The Challenges of a Digital Textile Printing Pioneer

In the big world of digital printing is a small group of companies that are enduring the challenges and pioneering an entirely different aspect of printing. What was the traditional and rarely changing textile printing industry 15 years ago has been brought into the 21st century in style using modified digital paper printing technology to create entirely new looks on fabric and opening new markets that were never possible before. One of those small companies is my own called GooneyBird's Digital Textile Printing-A Customization Company which is operated by my husband Billy and I. The challenges we are faced with daily include finding and educating our markets and changing their paradigms, limitations of materials, testing requirements, the current pace of technology, and our own set of challenges in making a small digital company grow successfully in this new world.

Our first challenge is to find or teach the right market about our capabilities. Finding our primary market was easy. While strolling along with my second child at places such as Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and other child friendly locations, our "market" noticed my child covered with a digitally printed keepsake baby blanket with personal photographs of family printed all over it. This eye catching blanket was created by my staff for my second baby shower during my career with Mattel, Inc. where I headed the in-house digital textile printing group. This blanket received so much attention I started taking names and numbers and went into business in April 2000 after purchasing the Mutoh Accuplot and the Jacquard Fabric Printing System.

While our primary market is a market we refer to as "crafts," we also print for apparel, toys, and home furnishing companies for their prototyping needs. Other customer include professional photographers, especially wedding photographers for keepsake pillows and special projects. Our special project market includes museum pieces and some small production companies who need much less yardage then the traditional textile printing industry requires.

One belief that our crafts market has is "do it myself." These people are creative individuals and know a lot about quilting, sewing, crafts, and using the latest methods to achieve the latest looks in home creations. This means that I need to change their paradigms of 1) all personal images are iron on heat transfers, 2) all printed fabric should be $7.00 or less at the local fabric store, and 3) any images of my children are great photographs. It is hard to be objective when it comes to your own children.

The more software savvy crafters and artists have paradigms to overcome such as 1) 8-12 color limitations, 2) desktop printer size limitations, and 3) 1mm line thickness limitations.

However our biggest challenge within the crafts market is the length of time it takes to get an order ready for production. The client must collect and be completely satisfied with the photographs before ordering, which we have found takes 4-6 months. We give guidelines for clarity and position to ensure a good quality of print. This often challenges the crafter himself creating a longer development cycle.

Our second challenge is understanding the pros and cons and varying characteristics of the materials in the market today. The pre-treated fabrics currently available are rarely the fabrics that our clients want. Many of the calls we receive are from small companies just starting out or haute couturiers who can charge a much higher price for their products. These people want production on a higher quality of fabric. Our challenge is to gain the client's confidence and to demonstrate our capabilities of digital printing on the fabrics the designer requests. This is very difficult when the pre-treatment vendors requirements are more than the designer needs. This leads to complications and lack of confidence in achieving the color specifications because a print proof sample is unavailable.

If we are going to move this industry forward into the mainstream, then costs of consumables such as ink and pre-treated fabrics must come down. Fabrics must be more consistently pre-treated right to the end of the bolt so no fabric is lost. Some fabrics even shrink considerably after steaming and washing which need to be considered prior to printing. We learned this lesson the hard way. We printed 21 yards of fabric for a graphic artist for a 3 dimensional art piece for the Brooklyn Museum, measured each piece and matched up the panels then put each panel in the steamer. About 2 weeks after shipping, we received a call from the artist stating that the fabric was 2 inches shorter all around. The infrastructure built could not be modified so we stayed up all night making the necessary modifications and printing another 21 yards to meet the crucial deadline.

Other daily material challenges are inks that clog, print heads that drip, and color inconsistencies within the same roll of fabric. Many of the printers today must purge all the inks if only one line is clogged, which is an enormous waste of time and money. All of these need to be addressed by the technology companies for improvements which could save us a lot of time and money.

