ImagesMagUK_April_2021

www.images-magazine.com APRIL 2021 images 27 IS DECORATOR PROFILE O n Tuesday 2 March 2021, after a bidding competition, brothers Andy and Jon Lunt completed the sale of T Shirt & Sons to promotional products supplier PF Concept International. Long-known in the print industry as the direct-to-consumer (D2C) leaders, T Shirt & Sons started out as a screen printing business 33 years ago. With unerring foresight, however, Andy and Jon rapidly realised that the future of their garment decoration business lay in digital printing and the automation of workflow. The brothers have consistently invested in the latest equipment – T Shirt & Sons was the first company in Europe to buy a Kornit Vulcan – as well as in the creation of a proprietary software system which its commercial director, Adam Golder, says allows them to be “way more efficient than a lot of our competitors”. Time to sell Andy and Jon felt the time was right to sell, explains Adam. “They were ready to pass it on and hopefully see the further growth of T Shirt & Sons with somebody else’s help.” What’s next for T Shirt & Sons? Adam Golder of T Shirt & Sons talks to Images about the company’s plans post acquisition, including supplying high street retailers more facilities throughout Europe. “If you can save a day in shipping time, it’s a huge bonus to our clients.” Retail ambitions T Shirt & Sons is best known for fulfilling single item orders for ecommerce, but Adam has also been in discussion with high street retailers for a number of years. “We are starting to work for the traditional high street retailers who are expanding into our world for economic reasons. They’re strategically putting more of their revenue into online because of the pandemic we’re living through, so they have to put more focus on online sales and speed to market. “With the new tech, particularly in digital printing, there are opportunities for store replacements and unlimited designs. You could use a digital printer, be connected into a high street retailer, and they could be giving you daily orders for various branches around the country. And you could fill directly to those stores, which is very attractive to the high street.” It’s an appealing model for retailers that allows for unlimited designs with no commitment, as well as reducing wastage. “With the traditional high street retailers, at the end of each season there’s inevitably going to be what they thought was always going to be a good seller not selling, and there’s always going to be a bit of a markdown – store replenishment and online marketplaces solve that problem,” explains Adam. “There will no longer be such thing as a bad seller, only good sellers.” New technologies The plan for the next three years includes “filling our current platforms through the slower months of the year, which is a big goal for us,” says Adam, as well as taking on new clients. “Over the next few weeks and months I’ll be digging into PF Concept’s catalogue of products to see if there’s some easy wins for existing T Shirt & Sons customers, and also add some new products that we don’t currently do.” While the company’s core work will remain apparel, its software has been built to print and ship singles of any description, so Adam will also be looking at new technologies. “It doesn’t matter what that product is, as long as we have the sub production lines to facilitate that, we already have the IT infrastructure to facilitate those products,” he explains. www.tshirtandsons.com T Shirt & Sons had many interested parties, but PF Concept – which is owned by Polyconcept, which describes itself as being “the world’s largest supplier of promotional products” – was the best fit for the future of the business. “T Shirt & Sons is a great business and is the market leader in print-on- demand [POD] and DTG printing,” explains Phil Morgan, senior country manager of PF Concept UK and the new managing director at T Shirt & Sons. “The POD market in Europe and the US is growing significantly and we wanted to be a part of it. With our knowledge of digitally printing on hard goods and T Shirt & Sons’ expertise in apparel, we think the businesses are a great fit.” Already the largest D2C fulfiller in Europe, with a facility in the UK and another in the Netherlands, the company wants to continue growing its EU footprint. The market is growing exponentially year on year, Adam points out, and with the industry moving towards greater regionalisation and speed to market, the company is not only looking to add more products for its existing client base, but at the possibility of opening T Shirt & Sons plans to keep growing its EU footprint