Page 44 - Print21 Jan-Feb 2020

Textile Printing
Riches
from rags
From humble beginnings printing T-shirts on a single direct-to-garment machine at founder Jared Fullinfaw’s home in 2011, The Print Bar has grown into a thriving fabric printing company, built on a foundation of what it bills as ethical manufacturing. Jake Nelson found out how Kornit has helped The Print Bar on its journey.
With two Kornit Storm Hexas, five million dollars
in sales last year, and 16 staff, Queensland garment printer The Print Bar has come a long way from when founder Jared Fullinfaw invested in a six-shirt-per-hour DTG machine nine years ago.
“I started printing shirts at home and selling them at a retail store in Brisbane. One of my close friends was in a band and asked me to do shirts for him, then other bands at the
gig wanted shirts as well, and that’s where it took off, and I thought maybe there was a job in it,” says Fullinfaw.
Fullinfaw took his business online after about a year, and soon found
a market with plenty of demand for digitally-printed shirts. According to him, one reason for The Print Bar’s success is its creative outlook.
“From there we skyrocketed – we did one hundred and forty thousand dollars in sales that first year, then we moved to a new warehouse and more than tripled it to half a million dollars the year after that, and now we are ten times bigger with $5m in sales.
“We look at ourselves as a creative studio rather than a
print shop: we do exhibitions, and collaborations with our customers. Our last exhibition had a thousand people in the space over the night. We sold pieces from various local artists as paintings, screen prints, shirts, tote bags, and tea towels – it went well,” he says.
The Print Bar soon found that
its six existing machines were not keeping up with customer demand, and began to hunt for a solution. It found one in the Kornit Storm Hexa.
“Kornits are integrated machines – we bought one, and that turned out to be the equivalent of six. We saved a lot on labour, became more efficient, and boosted quality.
“The Kornit Storm Hexa has a wide colour gamut, so we could replicate logos and art pieces as well. Kornit lets us do a good job for our customer base,” he says.
The Print Bar has since put in
a second Hexa – and, this year, is looking seriously at adding the high- volume industrial Atlas to its stable.
Fullinfaw says, “We are at capacity at the moment, and we need a new machine – and we are also about to launch a web app that integrates with Shopify. It is essentially a way to enable third parties to resell PrintBar t-shirts and other products.
“We look at ourselves as a creative studio rather than a print shop: we do exhibitions, and collaborations with our customers.” – Jared Fullinfaw
factors. It is also undertaking other sustainability initiatives, he adds.
“For people who do one-off events and don’t need the shirts afterwards, we try to get those returned so we can send them to a textile recycler
or turn them into paper to donate
to a stationery shop down the road. We want to make them into unique bits of cotton that you can write on, instead of sending them to landfill.
“We want to encourage people to use things more than once; we’re also really pushing for recycled garments as well. We have a brand called Recover, which is made from 50 per cent plastic bottles and 50 per cent recycled cotton. We aim to close the loop on textiles,” he says.
Looking to the future, Fullinfaw also believes that digital print will come to take over textile, in much the same way that digital has impacted on offset commercial printing.
“I believe it will start to be a way of doing larger runs, especially as the cost per print is coming down; it also gives options – all the same on the front but with different backs, for example. That and it’s quick and easy to set up: a couple volunteers and a crew member can do a short run print.
“It’s not quite there yet – it’s
not quite perfect at matching spot colours at the moment – but every year rip software, inks, and colour gamuts are getting better. The old issues that plagued digital printing, such as washability, are long gone
– we get about as much washability now out of a digital print as out of a screen print,” he says.
It’s a future that – backed by Kornit technology – is set to be a bright one for The Print Bar. 21
Above
From six machines to one: Jared Fullinfaw, The Print Bar, with the Kornit Storm Hexa
“If you’re a small business who wants to sell merchandise, and you already have a website – especially with Shopify – you can add this app, market your designs, and when the shirts sell, we print and ship them
to your customers and pay you a commission per sale,” says Fullinfaw.
The Print Bar is also heavily invested in what Fullinfaw describes as ethical manufacturing: it is migrating all its inks to water- based, and makes sure its garments are Wrap certified, meaning that the manufacturers are audited for working conditions, pay rates, and environmental impact among other
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