Decorator Profile
Taking garment decoration upstream A
With a philosophy of offering a truly customer service orientated approach, one Cornish garment decorator has a business plan that is all sewn up. P&P editor Melanie Attlesey reports.
wise man once told Zach Pillinger, owner and director of Upstream Printing, that in business big was ugly, small was beautiful. Although this man worked in an abattoir, Zach was spurred on by these words of inspiration and so set about creating a thriving screen printing and embroidery business in Cornwall. Zach describes his business as small, but with a big outlook and client base. Zachs career in the textile industry began 15 years ago when he set up a small fashion brand, which soon led to him getting involved in screen printing. This evolved over the years to Zach becoming a partner at a mid-sized screen printing company. And after many years of, as he says, working far too hard for far too little money, Zach left to go it alone and formed Upstream Printing in 2011 with the help of his wife Jodie.
The name Upstream Printing derives from two trains of thought. Prior to being involved in textiles, Zach used to be a professional kayaker and secondly when he started the business he thought that it may be a bit of an upstream struggle.
The evolving industry
Zach drew upon his previous experience of working for a screen printer to create his new venture. “It became apparent that general business over the years, aided by e-commerce, had evolved and yet traditional screen printing businesses had stood still. With the development of shiny new websites print agents emerged all over the country and a great deal of printers became essentially trade slaves
Jodie and Zach Pillinger
bearing large overheads, but reaping very small rewards,” he explains. Adding: “These issues also affected customer experience, with customers nationwide being promised the world by inexperienced office staff, when in reality the actual decorator was unable to match the customer expectations.” So Zachs goal was to create something
different. He wanted to create a business that utilised a full in-house production facility, that also dealt with clients direct. He believes he has achieved with Upstream Printing.
“This control allows us to offer our customers shorter lead times, greater product and production knowledge to manage customer expectations and increase our margins,” says Zach. “Six years on we have very much stuck to that mantra and to continue to offer our
customers a truly customer service orientated approach, backed up by a full decorating set-up including screen printing, embroidery, labelling and digital printing services.”
Ultimately it is no good talking the talk, if your working environment and product offering is unable to follow suit. This means using the right equipment and sourcing the right garments is very important to Upstream Printing.
Equipment and garments Equipment found in the companys custom-built printing workshop includes products from M&R, Epson, Happy, SWF and Roland. The reason for this is as Zach explains: “We need a versatile and reliable set up that utilises space but lets us decorate any garment with a number of decoration methods to produce an end product that can live up to customer expectations. With a relatively basic set up correctly maintained and with experienced operatives, we can maintain a healthy workflow and produce an output that is hard to match using a much larger, but poorly operated set up.”
Some of Upstream Printing’s sales staff working at the Boardmasters Music festival | 48 | March 2017
The equipment that Upstream Printing uses gives the company efficiency and control over current market expectations for garments that are finished using a multitude of decoration techniques. This principle also carries over into the garments that Upstream Printing offers its customers. “Being active in a wide variety of specific areas we use a selection of products that we would recommend to suit the needs of each area of the business. For customers who would like a comfortable yet well-priced hoodie we use Cottonridge, for retail customers or ecologically sensitive customers we use
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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