It would seem that if you are in printed business for 13 years and even take a leading position in the segment of the digital printing market in the capital, the opening of another unit in the printing house should not bring a lot of trouble. But not everything is so simple: you have to learn about the capricious fabrics and machines, find new customers and, perhaps, to start your sewing shop. What you need to take into account the newcomer in this business?
The main direction of our holding existing since 2006 and began with a small typography, is classic printing with orientation to advertising and book-magazine products of the full cycle. We have not experienced a shortage of clients - even in difficult 2020 we had up to 5,000 orders in the season. Nevertheless, after analyzing two years ago, our client base, interviewing and segmented by customers, we understood: a request for printing on the tissues appeared. At the market at that moment, players were already attended, but in general, Niche was not massive.
Today, the share of printing on the tissues in the company's business is about 10%. In 2020, we even increased the turnups by 30% compared with the previous year, and the revenues in this segment grew by 72% - the Covide did not prevent, on the contrary, he made a trigger to increase the number of orders. Because the market of fabric and clothing - in principle the growing market, and if inserted into it, it gives a good return, although it is very difficult. Despite the fact that everyone "planted" on the houses in the spring and the need for new clothes should seem to have to decline, the opposite occurred. When all restrictions were removed in the summer, orders became much more. People are always important to be able to show their individuality, especially after a forced seating locked, and clothes are one of the most important tools for this. Our wholesale customers engaged in tailoring (by the way, not only clothes, but also other textiles), they know well. But we ourselves also did not yawned - immediately settled the production of cotton two-layer masks: first for themselves, and then for construction companies.
But back at the time of the start of the business. The following customer balance was gradually installed: 40% of wholesalers, 30% online stores of textile products with prints, such as Prinio, online stores of children's bed linen and the remaining 30% are advertising agencies, designers of their own clothing lines, etc. Retail is also possible, but it will be more expensive. Initially, we printed orders and less than 20 meters, but then they realized that it was unprofitable. Our target client is a permanent petty wholesale, it is important to us how much it prints per month. It is under it that all system solutions are made. Although, in principle, we are ready to fulfill any order, the question will be only in price, so that 2-3 meters we can do if it is a permanent order, and 5-10 meters, if it is one, but it will be much more expensive.
Fabric and printing fabricThe need for cloths from customers is different: someone needs only natural fabrics (cotton, flax), and someone is only synthetic. Accordingly, it dictates and choose the technique: printing machines on natural and synthetic tissues are also different. And the method itself is different: natural fabrics are direct printing, and the synthetic of all kinds is sublimation. The latter requires two machines: First, the drawing is printed on a roll of paper on one machine, and then the paper is refilled in the second (calender), where the sublimation process takes place: under pressure of the press at high temperature, the paper "gives" its drawing of the fabric.
The difference in printed machines is related to how the paint penetrates into the fabric. Natural fabrics absorb water-based ink, the weaving itself in the canvas ensures complete penetration of the paint in the "flesh" of the tissue. The synthetics of the same paint is transferred only with severe heating.
There is a lot of subtleties in the printing process. First, if your "genuine" fabric is not 100% natural and contains at least 3% synthetics, the print quality can be very different from the necessary, therefore, any "non-standard" fabric must be tested before erased. Therefore, it is worth working with only proven suppliers so that there are no surprises. But the presence of synthetics in knitwear, for example, in a footer or melange trees, does not interfere with the print.
Secondly, "Washing", or "disappeared," tissue depends on its density. For example, from Canvas (rather thick fabric) sew bags and aprons (for restaurants), and if they wash them in the car, they will get a slightly pale hue, the effect of the composition will turn out. Therefore, such products are ordered mainly for promoters, for home use (let's say, tablecloths) it does not fit. In addition, some fully natural fabrics have a factory impregnation, which can prevent complete adhesion of the web, and the print color reproduction will have deviations.
Thirdly, you will never find absolutely white cotton. Even the most white of them has a certain Panton (the name of the color in the adopted standardized classification system of colors). On flax and cotton, with a complete capture of the color background, the outdation will be 1-2%, so we prefer to use your own fabric color as a background.
Fourth, printing on natural fabrics should take into account the type of web (cloth or knitwear), as well as the amount of threads in the row. From the knitwear, we print on a two-minute footer, Kulirka, Interlock, and the footer is only a "double-room", since the "three-line" is very "climbing", the car is quickly clogged with "Pooh" and may fail.
Fifth, such a type of fabric, like a cotton coalir, for example, requires very good quality raw materials, and this already depends on the greed of the manufacturer. Of the 15 initial suppliers, we have undressed for two hands. Perhaps they used recycling, and more rigid tissue are obtained from it, and this rigidity in the thread does not allow paint to penetrate it, the seal lies rudely. It is also problematic to sew from such materials too: products "crawl" is incorrectly stretching. All this we found out the method of trial and errors.
In general, knitted materials with a very smooth surface are suitable for digital widescreen printing. It depends on the length of the fibers in the threads. The highest grade is an extrapince, we use it. Knitted fabrics of lower varieties (cards, open end) have a strong pile on the surface and to the capture are unsuitable. This we also found out the experienced way.
The print quality is measured in pixels (for cotton, for example, it is 360, 540, 720, 1080dpi), but in fact uniform quality standards do not exist, they are not developed, the segment has not created its own standards. It often happens that "not very" comes out on paper, and when transferring to the fabric is excellent. Therefore, the main benchmarks are a color barrix and a signal sample.
