In part two, Green examines the impacts of e-commerce and trends that are driving the North American digital textile market forward.
Tim Greene
In some ways the digital transformation of textile printing has been accelerated due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Recently, InfoTrends and NAPCO (publisher of Printing Impressions) surveyed 167 print service providers (PSPs)—72 of which were print-for-pay—and we were able to ask about their attitudes and expectations around wide-format digital printing. InfoTrends found that while initial investment price was not a major consideration, return on investment (ROI) is a critical part of the wide-format digital printing business for these shops.
InfoTrends’ recent “Emerging Trends” survey was designed to create performance and value innovation benchmarks for the production printing market. There were a total of 10 data points developed from this survey that a company can use to evaluate its performance.
Printing Impressions and InfoTrends have recently conducted a survey of Printing Impressions’ readers that focused on their use of wide-format digital printing equipment. The respondents to the survey fell into two main groups: in-plant operations and print-for-pay establishments. Participants were asked various questions regarding their current wide-format equipment and services, as well as future plans for their wide-format business. (See Chart 1.) The results show that while aqueous ink-jet is still the dominant technology, there is a growing presence in the production and commercial printing market of newer printing technologies. More than 67 percent of respondents indicated that they currently own an aqueous ink-jet
