What You Need to Know Now About Digitally Printed Fabric

It’s nearly impossible to work in the print industry and not have heard about the expanding interest in digital textiles. Although digitally printed fabrics make up only 2% of the entire textile marketing, it’s a fast-growing technology. It’s expected to grow from a $14.2 billion industry in 2016 to a $33.4 billion industry by 2021, according to Keypoint Intelligence.

That’s more than doubling the opportunity in five short years. And it could grow even more, with big players like Amazon and Home Depot both entering the textile game in 2018.

As a print service provider, what does that mean to you? More material options with ever-advancing technology, more solutions to offer to your customers and more ways to grow your business. Here are four key points to know now about digitally printed fabric in the wide-format market.

Innovation Inspired Us at SGIA Expo 2017

The weather may have threatened, but that didn’t stop the SGIA Expo from going on! And we were so glad that it did. We found inspiration everywhere we looked around the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. With 600 exhibitors and more than 19,000 people in attendance, the power of printing — on nearly every conceivable surface — could be heard loud and clear.

Walking the show floor, we were thrilled to see some of our partners featuring and launching some great new products. From HP, we we learned about the upgraded HP PrintOS Mobile, which not only helps printers stay on top of printer data, job history, KPIs and service calls, it allows their supplier to track their needs, too. A great tool to enhance those relationships and keep production running right on time.

We couldn’t help but stop in our tracks when we came across the Fredrix Canvas booth, where they made pillows with Fredrix Natural Raw Canvas printed with latex technology, and cool customized coasters fabricated with Fredrix 575 Tempo Canvas and finished with a Marabu top coat. At Fredrix, they are really changing the way we think about printing everyday products.