Machines for printFor printing on natural fabrics, with which we started two years ago, we chose Mimaki TX300P-1800. The model has proven itself well. It does not cause trouble, the head change is the main wearing element - is made under warranty. Machine maintenance includes mandatory cleaning after each shift and each type of fabric. Most of all, by the way, "flies" from the footer. Once a year, such a car must pass with a master specialist from the company.
When they decided to start typing and on synthetic tissues, the question of buying a widescreen sublimation printer, especially calender (thermopress) we already had. Focused on the amount of factors: print quality, the ability to work without an operator in the night shift, the possibility of producing innovative products. We decided to take Epson Surecolor F9400N with fluorescent inks, as we see the growth of the request for bright prints. In addition, the company-supplier suggested favorable installments. The printer can even be left included for a long time - the paint does not dry out in dunes (holes on the head, through which ink fly), because once at 12 o'clock the printer rins the head with a minimum ink head. This is generally a more sparing option than deep cleaning after a long shutdown, which can adversely affect the head resource. In Epson printers, in contrast to the equipment of other companies, there are only "native" heads, and the original viscosity inks and the flow rates are selected just for them, so we did not have to "bother" with the setting.
A drawing on paper is printed on this printer (it, by the way, costs from 7,000 rubles per roll of 400 meters long). The price of paper fluctuates together with the euro course - we have not yet produce products for due quality, so you have to buy mainly in European manufacturers.
Next, the roll of the sealed paper pattern is transferred to the calender, where it is seal on the fabric by sublimation. We have the Titanjet RTX3-1600PU model, we have been working for two years - from the very beginning we were used to dry natural tissues. The car was very reliable.
The entire workshop serves 3 printers, one auxiliary worker and a storekeeper. We keep our warehouse of the most running fabrics: natural - satin, percal, hawk, footer, Len, Canvas, Satin, Kulirka; Synthetic - adverd, gabardine, taffeta, biflex, "niagara", chiffon, pearl chiffon, "Düspo", "Milano", synthetic atlas and others.
The room together with the showroom and the warehouse takes about 100 square meters. m. Separately "lives" design studio. Freelancers cooperate with it: they adapt images, make layouts for both fabrics and printed products.
"All this should be sewing!"On natural fabrics, demand as a whole is more in rolls, and the synthetic is most in demand in finished products. It turned out that working with sublimation, it is better to fulfill the full cycle of work - from printing to sewing and shipping to the customer. When we just started to build a funnel for customers, thought only to add a sublimation machine. But it turned out quickly that simply the wholesale sublimation is not needed by the market - you need ready-made products. In addition, one day, I almost did not let down the contractor on the sewing, and we decided to make your own sewing shop - dependent on third-party services turned out to be unsafe. Today, two people work in this workshop. We sew masks, aprons, shoppers, pillowcases, blankets, t-shirts, sweatshoes, gift bags, shawls.
We work with clients throughout Russia and the former allied space - from Moscow to Yekaterinburg, from Kaliningrad to Azerbaijan, in a huge variety of cities and even villages of Russia and neighboring countries. We cooperate with all transport companies, but the main - "SDEK" and "Business Lines". The classic typographic business depends on the season (it is important to take into account in the logistics that most orders fall on November-December), but there is no printing on the tissues. Here is the season all year round.
How do we find customers? When there was still a "peaceful", docking life, we participated in exhibitions: "Textiles", "Textiles of Russia", "Inzhmash", "Intercan" and others. Today, in the era of Online, the social networks became one of the main tools of promotion - whatever you have a beautiful and understandable site, one is already not enough, and there is no less than six months on its promotion. We are represented in Instagram and Facebook, where we are found by hashthegam: # printing, # printing machine, # Pechnakhoplopka and others. We yourself are looking for customers there, we offer them our services. We also conduct online webinars for potential and regular customers, tell about our innovations. Only in 2020 out of 50 regular customers 5 came to us from social networks.
Chief CouncilOpening a print business on the fabric, it is better, of course, to have experience in business at all. If there is no experience, it is not worth risking. And if there is, you must first of all deal with the target audience - it is important to remember that in Moscow and the regions it will be different. And although high-quality equipment is definitely a condition for success, it is not necessary to start not from his choice, but with an understanding of who you are working for. Customer hurry is not easy, they seem to be blurred, it is necessary to understand how to find them and how to reach them. From this will depend on the promotion channels, with which segment you will work. One channel (forms, the official site-lending) is clearly not enough. We must already own the marketing techniques, to understand the press technology and think immediately over the optimization of costs - do not hire a lot of people: the average turnover of the companies in this segment of the market is only 1-2 million rubles per month. The next step is already large textile production, where the number of equipment immediately grows. And the printing machines are only two species, without an average of: small performance (they differ in models and widths - 1.6 m, 1.8 m, 2.2 m) or immediately machines for industrial volumes. Therefore, a very small company can, of course, can be discovered if the owner is ready to combine sales, technologist and a cleaner in his face.
Well, it is worth thinking above the title. Its - "Cherry Pie" - we chose precisely because it is absolutely not typographical, but it causes pleasant heat associations, happiness and at the same time: "What are the pies?" It immediately made our positioning completely individual, such a name was remembered. Then a reputation on the quality of work was added: today in Moscow we are a leading company in the technological possibilities of printing.