TRANSCRIPTION
Well, I'm already talking about direct printing. Always on white and light t-shirts Like the holy grail of printing, the arrival of textile printing in the 21st century and now, finally, I can tell you about direct printing on dark backgrounds.
This was a battle not just for us, but for the whole industry. Technically, we've already had the machinery to do this kind of work for a year and a half, but we hadn't done it before because we knew that the technique wasn't yet perfected, there were other steps that didn't yet allow us to achieve the quality and consistency that we want to offer our clients, so we've been quietly in our corner, studying the possibilities, seeing what still comes and what doesn't, until finally, at the end of 2017, we got everything up and running, acquired some extra support machinery to be able to offer you that quality work you're used to from us, and that's how we've arrived at today with direct printing on dark backgrounds working with very good quality.
Well, the direct impression, what's so fantastic about that?
So direct printing uses more environmentally friendly inks than screen printing. It uses water-based inks, unlike the plastic-based inks used in screen printing.
If we compare it to flex printing or flex cutting, it's a film that doesn't exist here. In other words, there are no films here, no rectangles, absolutely nothing.
This prints every little detail, in other words, this is a T-shirt, this is a print. In this case, we chose to print black because we thought it would look better with black than with a t-shirt.
Direct printing has allowed us to do some jobs that we couldn't do before in small quantities or that would have been extremely expensive to do, now they're at an acceptable price and with absurdly good quality.
To tell you the truth, we've been working with direct printing since October eventually.
It's not day and night, because we don't have a night shift at the moment, but every day from morning until the end of the day direct printing is working. When customers receive the garments, they order more because they really realise that this is a quality item that allows them to do completely absurd jobs of such high quality. This doesn't come off with washing, you can stretch the garment. There's absolutely no loss of quality, it doesn't break, there are no problems here at all.
In terms of feel, compared to screen printing for example, it has a much softer touch, i.e. (noise)...
Contra a serigrafia que é (ruido)
I don't know if you can tell with the camera, but this one has a much softer touch, despite being an A3 print it's comfortable to wear, you can move around with absolutely no problem, it's very, very good.
An extremely positive thing about direct printing, which until now was practically impossible to do. Printing on seams.
When I talk about seams, I'm not talking about these seams here, shoulder seams and the like. I'm simply talking about this type of sewing on jackets. In other words, over zips and the like. We've already done some productions for Excuse Me Bro, and we've also done some for Crossfit Aveiro, our next-door neighbours. They were both extremely pleased with the work and Excuse Me Bro has just placed another order to make more shirts or jackets with his print.
What more can I tell you about direct printing? For me, it's the best there could be. It's a new chapter in textile decoration, because it allows us to do work with an unparalleled quality that wasn't possible in the past. It allows for more detail than screen printing. It has a disadvantage that I also have to say. The colours aren't as vivid, although they look much more real compared to the files our clients send us. We're talking about a print over a matte shirt. In other words, a T-shirt isn't shiny, unlike what we see on screen, so the colours aren't as vivid as with screen printing, but direct printing is worth at least trying out to see if you like it. It allows you to make samples and, as there are no production minimums, you can make just one shirt, although as you know, this is always very expensive. They no longer need to make industrial quantities, they can make 1, 5, 10, always with the same quality, a quality very close to screen printing. It's something I personally recommend, I'm extremely excited this year to see what will happen, to see the happiness of our customers.
I can tell you that although we only officially launched this a month ago, in December, we've been working on direct printing since October. Here, a little in secret, talking client to client, explaining what we were trying to do, and the success rate, i.e. satisfied clients, is extremely high. They're very happy. We have used this test period precisely to make improvements. There was a time when I spent more time in a launderette than here at the company. Every print we made, I went to the dry cleaners to test the durability. We washed it 1, 2, 3 times and we always walked like this. At the moment I can assure you that it lasts a long time with frequent washing, even a long time.
It's important to mention that direct printing has a few steps that are perhaps a little different from normal.
Before we print a garment, it has to be treated. In other words, we have to use a chemical here that is very diluted with water, but we have to use a chemical here for the white colour to settle and stick to the garment.
Sometimes this "chemical", the pre-treatment, leaves some stains around it, which are nothing more than a tiny stain, a remnant of pre-treatment that hasn't dried but doesn't affect the quality of the decoration at all, which will come off in the first wash. This is guaranteed, I can give you that reassurance. When the garment is first washed, this mark comes off and doesn't always appear. It only appears once or twice in a batch of T-shirts and comes out when washed. This is what it's all about and you can rest completely assured that you'll get the best quality work with direct printing and I hope you'll take advantage of this because it's here to stay, it's the future of textile printing and I want you to be part of it.
Thank you and see you next time.
