Customers can now design their own t-shirts, choosing from a range of images and text to combine, and watch them being printed on an Epson 44in SureColor SC-F6000 roll-fed dye-sublimation printer.
Yr Store director Tim Williams said: “There are no pre-set designs, it really is like a building block set-up. You can put anything with anything so you really do have complete creative freedom.”
He added: “We’ve had a really good reaction. People really love it, I think they can’t quite believe it’s being printed live in front of them.”
The Liberty pop-up print stall is open until the end of December while the Topman facility is a permanent installation that will be rolled out to other Topshop stores in 2014. Other high-street brands will also be launching Yr Store booths in the new year, reported Williams, with dedicated Yr Store shops also planned.
The application has become commercially viable apparently due to the cost-effectiveness of the Epson SureColor models, launched at Sign & Digital UK in April this year.
Williams said: “These printers use less ink, they’re more efficient than a lot of other dye-sublimation printers available, and the inks are considerably cheaper.”
He added though that, at £28 a t-shirt in Topman, margins were still not huge: “In our concession we have to have people printing them so we have quite a high staff cost. A big part is guiding people through the software. So there’s not a massive margin in it.”
The point though, he added, was to upsell customers onto higher value items. Liberty London now also offers personalised scarves and Topman sweatshirts, and Yr Store plans to roll out a wider range for printable garments next year.
Epson Surecolor printers will be used at other high-street roll-outs next year. The SureColor SC-F6000 has a speed of 16-57sqm/hr, depending upon application and uses Epson UltraChrome DS aqueous ink.
Personalised garment printing could soon become a staple feature of high-street stores, predicted Williams: “I’d like to think we won’t get too much competition immediately but I do think we’ll see more and more people doing this. It’s natural we’ll see more things bringing theatre into the store.”
Of the designs currently favoured by customers, Williams added: “We’ve seen a lot of architectural images, gothic interiors with animals on and floral designs. At the more unusual end pineapples, cats, burgers and ice-creams on space backgrounds have for some reason been the big ones!”
