Clothing employer Clothes2order has invested £1m in new digital t-shirt printing equipment, hoping to keep pace with what chairman Michael Conway calls a UK style retailing ‘revolution’.
Clothes2order is one of the first companies worldwide to take shipping of a heavy-responsibility, direct-to-garment printer released earlier this year by NASDAQ-listed Kornit Digital.
The device, known as the Atlas, can produce as many as one hundred sixty prints inline within an hour and uses newly developed inks that are non-hazardous, non-poisonous, and biodegradable in a waterless printing method.
It is optimized for on-call printing, a growing part of Clothes2order’s business. This includes offering style outlets and brands to provide new traces in real-time without the threat of piling up inventory, which may be wasted.
The arrival of the Atlas, along with other new devices, has taken the enterprise’s investment in machinery to over £2.5m in the past few years.
Clothes2order operates from a production and distribution facility in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester.
The employer resources customers across the United Kingdom and over 35 countries.
Revenues grew from £4.4m in 2013 to over £12m in 2018, and the business is trying to double in size over the next couple of years.
Michael stated, “The face of UK retail is changing unexpectedly. Sustainability, pace, and flexibility in preference to charge have become the key drivers for stores and types alike, transforming the fashion retail supply chain.
“For many years, we’ve seen clothes being made in factories in Asi; howeve, inrecentt times, thanks tothe virtual era and having manufacturing and processing in the UK, outlets and types are capable of performing inventory.”
