Images_Digital_Edition_June_2019

www.images-magazine.com JUNE 2019 images 43 IS BRAND PROFILE Institute in Belgium. “When I came back, I had all the knowledge needed to start this business [Polyprint] and to focus on digital printing.” Early days It was, however, still early days for digital printing and the industry. “We were showing a technology that the market wasn’t ready to adapt to yet,” explains George. “Also, the technology wasn’t ready, because the printers were too slow for production, even for sampling at that time, and all the parameters like inks and software and the know- how were being built year by year. In the early days, it was very difficult to achieve a good result with the existing technology so we also had to teach the market about this technology and how they could benefit from it.” The company started with dye sublimation as well as other digital processes, such as acid inks for printing on silk, with a focus on roll- to-roll machines. It became the Mimaki distributor for Greece, as well as a distributor for DuPont, which at that time was selling textile printing equipment. By this point, in 2003, the new company Polyprint had just four employees: George, his father and two others. “I was doing sales support, installations, customer support – I had the chance to learn everything from being in contact with the customers daily and to really understand their needs and pain points. It was quite a busy period, but I learned a lot.” Increasingly, demand came for something other than roll-to-roll – the majority of their customers in north Greece who were still in the business wanted to be able to print on T-shirts. “Customers kept on asking for a solution for printing on T-shirts and cut pieces,” says George. “This is what led us to start looking to develop our first digital (DTG) printer.” Rapid growth Polyprint was selling large format printers from an Italian company called MS, and so George asked them to make a digital printer based on the Epson model. MS soon realised this was a sector with potential, and so Polyprint decided to go it alone and develop its own printers, again based on Epson technology. It took nearly two years to build the very first TexJet, the TX4260, which was unveiled at the 2005 SGIA show in the US. It was, says George, a very different printer to the one they sell now. “In 2005, there was only ourselves, Brother and Kornit, I think it was – there were only a few people in the industry. People were really sceptical about DTG, because at the time there wasn’t any white ink – the application could print on white pieces only. White ink came some years later, and took a few more years to become reliable. “The quality today is much, much better. The inks have been improved, the software has been improved, we do a lot of work in colour profiling and also the overall quality of the system has been improved compared to the first systems.” It was difficult for the first couple of years, admits George, but interest in DTG was rapidly growing across the world as the technology improved. “For us as a company, every year was better and better, with customer growth every year, but it really picked up in 2012.” It was a combination of the systems, the software, the ink and the buyers’ knowledge improving as the market matured. It was also the year that Polyprint launched the TexJet Plus model – a “very, very good and reliable, stable machine”. By 2014, Polyprint’s dealer network had extended to more than 55 countries. In 2016, the TexJet Echo and the more compact TexJet Shortee were released, followed in 2019 by the new TexJet Echo 2 , which landed in January, and the Shortee 2 , which was introduced at Fespa in Munich in May. The two new machines may sound like updates, but the reality is very different and reflects a big change that took place in the company last year – they brought everything in- house. “We were able to invest a lot in our R&D department so we built up a very good, talented team with experienced engineers,” states George. “Practically speaking, these two printers are brand new. The overall design is completely new from scratch because we managed to bring in-house a lot of the factors that previously we were outsourcing, and think about the design and assembly of the mechanical parts of the printer as well as the design of the electronic parts and software and firmware programming. “Two years ago we were outsourcing these parts to partners here in Greece; the last two years we developed everything ourselves. Now the whole thing is being designed, assembled and manufactured by us.” Customer options This has given the company the ability to add more features that customers ask for as well as allowing them to customise each machine to each print shop’s specific needs. “For example, we have added a temperature and The TexJet Shortee 2 was launched at Fespa in May There is a waiting list for the TexJet Echo 2 , which was launched in January 2019 Digital technology was the only way to survive