The growth of digital technologies is now starting to make a major impact on the textiles sector, where new business models are opening up a world of possibilities. Keywords: accessories, acid dye, backdrops, banners, Barack Obama, Basso & Brooke, blogs, business opportunities, Canadian fashion, Canadian manufacturing, Canadian Textile Industries Association, Como region, cotton, cotton fabric, CTIA, DesignYourFabric.com, digital fabric printing, digital fabrics, digital output technology, digital technology, digital inkjet technology, digital textile market, digital textile printing, Digital Textile Printing Market Overview, digital textiles, dirt repellent, disperse dye, drapes, DTP, Dupont Artistri, dye sublimation printing, environmental conservation, environmental factors, environmental impact, e-commerce, fabric signs, fabric softener, family businesses, fashion, fashion in Canada, First Lady Michelle Obama, Europe, fashion, FESPA, FESPA Digital Textile Conference, H&M, household linens, InfoTrends, inkjet, inkjet printing, interior design, interior décor, ITMA, James Hanlon, John Hawke, Justin Trudeau, large format printing, laser cutting, linen, linen fabric, Lucian Matis, major fashion brands, Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, Michael Hawke, Michelle Obama, Michelle Obama’s clothes, Michelle Obama fashion, Milan, NASCAR Hall of Fame, natural fibre blends, natural fibres, Neil Felton, new business opportunities, North American textile manufacturing, North American textile production, North American textiles, novelty items, nylon-based fabric, nylon fabric, pigment dye, pillows, political wives, positive environmental impact, President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, PrintAction, printed tents, print heads, reactive dye, Ron Gilboa, rotary screen printing, scarves, screen printing, signs, silk, silk fabric, soft signage, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau’s clothes, Sophie Gregoire Trudea fashion, substrates, supply chain consideration, synthetic fabrics, technology maturity, textile decorating, textile dyes, textile manufacturing, theatre backdrops, The Emerson Group, trade show displays, upholstery, Victoria Gaitskell, vinyl, vinyl signs, viscose, viscose fabric, washing systems, water based dyes, White House, Zara

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2. 14 PRINTACTION · October 2016 PRINTACTION.COM
The growth of digital technologies
is now starting to make a major
impact on the textiles sector,
where new business models are
opening up a world of possibilities
By Victoria Gaitskell
I
f you don’t believe that digital textile
printing has gone mainstream in
North American fashion circles, ask
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. On March
10, 2016, in Washington, D.C., she
wore a dress made with Can-
adian-manufactured digitally printed
fabric to no less august an occasion
than the welcoming ceremony for the
first official visit of her husband,Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to the
White House.
To create the dress, Toronto-based de-
signer Lucian Matis applied decorations
made of silk thatwas digitally printedwith
a hand-painted pattern of pink and purple
orchids onto a background of solid crim-
son crepe. Fashion media instantly
erupted into raves about the dress, some
commentators even going so far as to
claim that its sensational colours stole the
show away from the Prime Minister and
theTrudeaus hosts,U.S.President Barack
Obama and his wife, First Lady Michelle
Obama.
In fact, Michelle Obama had already
climbed on the digital textile printing
(DTP) bandwagon sevenyears ago in May
2009,when she made fashion headlines by
wearing a piece by U.K.-based DTP-pion-
eering designers Basso & Brooke to an
evening of poetry and music at theWhite
House. (Actually, her stylist shortened
Basso & Brooke’s design for a digitally
printed, Swarovski-crystal-beaded dress
into a top which the American First Lady
wore over white cropped pants. Another
Basso & Brooke garment is the first digit-
ally printed piece in the permanent collec-
tion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s
Costume Institute in NewYork.)
