Photos courtesy Aurora Specialty Textiles Group
By Peter Saunders
While wide-format digital printing on vinyl has revolutionized the sign industry over the past few decades, the digital printing of fabrics is having an even more significant impact on businesses today, as the vast and diversified textile industry represents a much larger opportunity for inkjet technologies to address.
As Canada’s Digital Imaging Association (DIA) pointed out at a fabric-focused meeting in 2015, inkjet printing is enabling “a shift from heavily labour-based supply to digital premium applications, including roll-to-roll and direct-to-garment items, with fast delivery and an emphasis on creativity and quality.”
Last October, the Federation of European Screen Printers Associations (FESPA) held its second Chinese expo at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. Post-event surveys show 54 per cent of participants are involved in textile printing. The textile-focused conference sessions at FESPA China 2015, in particular, proved popular with attendees.
The high level of interest in digital textile printing continued the following month at the 2015 Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) Expo. Mark J. Shaneyfelt, director of print media sales and marketing for Aurora Specialty Textiles Group, presented a seminar titled Profitable Trends in Fabric Printing.
“The major trends we saw at the show include a dramatic increase in soft signage and wide-format fabric printing,” says Shaneyfelt. “There’s a growing awareness of the impact digital textile printing is having. This is a rapidly growing market and we see a multitude of new opportunities opening for everyone.”
“There’s been a big shift from analogue to digital in textile systems, including both dye sublimation and direct inkjet printers,” says Dan Marx, SGIA’s vice-president (VP) of markets and technology.
Where growth is happening
Shaneyfelt cites global industry studies estimating 1 billion m2 (10.8 billion sf) of textiles were digitally printed in 2015 and forecasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 per cent or more through 2019. Of this growth, 75 per cent will fall within the soft signage category, ranging from trade show displays (see page 32) to banners to framed graphics to point-of-purchase (POP) graphics.
“Based on the projected market data, demand for soft signage is one of the strongest growth segments in the printing industry,” he says. “Textiles have begun to take centre stage and the transition is not slowing down.”
Digitally printed textiles are a major draw for customized home decor.
One market where this trend is particularly visible is retail, where many marketers are choosing fabrics to give their promotional graphics a sense of elegance. In addition to the natural drape, look and feel of fabrics, retailers also benefit from the materials’ low weight and flexibility, which allow graphics to be inexpensively shipped and stored, easily handled and stretched to fit around curves and angles.
“Every surface is an advertising opportunity,” says Shaneyfelt, “and textiles are more forgiving than other materials during installation. There are also systems that use frames and silicone gaskets to provide leeway for the fabric so it fits snugly, preventing it from looking baggy. Some knits have a stretch component, but this can be an issue when they’re being run through the printing equipment. There’s a learning curve, but signmakers who are wary at first become comfortable with it.”
At trade shows, too, exhibitors benefit from lower costs for shipping and assembling booths that combine fabrics with framing systems. Given how the flexibility of fabrics also makes them more abrasion-resistant than vinyl graphics, they are proving better at surviving busy trade shows without damage, allowing the graphics to be reused at other events in the future.
“You can fold up fabric trade show booth graphics with some bubble wrap between them to avoid hard creases and you’ll get a lot of life out of them,” says Shaneyfelt.
For the same reasons of durability and ease of transport and setup, fabric graphics are also becoming more popular outdoors at concerts, festivals and sporting events. In some cases, they are attached directly to existing structures, e.g. wall murals; in others, they are stretched across portable framing systems.
