A lot of people are talking about Print on Demand at the moment, many touting the sustainability benefits of the product only being manufactured when the customer orders it. It can sound like an idyllic solution to many of the printing industries problems, but it doesn’t come without it’s challenges.
Let’s look at product blanks for example. All the raw materials were sitting on the shelf patiently gathering dust until that order came in. If you’re the B2B customer and took the time to detail those components in your product specification, maybe even tweaking some characteristic of the commercially available product-Congratulations! Your small business printing partner potentially invested tens of thousands of dollars in that blank stock, and they could look to you to compensate them for losses if those sales don’t come. The previously mentioned dust that’s gathering on slow movers will also push your defect rate up, as it’s often not spotted until final QC. I doubt that dust print chic will ever be in vogue.
On the topic of higher internal defect costs than traditional retail manufacturing, let’s look at printed garments. Bulk printing during clothing manufacture is typically performed on a single unstitched garment panel (Front, Back, Sleeve etc.). This comes with relatively low monetary consequences for a defective print. Final QC pulls defective panels aside, at the fiscal risk of maybe 10’s of cents. By contrast if you make a print mistake on a fully finished garment, you could be looking at potential cash losses 20 times that in magnitude and that’s before you add in the cost of production capacity in a high-priced country with premium labour rates.
If you are a retailer that’s thinking of getting in to Print on Demand and you’re attending ICPHSO then reach out and let’s grab coffee. With almost a decade of experience managing POD programs we can likely help you identify and avoid some of these pitfalls.
Are you a small print shop that’s thinking of stepping into Direct to Garment POD? Reach out to day to let us help you put your best foot forward.
#PrintOnDemand #PODPrinting #On-DemandPrinting #Customprinting #Printfulfillment #DropshipPrinting #DigitalPrinting #PODBusiness #PODFulfillment #PrintonDemandApparel
#ICPHSO
Leave a Reply