Decorator Profile
30 years in business S
o much can change in 30 years. It only took three decades for a modest contraption made out of bike parts for aviation to develop so far that its later iteration was able to fly around the world in only one week.
30 years from that, and we went from flying the skies to flying into space, so imagine the development for any company over that time.
For Justin Baker, that time frame has allowed him to go from providing outsourced garment decoration to running a multi-faceted in-house decoration business, communicated through bespoke, state-of the-art piece of software.
Lay of the land
In its current state, the Embroidered & Printed Clothing Company works from two units, a head office in Margate and a new production facility in Ramsgate. The latter was moved into around one and a 1/2 years ago and has most recently brought DTF printing into its portfolio, bringing the company leaps and bounds ahead of where it all started.
Justin said: “I had a single-head Melco embroidery machine we picked up, and we started doing jobs for local campaigns, just working with a handful of T shirts for their staff. “We were originally paying a company to embroider them for us. During that time, we found out more about it and the machines; both what they were and how much they cost. “After about a year and a half, we said we probably had enough work to justify getting our own machine. We started with one auto and built up from there.”
Showing growth
The business covers 60,000ft.sq in area, 25,000ft.sq in Margate and 35,000ft.sq in Ramsgate. The main office houses the embroidery department, with a six- machine Tajima setup as well as the company’s pair of DTG Kornit Avalanche machines.
The Ramsgate facility has been an ongoing project since it was bought a couple of years ago.
Justin said: “Funny enough, when I was first doing embroidery, there used to be a company in this facility called Air
Justin Baker, managing director of The Embroidered & Printed Clothing Company
30 years can see a wide array of changes, but for Justin Baker, it saw his business, The Embroidered & Printed Clothing Company, go from subbing out most of its work to becoming this huge garment decoration operation. To learn more about his journey, acting editor Benjamin Austin paid the company a visit in its newest facility.
Atlantica and I used to deliver them their polo shirts.
“When it came on the market it seemed ideal for us and what we were looking for.
“When we moved in it was a complete shell. We had to sort out the gas, electric, pipework, the whole layout.
“And we had to do it while still producing orders for clients in Margate.”
It currently houses seven MHM screen printers with plans to install an eighth, a Pantone ink mixing station, and its most recent purchase, an Adelco DTF printer. Justin said: “We’re screen printing about 1.6 to 1.8m T shirts a year, so we’re probably decorating somewhere between two to two and a half million garments a year in total, we are now one of the largest trade print suppliers in the UK. “DTF has definitely been a game changer and it lets people get into the industry and produce full colour logos on a T shirt that they couldn’t do before because they’d have to buy a massive screen print machine and have a huge amount of space to do it.”
The site also uses a SAATI LTS 8012 laser developer, used to create all the screens with great accuracy and efficiency.
Justin continued: “We’ve noticed a real big improvement in the detail of the screen printing that we can hold with the SAATI LTS.”
The software
But the company’s spotlight piece of tech is its bespoke software it uses to run the entire facility. It allows customers to make an order, track its state of completion and view the finished result. From a manufacturing point of view, it keeps all staff aware of what jobs are being run, at what machine they are running from and
| 48 | September 2026
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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