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10 Things We Would Like to See in 2016

January 15th Show Audio

Please find some links and notes from the 2 Regular Guys Podcast. Terry and Aaron take a look forward at what we would like to see in the industry for the coming year. The ideas range from new products to new techniques, from sales forecasts to better ways to deal with employees. Tune into this yearly show when we review our thoughts from the previous year and give you our impressions of the coming year.

Sponsored by: Equipment Zone

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10 Things We Would Like to See in 2016

Discussion of past industry changes

Aaron: Last year, Mark Coudray shared an interesting list of industry changes over the decades. I think these are well worth repeating.

  1.     Tshirt 1.0 = Automation in the 70s and 80s
  2.     Tshirt 2.0 = Desktop Publishing 80s and 90s
  3.     Tshirt 3.0 = Marketing going Digital Today

Digital age has taken over paper, and moving well into garments and Industry seems to be innovating again.

1)     Terry: Pinocchio’s for good and bad information like in politics. There is so much bad information, misinformation, and one that bugs me, not exactly bad info or misinformation but… “This is the only way to do this.” Last year I talked about more professionalism in the industry. This goes along those lines, but a way for all the newbies (and there are more and more which is encouraging) to weed through the mountain of information available today. The latest flat out lie I’ve heard more than once recently is, “You don’t need to heat set the ink when you use our DTG printer.”

Aaron Note – The Facebook Group are pretty crazy too. It’s like a mafia family and you get some really interesting people and I think most of the people who do have good info avoid them because of all the infighting and drama.

2)     Aaron: Last year I had talked about Heat Transfer Paper and there are definitely some progressions made here, but there is still a ways to go. I won’t call it a DTG killer, but certainly I think you will find the things in the works that we could see in 2016 will make for a nice alternative or gateway into the DTG world.

3)     Terry: Last year I talked about direct-to-screen for the small to medium shop. Currently, machines on the market are targeting that 50+ screens a day customer. (Greg Kitson says he can show me the data that 25 screens can be economical)  I think it’s going to happen this year… direct-to-screen for the masses.

4)     Aaron: I’d like to see the big Japanese player really start to innovate and take some risks. Epson made a nice stride with the F2000, but it is still the same unit with no new news of developments, now you have Ricoh in the space with the purchase of AnaJet, plus companies like OKI who are in our industry, Mimaki, Roland etc. Time to make something that will truly change the industry. Bleeding edge as Scott Fresener used to call it.

5)     Terry: I’m going to reference last year again when I said I’d like to see 100% poly capability with DTG. There’s some positive experimentation by our friend Brian over at Image Armor. But this year I want to add what I think is a more important option, printing on performance wear. This is a double issue, in fact, 1st printing on 100% man-made fabric, and 2nd dealing with the high temperature required of current DTG inks and the inability of most of these fabrics to take this heat.

6)     Aaron: I’d like to see a really innovated, bright and even young (or young at heart) person take over SGIA. Michael Robertson has announced his retirement and the search is on for his replacement. Mike did a fantastic job during his time with the organization, but I’m looking forward to seeing someone take over who will look at the industry as a whole, not just the different segment (Like screen vs digital). (Can lead right into #7)

7)     Terry: I would like to see companies who focus on helping newbies get started also have some conversations about the other facets of starting a business beyond buying equipment and learning how to decorate a garment. Maybe at the very least direct these new additions to resources in business, marketing, pricing, etc.

8)     Aaron: I’m still going to say that I’d like to see better use of Social media by our industry. You have some really good people out there pushing this like Jay Busselle, but yet many of even the largest players in our industry don’t get it. People just went crazy over Seth Godin at the recent PPAI show. While he is an awesome speaker and truly is someone to follow and base your marketing on, it just feels like we are so late to the boat.

9)     Terry: I think it would be interesting for screen printers who are also doing DTG for short runs, to have a custom built platen that could work on the DTG printer then locked into perfect registration on a screen printing press. This would add the advantage that screen printers enjoy now with adding specialty inks such as puffs, suedes, gels, etc. I’m picturing flash curing the DTG print on the screen printing press, adding the specialty highlight product, and then curing the entire image on a conveyor dryer. I think this makes more sense than some of the examples of trying to screen print the under base and then adding DTG on top. And, this in reality would be a fairly easy proposition for someone with experience using both processes.

10)  Aaron: Probably similar to my changing of the guard desire from last year, but I think we as an industry need to really promote and get behind building relationships, and stop with the hiding of information, putting your competitors down and have a new school outlook on the way business should be done. I want people to look at challenges, obstacles and opportunity and try to find a way for all parties involved to win. Collaborate, work together and keep our industry moving in the right direction. If you look at some of the futuristic movies, we will all be out of work someday as everyone wears the exact same clothes, so we need to work together to keep personalization alive.

Chat Log:

ErichCampbell: Can’t wait to see what the new printers bring. More competition should fuel more innovation. 🙂

ErichCampbell: Woohoo- back in the chat. Got stuck out due to technical difficulties. 😉

ErichCampbell: Happy that I could still listen in on the phone line.

ErichCampbell: Great ideas you guys had- love the idea of encouraging new blood and innovations

ErichCampbell: And I like the idea of mounting garments in a way to do more multimedia- very cool.

ErichCampbell: Can’t stress enough that the marketing and social media angle is hugely important- seeing ourselves as solution providers and partners in our customers’ companies not just commodity garment providers is so key.

ErichCampbell: That’s the reason I’ve always been working on education- we can all do more innovation and find niches for each other.

ErichCampbell: Good show, guys! I’ll be listening back on what I missed. You have to love technical difficulties. 🙂

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Terry’s Books

Screen Printing: A Practical Guide to Starting Your Own T-Shirt Business Just $4.95 as an e-book.

Direct to Garment: A Practical Guide to Starting Your Own T-Shirt Business Just $4.95 as an e-book.

Scheduling and Estimating Production Time for Garment Screen Printing Just $2.99 as an e-book

Equipment ZoneThis show is brought to you for a full hour by: Equipment Zone, with 20 years experience selling garment printing equipment nationwide. Equipment Zone offers the new Epson F2000 SureColor direct-to-garment printer, their own VelociJet-XL DTG printer, and the all new SpeedTreater-TX automatic pretreat machine with a full 16”x24” pretreat area. Introductory price is $3,995. Equipment Zone also carries a full line of DTG inks and supplies. Go to EquipmentZone.com

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