Equipped with these revelations about
RISE OF DIGITAL
TEXTILES
TEXTILES

3. PRINTACTION.COM October 2016 · PRINTACTION 15
Canadian designer
Lucian Matis
received major
attention for the
digitally printed
dresses he created
for Sophie Trudeau
during her
most-recent visit to
Washington.
the wardrobes of celebrity political wives
and a tip from a fashionista friend, I
tracked down the printer who manufac-
tured the sumptuous silk fabric used in
Grégoire Trudeau’s Washington-arriv-
al-ceremony dress: The Emerson Group
Inc. of Mississauga, Ontario. Company
President Michael Hawke confirmed that
the distinctive material was one of their
recent jobs and speaks at length in this
report about the evolution of his DTP
business over the past eight years.
Global growth statistics
Via e-mail I also contacted Ron Gilboa, a
Director of Functional Printing and Pack-
aging at InfoTrends (Weymouth, Massa-
chusetts) a worldwide market research
and strategic consulting firm for the
digital imaging and document solutions
industry. While I was writing this article,
Gilboa was preparing to deliver an over-
view of the DTP market and trends at the
FESPA Digital Textile Conference on
September 30, 2016, in Milan, Italy. FES-
PA (formerly the Federation of European
Screen Printers Associations) is a global
federation of 37 national associations for
the screen printing, digital printing, and
textile printing community.
The Milan conference is one of a series
of educational events on DTP that FESPA
has organized since 2008. According to
FESPA’s Website, Milan is the largest
DTP market in Europe, and the nearby
Como region a textile manufacturing and
decorating hub that accounts for 55 per-
cent of the European digital textile market
and produced more than 180 million
square metres of digitally printed textiles
in 2015.
In an online description of the Milan
conference, FESPA CEO Neil Felton
comments: “Today, digital accounts for
only a small proportion of all textile print-
ing, but this is forecast to grow substan-
tially in the years ahead, with estimates
suggesting that digital could account for 5
percent of textile printing by 2020, up
from 2 percent today. Clearly that’s a sig-
nificant diversification opportunity for
printers already invested in digital output
technology and supporting workflows.”
Gilboa kindly furnished me with a sta-
tistical report he wrote with InfoTrends
Research Analyst James Hanlon, entitled
“DigitalTextile Printing Market Overview,”
that further explains and predicts the ex-
tent of the new global commercial oppor-
tunities cropping up in this up-and-com-
ing segment of digital print.Their report
expects DTP to reach an estimated global
product value of over $30 billion by 2020,
based on driving factors that include
technology maturity, supply chain con-
sideration, brand ability to develop new
products, and a significant and positive
environmental impact.
Additionally, although Gilboa and
Hanlon predict DTP’s future growth will
be concentrated in the Asia Pacific and
$30B
Infotrends, based on
a recent report,
predicts digital
textile printing will
reach an estimated
global product value
of over $30 billion by
2020, based on
driving factors that
include technology
maturity, supply
chain consideration,
brand ability to
develop new
products, and a
significant and
positive environ-
mental impact.
other areas of the world where the most
cutting and sewing is conducted,they add
that “one of the trends we are observing
keenly is the formation of localized pro-
duction that includes print, cut and sew
that are digitally enabled and automated.
These allow for in-country production
and consumption and new revenue
streams for customized high value prod-
ucts,” as Hawke’s case exemplifies.
Emerson’s 8-year curve
Hawke’s business, The Emerson Group
Inc. is a family-owned, integrated com-
munications company whose current
services, aside from DTP, include market-
ing and design. His father, John, first
started the business as a prepress film
company in 1986, and Hawke, now 52,
jumped in soon after. His brother, Chris,
joined them a year later and now runs
production. Hawke’s wife, Kara, also
joined them in 2000 and now works as
Vice President of Sales.These days, even
at age 75, John still keeps an occasional
hand in the business.
As it evolved and the rise of computer-
ized prepress caused demand for prepress
film to shrink, the Hawkes bought a small
design company and converted it into an
advertising agency. Then eight years ago,
after they first saw digitally printed fabric
being produced in Europe, they decided
to get involved in soft signage production.
Hawke says they reached this decision in
part because returning to some form of
manufacturing seemed a more comfort-
able fit than staying with prepress and
design work alone.
