ImagesMagUK_Digital_Edition_March_2018

www.images-magazine.com MARCH 2018 images 29 BRAND PROFILE Creating core fashion basics that can be sublimated was the brief set by the Xpres team when developing its brand new, polyester-rich Vanilla range TheThrillas inVanilla “T here is an acceptance and understanding from the consumer at large that polyester garments are now actually very good quality – they’re no longer these shiny, horrible things from the ‘70s,” laughs Ryan Hornbuckle, marketing director at Xpres, as he holds a garment from Vanilla, a new, polyester-rich range of fashion styles created by Xpres for the dye sublimation market. “Certainly retailers have grasped that to get a really vivid, detailed transfer, sublimation is a very good tool to use.” Xpres has offered a sublimation T-shirt for a number of years now alongside all the dye sublimation equipment and consumables a decorator could need – there isn’t much the Xpres team doesn’t know about this market. “Looking around, we realised there was a gap for a set of fashion basics that have been designed for sublimation, so that’s what we set out to do,” explains Ryan. The team created a list of the most popular fashion basics in cotton and set about adapting them for polyester-rich fabrics that have been optimised for sublimation printing. “The garments are either 100% polyester or poly-rich, so 65% polyester/35% cotton, to get a really decent transfer,” he says. “If you want to do a one-off, it’s so cheap to do it with dye sublimation, and now with the Vanilla range you can get a great retail-look.” A large, top-to-bottom front panel print costs around 65p (using the Epson F6200) in ink and paper, while small, pocket- size prints produced on an A4 sheet are around 10p (also using the Epson). One of the hero products of the range is the Men’s Subli Pocket Tee (VAN105). “If you go on any of the big retailer websites, the number of pocket tees is staggering,” says Ryan. The Vanilla Pocket team has been cleverly designed so that while the T-shirt itself is 100% cotton, the pocket is 100% polyester. This allows decorators to either roughly mask round the pocket with the Vanilla app tape then dye sublimate, or they can simply put an A4 sub transfer over the pocket and surrounding area, print it and then wash it. Because the T-shirt