Hello I'm Shoshana Burgett from Colorkarma, the creative hub for all things production.
And I am here with Carrie Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink,
the leading industry news and analysis site- 
-for all things manufacturing and printing.
There you go.
And we're here at we just finished the AATCC/SGIA Digital Textile Printing Conference.
Yeah. 
Takes us back to the 90s in printing,
when when the analog
to digital transformation was beginning to happen.
And there's so many synergy, not synergies, but you know 
Similarities
Similarities, yeah, between those days and now in terms of you know,
because the textile industry is really in its infancy.
Only about 6% worldwide of printed textiles are printed digitally.
What was interesting also in terms of the synergy, similarities from the 90s,
is back then you know we had Yellow Pages and books and marketing material,
and you ordered things, 20,000, 40,000 and you might have thrown out 60% of it.
Yeah
Where today, even when it kicked off, there was this assumption that digital was just going to replace the way they're doing it today,
with the rotogravure, but it's really not.
It's just gonna change and evolve no different than it did for us.
Yeah, it's sort of complementary technologies.
And you know, there there are a couple of couple of observations.
One is that, just like with commercial print, when digital came out,
designers, a lot of designers, don't
really understand nor are they being taught what the possibilities are.
So for example, in textiles, you know, if you're printing with screen, for example,
Yep 
You know, you can't have 47 colors. You just can't. You know?
And with digital, you can
have really an unlimited color palette to work with.
But if you have an unlimited color palette, it's not saying you can hit all the same colors in the gamut,
which was the same problem we had-
Right
-with graphic designers.
It's being able to say with this little device really,
I can hit a very broad brush set
of colors.
I just need to understand what colors I hit.
 Right
Whether or not the device has CMYK,
or adds different three colors or four colors to get a larger gamut.
But once you once you understand the technology and and Mike from Adobe, Mike Scrutton from Adobe, said it,
it's designing for the intent, leveraging your knowledge of what the technology is.
Yeah 
Because once you understand what
the technology is capable for,
then you're no longer bound by it.
Right
And creatives can now design around the technology.
Yeah, and the other part is
the the buyers, whether you know,
the brands or the merchandisers or whatever, and same thing happened in commercial print.
Where they think about the cost
per piece, as opposed to the total lifecycle cost.
And you know, they're that's the way they're compensated,
and incented and it's the way they've always done it.
But, you know, with digital you should be looking at the total lifecycle costs,
because like you said if you print, you know, 20,000 brochures,
or you make, 
I make, a 100,000 jackets,
And you throw half of it away, then your cost per piece is not what you thought it was.
And I may not throw them away for textiles, they might go to the discounts.
Yeah
But at the end of the day, I over produced 
Right
Because the determination of what the volume was was done months and months ago 
Right, right.
And we can't predict the weather anymore and, much worse than the weatherman did.
And then the other part is that you know, digital enables new applications that you couldn't do before.
Does this sound familiar to anybody? 
So new application, so
And so for example, the customization. You know? And I think about one one, this isn't printing,
but one example is Ralph Lauren and the sweaters, this was knitting.
So you can order a sweater with your school logo or whatever you want on it,
and have it made just for you, or you can make a pair of blue jeans that are 3D modeled sized for you.
Or you can go online and pick out a dress style and a pattern on a fabric, surface pattern on a fabric,
and a type of fabric and have it made just
for you.
Which you can't really do with rotogravure or screen.
But customize it, so the consumer can't pick every single color in the brand palette.
Right. 
They have five, six choices whatever it is.
But at the end of the day, I'm going in and I'm defining what that shoe would look like.
Then there's an emotional attachment for it and that is very different
and that actually enables quality to shift from being the requirement to the emotional.
Because, just like we did with print with
photo albums, and things like that,
the quality was not the same. But, you had, you know, mothers or friends saying
"but they made this great photo book for me." You have that emotional attachment.
