ImagesMagUK_Digital_Edition_March_2018

www.images-magazine.com MARCH 2018 images 27 DECORATOR PROFILE with T-shirt orders running into six figures over ‘cyber weekend’ alone. Then there is the four-person IT team that’s constantly at work on the internal IT systems and APIs. “On a busy day, we might send out 20,000 parcels. To do that efficiently and make money out of it you need to be really streamlined,” says Andy. “We’re almost more IT than T-shirts nowadays. It has to be technology-driven, which is why we spent a six-figure sum on the servers and technology to get to this level.” From the Breeze to the Vulcan The brothers’ first DTG printer was an Epson-based model from DTG Digital Europe. “One of our screen printing clients wanted a personalised project. It was hard work, really hard work, but it made us understand that something was going to happen here,” recalls Andy. The next purchase was a Kornit Breeze, which rapidly became three Breezes, then two Storms. Then in 2014, the big shift happened with the purchase of two Avalanches. The current Avalanches, which were upgraded to R-Series models in 2017, will be upgraded again this year to the HD-Series machines that were launched at the beginning of the year. Given that the company purchases 12 tonnes of ink a year, the 30% ink savings promised by the new HDs – one of which it’s currently beta testing – makes the upgrade a no-brainer. Using large-volume DTG printers such as the Kornit Avalanche rather than daisy- chaining smaller DTG machines is a hotly debated topic in the industry. Sun Frog in the US famously has huge numbers of Brother DTG machines, and is always hailed as an example of successful daisy- chaining. “We have this conversation here all the time, and it’s really difficult,” says Andy. “There is no right answer. BMW or Mercedes, which is better?” (Someone from the IT team immediately chips in: “BMW”.) “But how much is the ink? For an A4 print on a [Brother] GTX, I was told it was about a dollar fifty, so it’s over a pound. I’m not going to tell you how much mine costs per garment, but it’s significantly less than that.” The counter-argument is that if a Kornit breaks down, then the loss in production is more significant than if a small machine in a chain breaks. “Across the whole of our machines in the UK and Holland, we lost a total of six hours of production in November and December last year,” Andy reveals. “Six hours is nothing. We look after our machines. We have full-time engineers here who have been trained by Kornit and can strip the machines down and make them work.” The current line-up of 10 Avalanches in the UK and six in the Holland facility is sufficient to handle production… For now. The company knows what growth is needed in the next couple of years because its team carefully tracks the growth and prospects of its customers. And even without taking on any new customers in the next year, new machines will be required, with space already set aside in the new unit to accommodate them. The new machines will include a Kornit Vulcan, which is said to be capable of printing 250 shirts an hour. “It’s an expensive machine – it’s a three quarter of a million pound investment – but it does produce the numbers, and it gives you a crossover to screen print,” says Andy. Quality control While walking round the new unit, Andy explains the importance of quality control to T Shirt & Sons’ operations. He estimates that each email sent by an end customer to one of his client’s customer service teams costs his client $4. “If your customer gets an email from their customer going, ‘This shirt’s not how I wanted it,’ not only do they have to have that $4 conversation, they’ve now got to replace the product. Instantly they’re losing money. And what do they do? They don’t lose money. They come to me. “So our QC’s critical. We spot the tiniest little imperfections, from everything like the size of the garment to a hole in the armpit, from print quality to the positioning, to ‘Is this what the client actually wanted?’ Because often people don’t understand what they want.” The new machines will include a Kornit Vulcan, which is said to be capable of printing 250 shirts an hour The new 34,000sq ft DTG facility in Westbury The Kornit printers and Adelco dryers are kept separate with only the feed section of the dryers inside the print rooms