There are a number of Chicago screen printers local to US firm Threadless that must feel like they’ve won the lottery. Threadless, an online T-shirt retailer that sells designs submitted by users, has grown from its humble beginnings in 2000 – along with many other web-to-print (W2P) T-shirt outfits – to sell millions of T-shirts across the globe. And it still uses those local screen printers to do all the printing. It is incredibly stable and incredibly lucrative work.

But before all the UK commercial printers thinking of going into textiles print rush to find a W2P T-shirt retailer, or even to set up their own site, it should be said that W2P T-shirt retail is just one of the growing successful areas of T-shirt printing that can be capitalised upon. Trade work for charities, print for high fashion and the lucrative promotions market are all growing too. Like all burgeoning areas of print, though, it is far from simple to capitalise on any of these areas. Choosing the right technology is crucial, but the struggle to make it work will be worthwhile.

The sector making the most noise, as stated above, is W2P. This is an area that has seen massive growth in the US. And that enthusiasm for buying T-shirts online is spreading throughout the rest of the globe. The US behemoths such as Threadless and Teefury are pretty dominant, but UK sites such as Qwertee.com and Shotdeadinthehead.com also have a decent market share.

Printer for the latter is Westbury based T Shirt and Sons run by Andy Lunt. He also prints for online stores such as Shop Bravado and says that the market lives up to the hype.

"W2P is a massive driver for the T-shirt market," he says. "But the consumer is very particular on quality and delivery. You have to ensure you are at the highest standards of both – so top quality print and very fast turnaround."

Direct-to-garment market
To cater for these short-run, generally quite complex designs, Lunt felt he had to enter the digital direct-to-garment market to make the T-shirts pay their way, as his screen kit was just not proving economical.

"We can’t screen print them because every T-shirt is unique," says Lunt. "It is not cost-effective."

Of course, the business model of the online store will determine the technology used. For Threadless, with runs of thousands, screen makes sense. For the lower-run work Lunt produces, it is does not. Lunt says the average break-even between the two is 100 T-shirts, but it is less for darker garments, as the digital printer has to put down a white before printing colour.

However, Mike Ford, owner of online retailer Last Exit to Nowhere, says taste also plays a part, as well as economics. His company has always preferred screen print to any digital alternative. It uses a printer local to its Nottinghamshire base to print its film-related T-shirt designs.

"All our T-shirts are hand screen printed," he explains. "You have more control with hand screens and you can adjust things as each comes out to ensure the quality is the utmost it can be."

Mark Smith, sales director at direct-to-garment press supplier Adelco, counters that the quality level of digital printers is now extremely high and that for many online retailers, it is digital technology driving the business. And he argues that for commercial printers looking to get into T-shirts, digital is a good option.

"We do have customers that are commercial printers and that have switched to digital garment printers, so it is possible to do," he explains. 

Overcoming difficulties
Lunt, though, says that digital and screen both have their difficulties to overcome. Choosing your client to aim for – so,  either long-run like Threadless or shorter run like some of his own clients – may be crucial.

"Digital is really very hard to get right, but if you are persistent and work at it, you can get there. Screen printing is a bit easier, so the long-run T-shirts are perhaps more accessible, but there is still a big difference between a good print and a bad print. A really good quality water-based screen print on a black garment, for instance, is very difficult to achieve."

Away from W2P these technological debates are less relevant, as screen tends to be the dominant process. For charity work, for instance, screen is used almost exclusively because of the large run-lengths involved. And charity work is as much of a player in the T-shirt market as W2P. 

Cat Santos set up T-shirt printer Fifth Column in 1977 and says charity work is a big part of her business. She says that in the 1980s, charities made up 75% of her business and though it has since dipped from that point, it is still a significant chunk of the market. Lunt also works for many charities, including high-profile eco groups such as Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice foundation and he agrees that a lot of work comes from the sector, be it for fundraising or spreading the charity messages.

Certain demands
Both Lunt and Santos warn, though, that it is a sector that makes certain demands, as you would expect, in terms of ethical and environmental policy. For instance, Greenpeace announced on 25 October that it would suspend all international sales of textile products until suppliers could provide it with transparent information proving that their supply chains can produce toxic-free clothing.

Those fundraising T-shirts it needs for campaigning purposes are still to be printed, but only where "the strictest standards, in line with our global procurement policy to ensure the lowest environmental impact" are adhered to, according to  Greenpeace International toxics campaigner Kirsten Brodde.

Unsurprisingly, Lunt uses only water-based inks and PVC-free inks. Santos, too, strives for the highest environmental and ethical standards, but she says that sometimes this can clash with the quality of the printing.

"I am hoping to make organic T-shirt print work," she says. "I got my licence but I wasn’t happy to continue with it, because the quality of the inks just wasn’t good enough. That is certainly a route I want to pursue. We have a lot of demand for it – but there is only one ink endorsed by the Soil Association and it just does not give the quality."

Promotion and fashion
These issues can also be prevalent in two of the other big area of T-shirt printing: promotions and fashion. For the former, the work can include both corporate jobs to promote products – Lunt has done a 90,000 run for Playstation in the past – and for bands.

"I would probably say music T-shirts are my biggest market area – whether that be online sales, tour sales or in shops – music related T-shirts are big business for me," says Lunt. "Also licences, people that own the licences to films will get T-shirts printed."

While lucrative, licence work has its issues. Ford says the main one is the time to market. "It is a very time-consuming process. You have to send off samples, get approvals and stitch in special labels with legal notices on," he says.

Santos, too, sells a number of T-shirts in this sector, including classic punk designs from the likes of The Clash, but she also operates in high fashion. Here, she says people will pay top money for the best quality (albeit less frequently and with as many constraints in terms of ethics, licences and environmental considerations).

"We do screen printing so seldom that I do not go below a run of 20," she explains. "But we do get high-fashion people coming in who are willing to pay for screen prints in shorter runs because they want the authentic print and ink."

By now, you will have noticed that both Lunt and Santos have their inky fingers in many T-shirt sectors. This is not a coincidence. Everyone in the T-shirt sector will tell you that if you wish to succeed, it is crucial to have a broad client base.

"You have to do a bit of everything, really.  It’s the best way of running a business – especially in T-shirts," says Lunt.

Smith argues that whether you go into screen or digital would not affect your ability to spread your workload. He says that with a digital machine, you can pick up both W2P work and the lower end of charity and promotional work. Likewise, and as shown above, screen can work in some instances in the W2P market.

Perhaps unusually, those in the industry are confident in the amount of work to go around even if commercial printers enter the market.

"We always seem to have new clients coming in and there also seems to be so much demand," says Santos.

"There’s plenty of work out there," agrees Lunt. "I could double the hours I work now and still not meet demand."

Obviously, entering a new market is never cheap. A decent digital direct to garment printer will easily set you back £50,000, for instance. But the rewards do seem to be worthwhile. There are pitfalls to negotiate in each of the areas of the sector and learning the skills of the print aspects will be difficult – as will finding the right clients – but if you can find a way to successfully navigate those trials, there is a plethora of work waiting for you on the other side.