We bang on a fair bit about how amazing printable textiles are, and for good reason. It’s a burgeoning textile market out there and this is particularly true for the retail industry. Textile graphics look amazing! They’re tactile, attractive and highly functional by being easy to transport and install and much better for the environment when it comes to disposing of them at the end of a campaign.
We bang on a fair bit about how amazing printable textiles are, and for good reason. It’s a burgeoning textile market out there and this is particularly true for the retail industry. Textile graphics look amazing! They’re tactile, attractive and highly functional by being easy to transport and install and much better for the environment when it comes to disposing of them at the end of a campaign.
Lightboxes and other fabric displays have become commonplace amongst the aisles of retail giants and iconic fashion brands and, typically, these large retail contracts require significant hardware and productivity to win, with graphics being rolled out nationwide and on a large scale. This has historically meant smaller print providers have missed out. Until now.
What we’re seeing lately is that smaller shops and independent retailers are demanding the same style and quality textile graphics as the bigger brands. Understandably, small retail owners want to utilise the same stunning textile applications as the larger brands. This increasing demand is great news for smaller print providers, who want to get into retail graphic production, but for space, financial or resource reasons are unable to make the significant investment required to put in a bank of printers or grand format hardware.
Independent retail outlets or smaller shops won’t be requiring huge volumes of print to kit out multiple stores and they also have smaller premises meaning the displays are correspondingly reduced in size. This puts standard wide format kit into the mix, rather than just grand format 3+ metre printers. Many of our printable textiles are available up to 3.2m or even 5m, but the narrower 3.2m is often slit to 1.6m for wide format users
. Combine products such as Soyang Starlight (a popular backlit textile that works like a dream with UV and latex inks to create impressive lightbox displays) with a wide format printer and easily make the transition to producing retail textiles.
It’s also possible that smaller print providers can create a positive relationship with larger printing companies and take on the smaller retail graphic production that is simply not cost effective to tie up a grand format press to produce. These reciprocal relationships are becoming more common as smaller sign and graphics companies can offer the flexibility needed for one off or short run production. You don’t have to buy our textiles in bulk, and printable fabrics such as our Nightstar Black Back and Vista Frontlit are available on a next day delivery from stock giving printing companies the ability to take on contracts with ease and turn them around with confidence.
