The custom apparel industry is constantly being fueled by new and innovative screen printing and embroidery techniques. Although it may at first seem peculiar, the new trend is to combine both silk screening with embroidery. This lends itself to a more complicated and profitable application. This combination can deliver large profits. Let’s explore this tandem.
The very nature of custom T-shirt printing mandates that you have the exact same set up and clean up to do one tee shirt as it does 500. Step one is to develop films. The development of films lends itself to a large portion of the overall manufacturing cost. Normally, the larger the run is, the more cost-effective the item is. If the job happens to be a large run of 250 pieces, the setup time and cleanup are going to be much less apparent when averaged over each item. You really won’t notice. However, if it is a smaller run of, let’s say, 12 units, that extra cost is going to be very apparent. It makes one ask the question, “What if we could screen print a consistent part of the image and use embroidery to complete the customization?”. The possibilities would be virtually limitless. Consider this scenario. We are silk screening a large face on the front of a T-shirt, but the eye is composed of thread. This would lend itself to a very small stitch count while creating a three-dimensional effect, where the eye is literally popping off the shirt.