State of the Industry with Scott Fresener

How are we really doing?

I wanted to write a short comment on my observations of the state of the garment decorating industry. This is not scientific but just a seat of the pants feeling. I now do a LOT of color separations and deal with hundreds and hundreds of printers worldwide. And, we have thousands of customers and users of T-Seps, T-RIP and of course our older programs like FastFilms and FastRIP. My day is spent doing seps and talking to my software customers so my observations are based on feedback from them.

What I keep hearing is how busy printers are. Yes, this could be regional and as with everything, I talk to printers because they need my services. This means I don’t talk to those who are sitting around with no business – but then again – if that is the case why are they sitting around?  Different topic. Different article.

In general, our customers are large and small. I will go from doing high-end seps for people who print for Disney, Harley, and others, and people who print for country western stars like Eric Church, to people who are printing Bob Marley shirts for the new movie, Avenger movie shirts – all the way down to smaller printers doing local events, festivals, rod runs and more. The are all saying things are good. And, in many cases they need either my products so they can do their own seps and output films or they need my separation services – yesterday! They need things right now to help them fill orders.

This is not very scientific but my observations are also based on my own trade show travels seeing how the booths are busier and exhibitors smiling because people are spending money. I have also done a number of separations for political candidates and I suspect the political business will help out this year.

It also probably doesn’t hurt that the weather has been unseasonably warmer and of course there are always shirts needed for natural disasters and we know there has been a lot of those.

My other gut feel is regardless of what the GOP says – unemployment is declining (slowly) and the economy is giving good signals. I think this trickles down to confidence so when people are trying to promote events, products, corporate ID, etc., they probably buy more than they use to.

What I also see is a lot more GREAT artwork and colorful designs. I think we have weathered the storm of “skulls, wings, and monochrome image” that have been the norm the last few years.

That said the “distress look” is NOT dead. I have never seen as much artwork with distressed images. It is just part of the landscape of this industry. If you don’t know how to do it there are a couple of good articles on this website about it and you can download free distressed overlays from my Free Downloads page.

What is also hot – as you know if you are in the trenches – are safety green, pink and orange shirts. Wow. Just like the old days.  For a long time the standard shirt color for separations was black and white. Now, it seems every other job is for orange, green, light blue and pastel colors. Refreshing!

I also talk to a lot of printers who are now stepping their foot into Simulated Process, Index and real CMYK jobs. I hear a LOT “I have not done this before but customers are asking for multi-color on different shirt colors.” Time to step up and learn how to do high-end work to get more business.

Long live the T-Shirt and T-Shirt printers. It is a fun business and I think there will be great rewards in 2012.

Scott Fresener