ImagesMagUK_April_2021

www.images-magazine.com APRIL 2021 images 49 IS BRAND PROFILE technology, were able to be retro-fitted to recently introduced machines, and this may also be the case with the 3D application. “Possibly,” is the only answer Phil will commit to at this stage. The speed of change What really grabs Phil at the moment is the speed of change the industry has seen in the past 12 months. The ecommerce sector, already growing before the coronavirus pandemic, has rocketed as bricks-and-mortar shops have been forced to close their doors during lockdowns, and it seems the change is here to stay. “It’s made people rethink their business,” says Phil. “One of the people I’m working with has got over 400 sites across the country. He said, “Phil, we are never going back to how we were.’ They’re investing tens of millions in automating logistics, warehousing and online capability because growth is expected even more this year coming out of lockdown.” The old way of creating stock then selling it is just that – old. The future is print-on-demand and shorter runs, believes Phil. “Sell one, make one, ship one, rather than manufacture millions, market and then sell what you’ve made. This is turning it on its head, from supply and demand to demand and supply.” This is a drum Kornit has been beating for many years and it turns out that its forecasts over recent years for how the textile industry will develop have been absolutely spot on. Phil uses Amazon, which started out as an online bookseller, as an analogy. “An author really couldn’t become an author unless he convinced someone that this was a great story and it was going to sell a million books, because the economies of scale was such. Amazon changed that. Ninety percent of all the books they ship today are printed on demand. “Anyone today can be an author. Just like any social media player today can have an apparel line without holding any stock, and sell on demand.” If someone on social media has 30,000 subscribers they’re a brand in their own right, says Phil. “How do you connect to them? Through a supply chain, digitally. That’s workflow, and that’s where I’m really seeing that we’re changing the game.” Connecting the front end – the ecommerce sites – with the back end – the print shop – is imperative, hence Kornit’s acquisition last year of Custom Gateway, which offers cloud-based software workflow solutions for on- demand production business models. Brands of all sizes are moving to print- on-demand as they look to reduce waste and increase profitability. One brand Kornit is working with said 40% of its stock currently ends up in promotions or being written down as waste. Print- on-demand solves that dilemma. Room for growth The drive to move everyone from screen printing to digital printing is expected from a company selling digital printing machines, but is the UK buying public, already a big consumer of garments, able to support many more print-on-demand businesses? And how does this fit with Kornit’s commitment to sustainability? The answer lies in not selling more T-shirts overall, but in increasing the percentage of customised T-shirt sales. A recent report shows that the UK T-shirt market is worth around US$11 billion each year. “That’s an average of 500 million T-shirts. And only 6% of them are being customised,” says Phil. That doesn’t, he says, include “those long jobs that are screened” – this is all on-demand customisation. “Kornit believes that customisation and personalisation will only continue to grow because today it’s still small, relatively speaking, to the amount of T-shirts and garments that are produced. “Even if the market, in terms of T-shirts, stays flat, what we definitely have seen in these last 12 months is a shift even further from longer run on screen to shorter run on customisation and on demand.” He adds: “The growth is there purely from transforming a market from analogue to digital. And that’s being driven by the consumer, not just by Kornit.” Drilling into data Runs are getting shorter, says Phil, and Kornit is able to keep a close eye on this because of Kornit Konnect, a software system that allows printers to monitor their production, and also allows Kornit to understand what its customers are doing. “One of our customers on one system through the peak period was doing 15,000 garments a week – and every single job was a one-off. It just astounded me. And that was four weeks running through the peak period, almost 15,000 garments a week of one-offs.” The Konnect is popular with Kornit’s customers as it allows them to manage If you’re a fulfiller, you want to be able to differentiate yourself. That’s what we’re experimenting with their business at an impression level. For example, says Phil, some customers use a neck tag pallet, which allows them to print on the front of the T-shirt and the inside neck at the same time. “For them the value of not having to print a neck tag as a separate process, and therefore doing it in one pass, with one member of staff, at a fraction of the cost, is what they can evaluate through Konnect. They can see that ink usage. A neck tag probably uses less than a millilitre of ink. But being able to do it at the same time and analyse that through Konnect to see, ‘What did that cost me?’ What did that actually cost to print and what is its relative value to a customer? It’s extremely valuable.” Aggressive ambitions This year, Kornit will be “very aggressive” with differentiation in the DTG market, reports Phil. “Everybody has been focused on one, quality, two, hand-feel, three, custom print. Those are the three points you have to be perfect on. It’s expected. That’s a given because the customers expect that today. “What do you do that they don’t expect? And it’s the 3D effects, the different finishes that will differentiate you. I think that differentiation is where we’re on the front foot. I think it’s going to be very difficult for other people to do that.” www.kornit.com