Going for Garment Gold

Garment printing has never been more relevant than for in-plants in the academic sphere. For some school districts and universities, it’s an untapped market that is helping in-plants increase revenue streams, retain customers and prove that their value resides in more than just ink on paper.

Garment printing is not a new service, but it seems to be gaining traction. If you’ve been to a conference in the past year, you’ve probably seen a t-shirt printing demo and heard about the advantages of adding garment printing to your in-plant.

“I always keep my ears open to what other shops are doing to expand their services,” says Drew Burgering, manager of Printing and Copying Services at Valdosta State University. “The last couple of conferences I’ve been to over the last couple of years, I’ve heard that people are doing it.”

Give the People What they Want

Burgering, who added a Brother GT-381 to his Valdosta, Ga., in-plant’s repertoire in late July, decided it was time to add garment printing after speaking to other departments on campus and discovering a demand for t-shirts. For Burgering, keeping services on campus is important, but keeping faculty and students coming back to Printing and Copying Services is equally crucial.

“Eventually they’re going to say, well we’re already going outside to get all this other stuff done, why do we have to come inside to get this done,” Burgering points out. “Why not go outside for everything? I had some extra funds, so I decided to take the leap.”

As with any business model, the more options a service provider offers, the more business—and repeat business—the provider will subsequently experience. A customer may hear about garment printing and in the process find out more about all of the other printing services that are available.

“Having it in our portfolio has opened up other things for us,” admits Alvin Griffin, director of the Graphic Production Center for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, in Charlotte, N.C., which added an Anajet mPower mP10 a few years ago. “So you can sell them a shirt, but a lot of times you’re going to end up selling them something on paper with it.”

At Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Graphic Production Center, Debbie Alexander (left), color lab specialist, and Alvin Griffin, director, show off an apron and a shirt printed on the in-plant’s AnaJet mPower mP10 direct-to-garment printer.

Right of First Inquiry

Rodney Brown, manager of University Printing at the University of Delaware (UD), installed an Epson SureColor F2000 approximately seven months ago to add to the Newark, Del., in-plant’s services, and in turn increase revenue.

“The more [services] that you can offer increases your chances to get that person to come to you to ask where they can buy something first, before going somewhere else,” Brown insists.

Adding a service, such as garment printing, can also help make up for revenue that is directed somewhere else in our dynamic digital society. Lisa Hoover, director of the Office of Publications, Print and Mail in the Communications Division at Bucknell University, just added a dye-sublimation system from Imprints USA that includes a 24˝ Epson printer and a heat press after looking at the service during trade shows. The printer creates a transfer sheet using dye-sublimation inks and that image is then transferred to shirts or other garments with the heat press. Even though the Lewisburg, Pa., operation has only tested different garment printing techniques, Hoover feels that in-plants need to look for ways to keep up with shifts in the industry to survive.

“The need for printing is ever-changing, and certain types of jobs that used to be printed have now gone electronically or [to] other methods to communicate that information,” says Hoover. “It’s always good to look for things that can replace those revenue streams that were lost.”

Replacing Lost Revenue

Across the board, in-plants are facing the reality that, like it or not, the print industry is changing, and it’s necessary to consider new services to stay relevant.

“Whether it be digital or offset, we seem to be doing less and less [printing] each year,” Brown admits. “So we’re just looking at another way of making some type of revenue. … I think most of us are self-supporting, so we have to find additional ways to make revenues.”

Before adding a service like garment printing however, in-plants should know what they’re getting into.   

“Do your homework. Just like you would do if you were going out and buying a car, or a press, or a copier,” Griffin advises. “Just make sure that you’ve done all of the math, so that you will be able to get the return on investment that you’re projecting.”

Griffin suggests administering surveys to gauge the potential volume of orders. He also recommends checking the space and temperature of the room where the equipment will be housed to ensure that your plant can handle the new equipment.

“The cost of buying the equipment can be fairly drastic,” Brown warns. “You can get into t-shirt printing, depending on what equipment you buy, for maybe around $5,000, or you can go up as high as $20,000, depending on what you’re trying to do with it. But know what you’re going to do with the equipment.”

The UD team is now receiving roughly one order of t-shirts per week, with orders ranging from 25 to 50 pieces. Shirts can be produced in approximately six minutes per shirt, including treatment. While the team mostly takes on short-run orders, it has handled an order of 105 shirts at one time. The Epson is capable of running 22 shirts per hour once it is up and running in four-color and handles all of the team’s cotton t-shirt work, as well as calendars and puzzles.

For polyester shirts or any plastics, such as name tags or golf bag tags, Brown and his team rely on a dye-sublimation system from Imprints USA, which the in-plant added approximately three months ago. Similar to Bucknell’s system, it includes a Ricoh digital printer to create transfer sheets and a heat press to seal the image into garments.

Dye-sub vs. Direct-to-garment Printing

Brown explains that if you could do strictly polyesters, the dye-sublimation system is an economical choice; it is faster and about one-third of the price of a direct-to-garment printer. However, Brown admits that the direct-to-garment printing probably costs a little less in the long run. The cost to purchase polyester shirts is substantially more than buying cotton shirts in bulk, and with polyester you’re limited in the color of shirts on which you can print.

“The key is that you sort of have to look around at the different materials and do testing until you really find one that you like,” Brown urges. “There are some shirts out there that are really soft [and] we just think that the softer the material is, the better it prints.”

If there is anything that Alvin Griffin has learned from adding garment printing, it is that there is a lot of trial and error to find out what works best, and that a smooth workflow comes with experience.

“The garment printing industry has really evolved in the last three or four years,” he says. “It is kind of complicated to make sure you have the right consumables here at the right time and you’re not overspending and getting into your profit margin by having a bunch of inventory sitting around. We’ve had to learn along the way.”