They started doing DTP with one
large-format printer 3 metres wide and
within the next three years added two
more printers, both 1.8 metres wide. All
three machines, manufactured under
DuPont’s Artistri brand, are no longer
available for sale. Hawke clarifies: “Al-
though we do also own a dye-sub printer
as a backup, we don’t do dye-sub” (short
for dye-sublimation printing, a common
process for decorating apparel, signs, and
novelty items such as cell phone cases or
coffee mugs. In dye-sub specialized pro-
cesses apply sublimation dyes first to
transfer sheets, then onto another poly-
ester or polymer-coated substrate using
heat.) Rather, all Emerson’s DTP work is
printed directly to fabric.
Right now Hawke’s business employs
25 staff, six of whom work in the front end
with the rest divided between two produc-
tion shifts on weekdays. Production staff
also routinely work overtime and on
weekends during peak periods, which
nowadays Hawke says fall practically all
year round, except for summers and at
Christmastime, when orders tend to slow.
Presently their DTP operation produ-
ces both large-format print on synthetic
fabrics and textiles in natural fibres for
fashion and interior décor.Their custom-
ers are located all over North America,
many in the United States.Textile orders
typically involve relatively small runs of
200 to 500 metres of printed cotton, linen,
silk, viscose, or blends based on these
fibres. Large-format orders include not
only the usual signs, banners, trade show
displays,and backdrops,but also frequent
novelty items for theatrical performances,
festivals, special events, weddings, and
large parties.
One especially challenging job Hawke
recalls was a wall covering for the theatre
of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Char-
lotte, North Carolina--a project requiring
them to print and sew together three sep-
arate panels into a gargantuan 30-feet-
high-by-435-feet-long scene simulating
the grandstand at a NASCAR race. An-
other was a tent for a corporate banquet
with paintings by Old Masters printed on
the interior walls, and a 50-feet-wide-by-
165-feet-long roof printed on the inside to
look like a ballroom ceiling decoratedwith
elaborate crown molding.
“We are getting more and more orders
for soft fabric walls and trade show dis-
plays,” says Hawke. “Although vinyl has
traditionally been the main substrate for
these products, fabric is so much easier to
use in many ways: it’s lighter, more resist-
ant to creases, easier to move around, and

4. 16 PRINTACTION · October 2016 PRINTACTION.COM
easier to handle and store.”
DTP details
Hawke recounts that they have previously
tried to run four different types of textile
dyes on their equipment: acid dye, pig-
ment dye, disperse dye, and reactive dye.
Now, however, they specialize in only the
latter two:disperse dye,which they run on
their large-format printer for synthetic
fibres,and reactive dye,which they run on
the other two printers for natural fibres.
Reasons for limiting their production to
this two-dye system include that washing
the printers repeatedly to change over
dyes is costly, plus the only fabrics they
cannot print are nylon-based ones (be-
cause the dye won’t stay on the fabric.)
Hawke specifies that the process of apply-
ing disperse dye to synthetics requires
heat, while applying reactive dyes to nat-
ural fibres uses steam to avoid burning the
fabrics. He adds that when using reactive
dye, the type used to print the silk for
GrégoireTrudeau’s dress,textiles turn out
softest to the touch and their colours look
the best.
“We try to offer our clients a range of
about 20 different synthetics and 30 dif-
ferent natural fabrics that will work for a
variety of projects, including displays,
upholstery, drapes, household linens,
dresses, and accessories,” Hawke con-
tinues, adding that textile orders for pil-
lows and scarves seem to be especially
popular. Designers can also bring in their
own fabric for printing, providing it does
not contain nylon, for the reasons ex-
plained above. After printing, both syn-
thetic and natural fabrics go through a
washing system to remove excess dye,
then a post-treatment to apply water and
dirt repellent or fabric softener, then lar-
ger fabrics are laser-cut to size.
Online and other advantages
“We don’t do a lot of advertising,” says
Hawke. “Instead, a lot of our business
comes by word of mouth, Internet search-
es, and our blog on DesignYourFabric.
com, an online business we’ve operated
for about a year, where designers can up-
load their own designs to print whatever
quantity they want of their own fabrics.
