Case Studies

Garment Printing using direct to garment (DTG) digital t shirt printing over zips

Zipt are a t shirt company with a unique design offering a product that is of the highest quality cotton material. Their t shirts are great for post-workouts as they are easily removable. Their innovative styling allows you to wear them with the zip all the way up, or half way down, it is up to you. They are also great in that you can remove them without having to mess up your hair! Their company's slogan is "Get ripped with Zipt!" Further information can be found at their Zipt website as well as an online store where you can purchase these excellent t shirts.

Objective

Zipt were researching and searching around for a t shirt printing and customised clothing company in London. They had the direct objective of finding a printing company that had the ability to direct to garment (DTG) digital print over zips, a service that other companies fail to offer. They were impressed by our ability to meet their specialised printing needs on their customised t shirts in London. DTG digital printing over zips on garments is a very specialised service that many London DTG digital printing companies do not have the expertise or the proper equipment to execute.

Garment Printing was able to meet Zipt's DTG digital printing requirements because we possess the leading industry knowledge as well as the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art DTG digital printing equipment currently on the market. Many competitors and most commercial t shirt printing and customised clothing companies in London and the United Kingdom do not have access to the equipment that we use. Our DTG digital printer fleet consists of the highest quality printing machines, each with their own specific capabilities. They are the Brother GT-541, GT-782, and the Kornit Breeze 921. For the Zipt order we found that our Brother GT-782 DTG digital printer was the most capable of the machines to handle printing over the zips on the high quality cotton garments provided by the customer. DTG digital printers have very sensitive printer heads and nozzles. Often a common problem found with DTG digital printers is that gases penetrate inks and disrupt printer head nozzles. Our DTG digital printers use vacuum-packed cartridges with degassed ink that combats this issue.

The Brother GT-782 boasts the ability to print onto dark garments. Its dual platen increases productivity as well as its 8 Brother inkjet heads and dual gantry for fast printing throughput. It uses CMYK and white ink. The Brother GT-782 prints both white and coloured inks concurrently, making it ideal for high volume DTG digital printing orders.

The end results of the Zipt order were high quality DTG digital printed t shirts with vibrantly coloured artwork directly printed over the zips without any interference to the design. Our customer was extremely satisfied with the quality of the print job.

How Animal Art Fair used Garment Printing

The Animal Art Fair is a unique market place, offering direct access to the world of animal art.  No middlemen, no galleries and no premium.  Just the opportunity to discover new talent and to buy directly from the artist.  We spoke to founder, Barnaby Parker about how they use printed clothing to help promote their fair.

1. What were you looking for when you were initially searching for a printed clothing company? Why did you choose Garment Printing?
We chose Garment Printing because you offered a very straightforward service, putting together what we wanted very quickly and delivering the polo shirts to us within 3 days.

2. How did you find the whole order process and service?
The order process couldn't have been easier and when the delivery address had to be changed after the order was made there was someone on the phone to sort it out. All in all it was perfect.

3. Animal Art Fair offers a service to a relatively niche market. How else are you promoting your business to potential artists and clients?
Animal Art Fair provides a marketplace for the world's leading animal artists and their clients. Visitors can meet the artists and buy their works in an informal setting. The majority of marketing that we do is by word of mouth - our reputation and that of the artists precedes us, but the printed polo shirts with our logo helps to promote the brand further once the visitors and exhibitors are at the fair.

4. Considering the marketing and promotional channels available to clients today, do you see printed clothing as having growing, or diminishing importance alongside tactics such as social media, or word of mouth? Does promotional clothing compliment these other tactics?
For us printed clothing has been crucial as our company polo shirts have featured in promotional photos all over the press - its fantastic PR for us. We even have an Animal Art Fair polo team which wears our shirts!

5. What clients do you work with, and what have been your biggest challenges when marketing your services to them?
We market ourselves to some of the world's leading artists and the biggest challenge is getting hold of them and then persuading them to exhibit with us. Last year one artist we spoke to was in Antarctica on a 12 month project drawing birdlife.

6. How have the printed t-shirts helped with your own events and promotions? What feedback have you received?
We use them for everything just because our staff always wear them - the feedback has been brilliant.

7. Why did you decide to go for the certain items of clothing and printing techniques you chose?
Garment Printing recommended them the particular polo shirt as they were reasonably priced, good quality and they looked good.

View more comments and photos submitted by our customers on our Testimonials & Gallery page.