Screenprinting is an art. Screenprinting is durable. Screenprinting is how it’s always been done. Screen printing is the gold standard. But are those days coming to an end?
We started printing shirts way back in 1975. A manual press, a bathtub for cleaning screens and a red light bulb in a small closet as a darkroom. I wasn’t around then but my dad Mike was the brave soul who decided that screenprinting was the next step in growing a mom and pop sporting goods store. And since then, screenprinting has been THE way to go for custom designs on t shirts, uniforms and hoodies. That’s damn near a 50 year run, which truly is a long time!
Now, a lot has changed in those 50 years. The mom and pop sporting goods market tanked, the manual press became 4 automatic presses, the dark closet became a dark room (50ft x 50ft), and the shirt orders went from 24-100 pc a week to 5000-10,000 a day. We have created a great business based on screen printing but I fear those days may be coming to an end.
Why? DTF is why. and no, it’s not what you think it means. DTF (Direct to Film) is changing the game for apparel decorators. DTF is basically a large format printer that prints ink onto transfer paper, applies glue and then is heat pressed to a shirt. Now you may be thinking, isn’t this another sticky, bulky transfer shirt? Well, no, it’s not. Old transfers used to have to print on top of vinyl, nd then heat to the shirt which made them very thick and often peel off. Now, that vinyl is no longer needed and the adhesive is applied directly to the ink on a DTF transfer so when it is applied to a shirt, it has a very soft feel, almost better than screen print.
So why do we thing screen print is dying?
DTF is ideal for a lot of things. Small print runs, high color count images, complex images, Print-on-Demand (POD) orders, and more. DTF transfers are bulk added to a print sheet so you can print as many different images, sizes and colors as you want all on the same print run. And today, Print on demand and small order quantities seem to be the only thing people want. We used to get large, bulk orders for customers like schools, businesses and events. Those customers would order 100 shirts to either give out or sell and hope that they’d be sold out by the time the event was over. And often times, they wouldn’t sell out. They’d be stuck with a pile of shirts that have no use anymore and low profits for their fundraisier.
That has all changed. Now, you no longer have to by shirts in bulk. Now, you can add any garment and design you’d like to one of our print on demand stores and send it to your group for purchase. 1 person goes to order their 2 items, we order those items and print/apply the DTF transfer and ship it out the next day! No more extra inventory. No more lost profits. And best of all, no more long lead times. Orders are now shipping the day after they were ordered compared to a few weeks on a screen printed, bulk order. DTF really is a gamechanger.
Now, there will be the haters. The die-hard screen print fans. Those who resist the change. And I get it. 50 years is a really long run for anything and honestly, I’m having a hard time getting used to the idea. Especially since we have over 1 million dollars worth of screen printing equipment in our shop :/
But you can’t avoid it. And here at Shirt.co, we are preparing.
We were one of the early adopters on DTF printing. We first heard about it in 2020 when events all suddenly came to a hault. Bulk orders dried up overnight and online store orders became the only option. We saw then that Print on Demand and DTF was our only option. We decided to buy our first printer then and boy was it junk. All of the directions came over in Mandarin and support was impossible. Long story short, that printer ended up in the dumpster.
Then we ordered another printer in 2021. And that printer ended up in the dumpster.
Jump to 2024 and we finally have DTF figured out! We now run 2 DTF printers, in our shop, 24 hours a day and we think it’s going to work this time.
So while we are sad to admit it, we do see the writing on the wall and are preparing for it. Screen print is out and DTF is in. And here at Shirt.co, we are determined to have the best quality DTF apparel there can be.
P.S. Don’t worry, we aren’t selling our screen printing equipment any time soon. There is still very much of a need for screen printing and we’ll be sure to offer this service for as long as we can to our great customers.
