The DTG Column
The one-shirt economy: Why DTG was made for the way we buy today
As much as printing technology changes so too does our purchasing habits. Instead of a bulk buy clients are now asking for samples and one-off pieces. It’s a habit that doesn’t perhaps suit the new wave of DTF that has become popular in recent years but, DTG fits almost idyllically, as Charlotte Darling, director at Amaya Sales UK explains.
The ‘one-shirt economy’ F
or years, garment decoration was built around volume. The economics made sense when customers ordered 50, 100 or 500 of the same design. Setup time could be absorbed, stock could be planned and production was all about repeatability.
Today’s customer is perfectly comfortable ordering one garment, one design and one size. Small businesses want to test an idea before committing to stock. Brands want limited drops. Influencers want merchandise without boxes of unsold T shirts sitting in the spare room. Sports clubs, charities and corporate customers all expect greater flexibility. Consumers have simply become used to personalisation, fast turnaround and buying online. We are seeing more customers building businesses around the “one-shirt economy”: Produce what you have sold, rather than trying to sell what you have produced.
And that changes the economics of garment decoration completely. Interestingly, after several years when every conversation seemed to be DTF, DTF and more DTF, there are signs that attention is swinging back towards DTG too. FESPA this year was a good barometer. Across the textile halls there was renewed focus on DTG alongside DTF, including from manufacturers whose recent attention had been heavily centred on transfer printing.
Our view has always been that this was
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
never an either/or conversation. DTF is an excellent process and has opened up huge opportunities, but that doesn’t remove the reasons DTG works so well. As often happens in our industry, the pendulum swings, the market learns, and technologies find their place alongside one another.
The strength
The great strength of DTG in this buying environment is that it removes much of the traditional setup associated with producing a decorated garment. A full-colour design can move from artwork to finished product quickly, without screens, films or large minimum quantities. You can print one garment profitably and then put a completely different design on the machine next. For me, the most important point about DTG isn’t simply that it can print one-offs. It is what that does to business risk. Instead of buying 100 printed shirts and hoping they sell, a brand can hold blank garments and print when the order arrives. Designs can be tested. Poor performers can disappear without boxes of unwanted stock. Successful designs can be scaled. Seasonal artwork can be introduced quickly, while names, dates and locations can be personalised without turning production into a logistical nightmare.
For smaller decorators, it also changes who you can say yes to. A new design can be sampled, photographed and available online within hours. Five shirts are no longer an irritating order. 10 different designs aren’t necessarily a problem. Work that once
looked too complicated or not worth setting up suddenly becomes commercially realistic. And this is where DTG and DTF increasingly overlap rather than compete. Many modern DTG printers can also produce DTF transfers in smaller volumes. So when direct printing is right, print direct. When the garment, application or job is better suited to a transfer, produce a transfer. The advantage is not being loyal to a process; it is having the right production route for the order in front of you.
Not just about the print What we also see from customers is that success isn’t necessarily about owning the fastest printer. The businesses getting the most from digital production are usually the ones that have thought about everything around it.
How does the order arrive? How quickly is the artwork ready? Where is the blank garment? Is pretreatment consistent? How smoothly does the job move through curing, packing and dispatch?
When you are producing hundreds or thousands of individual orders, a few wasted minutes at each stage quickly become more expensive than the print itself. That is why the next phase of DTG will be as much about workflow, automation and intelligent production as print speed.
Some of the world’s largest garment decorators have invested heavily in DTG because on-demand production can work at serious scale.
The opportunity is much bigger than simply printing T shirts.
Consumers want more choice. Businesses want less stock, less waste and less financial exposure. Online selling means a niche design doesn’t need to sell 500 pieces to justify existing.
20 years ago, that would have been a difficult model to make work.
Today, one shirt can be an order, one order can be profitable, and thousands of different one-shirt orders can become a very serious garment decoration business.
October 2026 | 21 |
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