ImagesMagUK_February_2022

www.images-magazine.com FEBRUARY 2022 images 23 AD ADVERTORIAL T he idea for Beyond Colour came to Les Stephens while working in his garment decoration business last year. For ten years he’d been embroidering and printing corporate clothing in Cirencester at his company Prints & Threads and buying in printed transfers as needed from third parties – but the cost of the transfers was, he says, becoming prohibitive. A sheet of A3 transfers in 2021 cost him around £5.80, there was a minimum order of 10 sheets, plus VAT and carriage had to be added in. And on top of this, the team at Prints & Threads still had to cut out the transfers when they arrived. “So, I decided to buy a DTF machine and do it myself,” recalls Les. DTF (direct-to- film) printers produce transfers that can be applied to most substrates without any need for pretreatment or weeding. Last November, the fully automated DTF printer was installed at Les’s premises Beyond expectations Veteran garment decorator Les Stephens has set up a new DTF transfer service for industry colleagues that promises top-quality products, competitive pricing, and low MOQs and he started producing transfers not only for his own company, but also for other trade printers and embroiderers via his new business, Beyond Colour. The DTF transfers the machine produces are of a very high quality, he confirms. “They are crisp, bright, sharp, stretchy. They rebound. There’s no cracking. I’ve test-washed one on a Gildan Ultra Cotton T-Shirt – I’ve done 120 washes, and the transfer is as good as the day I put it on.” Easy to use There are four main types of transfer available from Beyond Colour, all of which use water-based, eco-friendly inks: the Essential DTF Heat Transfer for cotton and polycotton garments; the Poly Blocker DTF Heat Transfer for sporty polyester fabrics; the Shell Blocker DTF Heat Transfer, which uses a high opacity white water-based ink to give a dye- inhibiting capability and is ideal for use on printable softshell jackets; and the Promo DTF Heat Transfer, which allows users to expand the range of printed promo items they offer, such as bags and umbrellas. The process to order transfers from Beyond Colour is very simple thanks to its clever website. “You choose the type of transfer you want, choose your size, upload your graphic, set the quantity and then pay for it. It’s dead easy,” Les confirms. “I wish I’d been able to use a service like this over a year ago, it would’ve saved me a fortune.” The simplicity of the site is complemented by both the four-day turnaround from ordering plus the highly competitive prices. “They blow the socks off everybody,” Les declares. “And the more you order, the cheaper it is.” There is a minimum order of five sheets from Beyond Colour, with an option to purchase a single, called a pre-production sample, at a slightly higher price. “Some customers might be happy with the graphic on the screen, but they want to see an actual sample of the printed product that they can look at, touch, feel,” says Les. With no need for pretreatment or weeding, it is a very appealing process, he adds. “You can bang out 50 T-shirts an hour with our DTF transfers, whereas if you’re cutting out and weeding 50 logos in vinyl and then pressing them on, that will probably take you two hours.” The website is set up to offer the most popular logo sizes, ie A6 for a cap, A3 for an all-over back print, but customers can also choose to populate the sheets with multiple different logos – the maximum size ‘multi-sheet’ Beyond Colour currently offers is 550mm by 500mm. “If you’ve got 10 customers this week and they all want left-chest logos, you can fit all of those on a 550mm by 500mm sheet. Or if you have an A3 sheet for a back logo, you may be able to squeeze a couple of left-chest logos on there too.” Underpinning the success of Beyond Colour is the simple fact that it is a business for garment decorators, run by garment decorators. “We understand how print and embroidery businesses work,” points out Les, “and we want to help all our customers maximise their profits.” www.beyondcolourtransfers.co.uk ECO-FRIENDLY WATER-BASED DTF HEAT TRANSFERS Multiple logos being printed on a single DTF transfer sheet The Beyond Colour DTF prints are extremely durable, reports Les The Shell Blocker DTF Heat Transfer has been developed for use on printable softshell jackets