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EXPANDING YOUR MARKETS


Expanding into new markets – attractively lucrative but competitive


What can you do to increase income when sales are stagnating and you’ve saturated your existing market? Ask any sign company and they’ll probably admit that a major challenge is generating more business in the sign market. One solution is to diversify your products and services so that you’re offering more to your existing customers and have something extra to attract new customers. You could consider investing in equipment to enable you to


print on textiles, which would open up markets for soft signage as well as the world of garment printing, potentially lucrative but competitive markets. Also, if your customer starts to look elsewhere for some of their signage work, they might start looking elsewhere for what you do. Traditionally, t-shirts used to be screenprinted. But screen-


printing has its limitations; it isn’t cost effective for one offs and small quantities and designs using more than one colour add considerably to the cost. Dye sublimation has also been used for years to transfer


images on to textiles. Dye sublimation works by printing the reverse of the image onto transfer paper which holds lots of ink, then dying the inks into the fabric using heat, often with a heat press. One advantage of transfer printing is the high quality and durable output for both polyester based materials and hard substrates such as personalised gifts. But then printing direct to garment, also known as digital textile


printing became available. Direct garment printers utilise adapted inkjet technology and most are just as straightforward to use as a digital printer for vinyls. Designs are uploaded and sent to print. At first direct to garment printers used CMYK inks so only


printing on to white or white or light coloured fabrics was feasible but with the development of white ink, it became possible to output images on a much wider range of colours, meaning increased potential and more markets for this output.


When printing directly onto pre-treated polyester, dye


sublimation inks and post-treatment heating are still used in order to achieve the highest quality and bright vivid colours. But because transfer paper is not needed costs and labour are reduced, especially on longer runs. A significant factor in the growing popularity of direct to


garment printing is that the unit cost between printing a one off and hundreds of items is almost the same. Ingraving can also provide additional income. You could invest


in equipment to start offering trade services or widen what you already provide to the trade. But there’s also a massive market for engraved customised products, from key rings and tankards to laser engraved acrylic award plaques. There’s a growing number of different markets signmakers can


get involved in, it’s always a good time to keep one’s eyes open for new opportunities.


Photo courtesy of TheMagicTouch.


Photo courtesy of Trotec Laser Ltd. 44 Sign Update ISSUE 129 MAY/JUNE 2011


Photo courtesy of Trotec Laser Ltd.


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