting new color schemes, textures and silhouettes to get customers through the door this year.
Hanesbrand Inc. last year introduced the Nano collection, which has 10 new vintage color offerings and five new silhouettes. “The Nano collection is fashion-forward, for the young consumer, for that Millennial,” said Andrew Verga, a Hanesbrand marketing manager.
The Nano collection has a vintage color palette and a garment-dyed look that guarantees color consistency and colorfastness, Verga said. The collection includes raglan-sleeve tops, three-needle stitching and contrast lining on the hoodies. The crew-neck tops have a V-notch in the front to give them a vintage feel.
American Apparel, the Los Angeles company that makes most of its garments in Los Angeles, went back to the 1950s with some of its new offerings.
American Apparel was introducing short, pleated skirts as well as circle skirts.
Other new items included club jackets—the kind your football-playing boyfriend wore in high school—that came in fleece or wool fashioned in a number of colors. The wool jackets, which also are available with leather sleeves, retail for $175.
Maud Massaad, an American Apparel sales representative based in Montreal, said the company was doing a lot of cropped tops, whether it was a spandex cropped top or a heavy terry cropped sweatshirt. “What is really in are the cropped tops,” Massaad said.
Bella + Canvas, another Los Angeles T-shirt company known for being trend driven, was introducing fabrics with lots of texture and more pop colors. The amount of fleece products was bumped up, too, said Kristin Mulligan, a national account manager at the company.
“This year we are seeing a lot of texture,” Mulligan said. “We have a marble-fabric collection. Marble sales are overtaking burn-out fabric sales. Marble is not as difficult to print on, and it’s made of a cotton and polyester yarn.”
New colors in the marble collection included maroon, black, royal blue, dark gray, light gray and a red/orange.
In the category of fleece, Bella + Canvas was introducing neon fleece, marble fleece, tri-blend fleece and digital fleece.
The company’s Flowy collection, which has a relaxed fit in lightweight fabrics, continues to do well, Mulligan said.
For many companies, the racer-back sleeveless tank top has been a popular silhouette recently. That was true at Cotton Heritage, headquartered in Commerce, Calif. “Racer-back tees are strong this year,” said Mickey Sachdeva, Cotton Heritage’s chief executive.
To add some newness to the company’s products, Sachdeva added more colors to its range of fancy fleece, such as salmon pink and ocean heather. “Buyers like the softer hand of the garment and the vibrancy of the colors,” he said. “We are doing a lot of business with the surf and skate crowd.”