And and you know, a lot of times the
producers or the owners
of the, you know, the brand or whatever, get caught up and you know, "I have to have this exact blue
because it's my color" and the consumer
just like in print, you know,
they don't get a piece of direct mail and say "oh the color is wrong," you know? So so it's
And also when they customize something
online, it's kind of a fun process
and it's made just for them and they're
not likely to return it,
a lot of times can't anyway on customize,
but you know, returns is such a huge huge problem in the industry and that basically goes away
because even if it's not exactly what they ordered,
"I customized it" 
Right
It's that emotional attachment. You know, quality is really important, but it's, I mean,
the gross margins you can get on customization,
the consumer loyalty, consumer engagements, taking pictures of it,
putting it on social, tagging it. It just opens up whole new world.
But that being said, there was a huge amount of conversation about color management, which is still very important.
Because you know, if it's gonna be red, you want it to at least be red.
Red, not orange.
Or rosy.
And you know, so color management, sustainability obviously is a huge topic.
And and also just, you know, getting the suppliers on board with, okay, you make this great printer,
but it's part of an ecosystem. And you really, we really need to all work together to make that ecosystem work better.
It's not just my printer and you know, we did that that, right? Finger pointing and 
Yeah
We don't need that.
And we heard the proprietary. Why are manufacturers proprietary? It's an ecosystem, open it up.
Yeah, yeah
Right?
That's that was one of the brands
said that's a reason they don't invest in digital,
was it was they felt it was closed and not open to connect to other things.
Sound familiar again?
Yeah
Although, I have to say that if when you compare commercial print to textiles,
textiles is a lot more complicated. The supply chain is more complicated.
The whole process is more complicated. I mean, you know, we in commercial print,
we talk about, you know, the paper and what you can you know, what technologies you can use to print on it.
And if it's inkjet you might need treatment or whatever.
But with textiles, it's a whole, it's a lot more complicated.
And there are a lot of different kinds
of functional coatings and treatments
that they do to fabric that that affect
the way the print comes out.
So some of it it you can't even do digital print with.
So, for example, there's a company that does micro encapsulation.
Yeah.
And in their case, 
Do you want to explain what that is?
Yeah, micro is those little tiny capsules that are treated into the fabric at the mill.
And when they break, they do certain things.
So, in this case, when they break, and this this was actually for bedding or for carpeting or whatever,
but when they break, they put little probiotics or whatever, but when they break, they put little probiotics
or whatever you want to call them that, that eat pet dander,
So, if you're allergic to pet dander, it it cuts that out of your carpet and your bedding and whatever.
But you can't you can't run that through a printer that's going to put pressure on it,
because it breaks it. So, you have to think about the whole purpose of what it is you're doing.
And is digital the right answer?
Is it analog? 
And is it a little both of both?
And they're gonna to live together for-
Yeah
-ever, I mean, really.
And you talked about the printers and
how it's it's different it's more complicated textiles.
You know with printers, we used to talk about inline finishing,
and I can pull a color sheet in a black and white sheet and I can pull different papers.
Where in textiles, if you used the same analogy, it's different textiles being pulled together.
Yeah
But some of the pages are being produced at different printers.
Yeah, yeah and they have to all match
And some printers are doing it all at the same time,
and some go to a whole different bindery.
So it really is it there's so many similarities, but the complexity has to do with volumes.
It has to do with the materials, the technology,
and capability and then pulling it into stitch, sew and all the other you know, other pieces
And the other the other thing that's happening,
is as, as the technology evolves, more of
that textile business that went overseas is coming back,
but it's coming back in a different form.
And there are beginning to emerge what you would call micro factories.
Yep.
Where it's vertically integrated and everything happens under one roof.
Even though we feel like we've done this before, it's exciting to be doing it again, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah.
 It really is, it's fun.
And now we have all the lessons. So we can come forward and say, "don't do that."
Yeah, don't do that.
That was painful, don't do that.
Go down that path.
Been there, done that, have the closet full of t-shirts, right?
So it was a fun two days.
Thanks for inviting me to speak with you. 
Thank you very much.
This is Shoshana Burgett from Colorkarma
And Cary Sherburne from WhatTheyThink, signing off.
Have a happy day.