We’ve had some hiccups along the way,
but since we got the bugs out six months
ago, we’re seeing the on-line business
grow.”
He explains that to obtain textiles via
traditional screen- or rotary-screen print-
ing methods from places like Europe,
South America, China, or India, custom-
ers have to order at least eightweeks ahead
and commit to a minimum order of
100,000 to 500,000 metres. “If they don’t
use up all the fabric, they’re stuck having
to sell off their inventory. But our on-line
ordering system fits the way people shop
now, there’s no minimum, we can usually
fill orders in seven to ten days--and those
time frames are shortening. In eight years,
print heads have improved,so whereas we
used to get 200 droplets out of one head,
now we get 1500 droplets, and the newer
heads can print four to five times faster
than we used to.”
Gilboa and Hanlon’s report provides
further supporting details on how digital
inkjet technology has dramatically im-
proved in recent years to facilitate a
multitude of applications, ink types, print
quality improvements, and faster produc-
tion speeds.
Hawke comments: “It’s nice because
DTP is starting to bring textile production
back to North America. Printing small
orders on demand is where the growth is
going to be here, because customers can
buy locally, they don’t have to buy min-
imums and don’t have long waits for their
orders.”
Significantly, Gilboa and Hanlon’s ob-
servations on new opportunities mirror
Hawke’s Web strategy and bode well for
his business model: “New software and
technology developments allow for great-
er brand, producer and consumer inter-
action.Web based applications are being
developed that enable an individual to
create designs and patterns for textiles,
manage orders,and track fulfillment more
easily. All of these combine to facilitate a
streamlined supply chain while reducing
operation cost.
Digital solutions help products reach
the market faster,reduce overall inventory,
and make purchase activated manufactur-
ing possible.This is great benefit for both
the consumer as well as the brand that are
now able to develop new products at
speeds not possible with traditional print-
ing. Brands, with digital textile printing,
can react faster to consumer needs, local-
ize products faster, and produce in small
batches and custom products. This all
leads to the democratization of design,
and helps support upcoming designers,as
there is minimal inventory obsolescence
risk associated with digital production.
Areas of textileswhere these benefits shine
through include fast fashion, high fashion,
sports apparel,home textiles,and outdoor
furnishing. Major fashion brands such as
Zara and H&M are deploying digital print
to improve and reduce their supply chain
complexity.”
Hawke continues:“Another of the nice
things about our DPT business is that our
dyes are all water-based, you can recycle
polyester, and natural fibres break down
in landfill, so our process is pretty green.”
Gilboa and Hanlon’s report also empha-
sizes that “digitally printed textiles have
one other key advantage over current
methods, and that is a drastic reduction
in overall environmental impact. Digital
systems are able to produce the same
printed textiles with significant reduc-
tions in water consumption during the
printing process, sometimes up to 90
percent when compared to rotary
screen-printing.Reductions are also seen
in energy consumption as well as CO2
emissions, where steaming, washing and
drying occur.”
New steps
The business resources Hawke continues
to rely on include the Canadian Textile
IndustriesAssociation (CTIA) and ITMA,
a global textile and garment machinery
exhibition held every four years, next
scheduled in 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.
His advice to DTP novices: “Prepare
for a big learning curve--for one thing
because, compared to other substrates,
fabric undergoes a lot of changes. It’s not
stable. It shrinks, for example, and batch-
es of fabric can vary from one to another,
so it’s important to locate suppliers who
give you a consistent product.”
Hawke’s future plans for his own busi-
ness: “We’ve reached the stage where
we’re maxed out for both space and elec-
tricity. So we have a choice of either
moving to another building or trying to get
more space and more electrical power at
our current address. Once we’ve secured
more of both these resources, we’ll take
another step forward by purchasing more
equipment.”
The Emerson
Group, in addition
to textiles,
produces a range of
wide-format
applications.