The Future of Printing
Walking through the mall the other day I had a major wake-up call. People aren’t staring at the store fronts anymore; they’re staring at their phones!
We are looking at an enormous shift in consumer expectations, brand interactions, and spending that will prove catastrophic to businesses that are unprepared. This change is happening abruptly due largely to a huge increase in smartphone use. Africa has begun to pass on land lines, leaping instead over decades of technology eras to become the most densely-populated region exclusively using smartphones.
Custom apparel printed on-demand and shipped within hours to the consumer is the new normal. We saw the beginning of this industry with companies like Threadless, Cafepress, Customink, and Tee Spring, whose market was primarily hobbyists getting their feet wet in providing custom designs. This initial shift led to a revolution in the ecommerce space with companies like Shopify, Magento, and Woo Commerce allowing for web store creation in minutes. The online stores using these new platforms needed the lightning fast turnaround times that Direct-To-Garment Printing could offer. Businesses like Scalable Press, Printful, and Sunfrog were then provided with endless growth opportunity, because they had invested heavily into technology that could capture the high volume of online orders, and they were able to deliver it to their customer as a white-label solution with production software. This market shift is similar to major cab companies controlling the passenger transit industry until Uber came in and allowed anyone with a car to run their own cab service.
Inklocker is disrupting the Print-On-Demand industry again by making it possible for anyone with a digital apparel printer to receive print jobs and deliver them to the client with ease and speed. We will see printers slashing prices to keep up with demand as more people have the ability to create an income by producing on demand apparel for clients surrounding their region. As brands face the challenge of reworking their business model to accommodate market expectations, they will increasingly turn to inklocker to streamline their processes & connect with the inklocker printer network. Brands will have to face the decision to adapt and adjust, or see their names next to companies like Kodak, who saw the future but chose not to pivot quickly.
Welcome to the on-demand revolution apparel industry! This is the new normal….and we think you’re going to like it.
By Brandon Sowers
CEO of Inklocker.com
