Archive for June, 2007
I commented in my blog from FESPA that the Kornit machines were giving good results on dark T-shirts, and now I know why.
The revolutionary 931D
Kornit recently announced that they had successfully applied for a patent on their revolutionary digital printing machine, the 931D Printer will be available to all in the garment/apparel industry soon. This cutting-edge technology, in conjunction with Kornit’s specially designed digital white ink, will allow t-shirt printers to produce sharp and vibrant colours on dark textiles using digital technology for the first time. Currently digital printing onto a dark t-shirt generally means “washed out and faded print colours”. Thanks to advances in technology, digital (DTG) printing looks to be the way forward for T-shirt printers.
June 28th, 2007
- What is ’skin friendly cotton?’
Although a T-shirt may well contain the purest cotton available, this refers to the raw material and not how it has been processed. During the dyeing and finishing process chemicals can be used which can affect the wearer and the environment. If allowed to be absorbed into the fabric these chemicals can cause skin irritation.
- How can I avoid this risk?
Developed in 1992 by a group of European textile institutes the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 Mark (sometimes abbreviated to Oko-Tex) is a global standard that sets strict limits on the amount of harmful substances which can be found in the product. Find out more about Oko-Tex’s work on their Website
The Oeko-Tex Label
The Oeko-Tex Standard 100 is widely regarded as the industry benchmark in the field of human ecology, since it provides a thorough and rigorously scrupulous screening scheme, which sets more stringent limits than current EC legislation on banned or restricted substances used in textile manufacture. The Oeko-Tex test even searches for chemicals not currently banned by legislation but are considered potentially hazardous such as: Banned Carcinogenic Dyestuffs, Allergenic Dyestuffs, Extractable Heavy Metals, Flame Retardants, Formaldehyde, Loose Dye/Colour, Organo-tin Compounds, Phthalates (plasticizers), Chlorinated Aromatic Compounds and Volatile Organics.
Here at polo-shirts.co.uk all of our ‘Fruit of the Loom’, ‘Hanes’ and ‘Stedman’ branded stock carries an Oko-tex certification that signifies, not only do the t-shirts contain 100% cotton, but also that this cotton has been treatred conscientiously to create the safest possible t-shirt for you and your family.
Fruit of the Loom’s ’skin-friendly’ clothing
June 26th, 2007
We have been looking for ways to improve www.polo-shirts.co.uk for our customers. We came up with a number of design and layout modifications which we have been testing over several weeks on thousands of customer visits. From extensive research we found an improved format for our product pages. During the next few days the design changes will be implemented on the site. Any comments gratefully received.
June 17th, 2007
The £10 off orders of more than £30 promotion is now over.
We appreciate all the customers who took part in the promotion.
June 11th, 2007
We have been advised by Paypal that they will be performing a scheduled upgrade to PayPal’s data centre on Tuesday, 19 June 2007. This upgrade is scheduled to begin at 05:00 am and should be completed by 0.700 am. During this time the PayPal site will be unavailable and we will not be able to process payments on the site through Paypal.
Payments made by credit card or debit card directly on the site or Google Checkout will be unaffected.
June 11th, 2007
We would love to be able to help all the people with worthy causes that approach us. Unfortunately we can’t do that. We have decided to focus our efforts on helping a limited number of charities. Currently our selected charities are Shelter and Barnardos.
June 10th, 2007
In a nutshell
• Great for t shirt printers.
• Compact exhibition
• Beautiful cosmopolitan Berlin.
The FESPA Exhibition covers printing in general (printing equipment traditional and digital as well as consumables. Two and half halls were dedicated to Garment and textile decoration. This included screen printing, digital printing, printing consumables, embroidery machinery and a limited amount of embroidery consumables plus a limited range on clothing. Unlike PSI Germany the clothing related halls are doable in a day if you are in a hurry.
The digital equipment (DTG) suppliers were clearly visible despite huge areas being taken up by traditional screen printing carousels suppliers such as M & R . Printing on black is still a problem for DTG printers but the results on black t shirts from the Fast T jet machine produced by U.S. Screen Print & Inkjet Technology looked considerably better than the competition from the Brother GT 541 and other injet garment printers. For higher volume DTG printing. Kornit offered a solution which gave good results on dark colours but at a significantly higher investment than the Fast T Jet or Brother GT451.
There was a large array of heat transfer press suppliers ranging from Beijing based manufactures through to better known brand names such as Stahls producers of the Hotronix range of Heat Transfer Presses. In contrast Roland equipment plotters and printers seem to be everywhere.
Clothing suppliers were thin on the ground. Continental, American Apparel, Bella and Sols were the best known clothing and T-shirt suppliers exhibiting. If you are looking purely for clothing or clothing suppliers this is not the right exhibition for you.
This was my first trip to Berlin which is a beautiful, relaxed and cosmopolitan city which I would love to visit again.
June 8th, 2007
We recently emailed all customers who are opted in to our mailing list with the Google checkout promotion. At the same time we also advised customers of the change to mailing policy. The reason for this is that where an exceptional offer arises we believe it would be in our customers interest to notify them straight away. Some of these offers are extremely time sensitive. Take for example the Google checkout promotion which allowed all customers who signed up for a Google checkout account and then paid using this method. These customers were able to save £10 on orders over £30. The expected duration of the promotion was approximately 10 days on our site. Accordingly we felt it necessary to notify customers straight away.
We do not share our mailing list and you can opt out at any time.