Our third challenge of testing is a very big topic on which I am not the expert. However I do know that if the digital textile printing industry wants to push forward and compete with the traditional textile printing industry for production, then we must understand and complete the testing as required or requested. Testing is a challenge for GooneyBird's because we are interested in printing production and creating our own line of products in the near future. Several organizations have very informative websites for you to do your own research. They work together so as not to overlap. The organizations of The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) have laws to follow for specific products primarily apparel and home furnishings. The other 2 organizations, The American Association of Textile Colorists and Chemists (AATCC) and The American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), give the guidelines and test methods to follow to achieve the proper results from the required or recommended testing.

The FTC requires manufacturers and importers to attach care instructions to garments and some piece goods that meet the requirements used by the AATCC. This is a law and the good thing is there are many exemptions that seem to fit the current product line within the small world of digital textile printing. Products sold for commercial use and worn by employees and garments made from material provided by the consumer only need a temporary care label but not a permanent one. The products or fabric must have had tests representing the actual wear of the product and cannot be given a "Dry Clean Only" label if the product can be washed.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission's Flammability Standard is a law and must be complied with or very large fines and restrictions can occur. The Flammable Fabrics Act states that all textiles for adult and childrenís wearing apparel and scarves must meet the flammability standard. The manufacture for sale, the sale, or the offering for sale in commerce of any product, fabric, or related material which fails to comply is prohibited.

The fabrics that are exempt are nearly all the fabrics that are currently in the digital textile printing market. The exemptions are plain surface fabrics, regardless of fiber content, weighing 2.6 oz per square yard or more and all fabrics (both plain surface and raised fiber surface) regardless of weight, made entirely from any of the following fibers or entirely from a combination of these fibers: acrylic, modacrylic, nylon, olefin, polyester, and wool.

How does this affect the digital textile printer? If we begin producing products that make it to a retail chain, they may and have the right to ask that those products meet the standard laws and codes and the test results should be available to them if they ask. As printers, we are not ultimately responsible unless we are also sewing the product. More research needs to be done within these organizations to clearly define who should be responsible for the testing because we are left with many questions such as, after pre-treatment and paper backing do they still meet the same codes as the fabric manufacturers original results or does application of the printing process modify the testing in anyway therefore making the printer responsible for some of those tests? The sewing manufacturer has the final responsibility for having the results however they are not necessarily responsible for completing all the tests.

As a printer I want to be mindful of the laws, regulations, and standards, do the testing whenever required, and keep all the records on file.

Nearly every industry today has challenge number four -Keeping up with technology improvements and changes. With ink and pre-treatment improvements, upgrades on color management and RIP software, faster computers, and hardware advancements, we face cost and time issues daily. We have to ask ourselves questions with each new improvement, "is this going to improve our output"? We also have to examine where this improvement will leave us when the next improvement takes place. Billy believes we should never buy technology when it is first introduced. He prefers to let them work out the solutions to the bugs and then purchase. In the digital world this can be a very short waiting period but can eliminate many of the headaches.

Last but not least is our challenge of what it takes personally to make this business a success. This includes changing our own paradigms of working for large companies with benefits and security, to being self motivated and goal oriented and taking ownership of and being held accountable for all the decisions with a higher level of risk and with a higher level of return. I believe that everyone can learn what it takes to get things started but only the love and the passion for digital textile printing will keep your endurance in these challenging times. What we have in GooneyBird's is rare for the digital printing industry. Billy is the software guru, color matching expert, and mechanical genius so he leaves the fun part of marketing and design to me. I have a degree in textiles with a design concentration from Colorado State University and understand both the traditional textile printing industry and the production sewing industry. With our very different specialties, we bring expertise in many different areas.

In conclusion, we need the industry to lower costs on consumables, create a way to pre-treat our own samples that will yield the same results as having it done in a pre-treatment facility, improve the hardware to eliminate the drips and bleed the lines individually, and create a guideline by the experts on laws and standards to follow for testing. This industry is here to stay and if we are going to take digital textile printing to the next level then we need more interaction between the technology experts and the printing companies so our needs are met.

We pioneers have all said it before but I am going to share it again: digital textile printing is not only about creating the same products with a different technology but about creating entirely new products. Feel the passion and get inspired!