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Adelco became the first worldwide distributor for Kornit Digital machines in 2005 and this year the reseller has noticed a marked trend towards higher output industrial models in the range. Sales director, MARK SMITH, explains more.
Up until three years ago, there was a significantly greater number of entry level models of digital garment printers sold within the UK compared to the larger, higher output, industrial models. Over the last two years Adelco has seen this trend reverse with greater number of high end Kornit machines purchased than the more entry level models. I have no doubt that this is due to the maturity of digital printing markets in the UK, particularly in the e-commerce, on demand print sectors.
Adelco has made numerous installations of all the Kornit Industrial models this year, in particular the Kornit Storm II, Avalanche 1000 and Avalanche Hexa models. Many of these sales are to multiple machine users who are seeing their markets expand at an enormous rate.
We have one particular customer that has just ordered their fifth Avalanche 1000 machine in just over a year and will be able to produce over 10,000 pieces per day, most of which are single print orders and dispatched to individual customers that have purchased their shirts online.
Workflow for such markets has become more automated where designs are ordered online on a garment of the buyer’s choice and the order is downloaded to a hot folder. The file is then automatically checked and manipulated to improve print quality, linked to barcode and automatically queued onto the print machine. This can all be done without being seen or worked on by anyone until the shirt is loaded to the printer and design opened via a bar code reader.
Buyers of merchandise online expect even personalised merchandise to arrive at their door within days of hitting the buy now button and to receive confirmation of the position of their order. It is common practice to have automated feedback to a buyer advising them of print commencing, print complete and dispatch notices, all of which are automated.
Adelco also believes that there will be a trend towards digital fulfilment of orders more traditionally produced by screen printing. Digital print costs are coming down and machine output is ever increasing. This trend coupled with the new Kornit Paradigm model, which is a digital add on head for screen print presses, will undoubtedly see the digital garment print markets eat further into the shorter run, multi colour screen print markets. Printing with the Paradigm reduces print costs to around 25% of the cost of a fully digitally printed coloured garment and output is significantly faster.
The current and future developments in faster, more efficient printers makes the digital garment market an interesting place to be.
For more information email mark@adelco.co.uk or visit www.adelco.co.uk
