The Startup...

The whole idea of Direct to Film printing, for me, has been evolving over many, many months. We already run a small online business, a business that's really enjoyable, profitable, and fun. Often, we found ourselves wishing we had the ability to provide customized items for some of our products. The rest. as they say, is history...

Our house has a long history with printing. Family and friends, all kinds, silkscreen printers, offset printers, independents, national companies, etc. However, I've been an online merchant for several years now. I started seeing other people and companies who do similar things as our online company does, also start to branch out into other "branded" items. So, we started doing in-house silkscreen printing and customizing some items we sell. Ok, not bad, we liked the results. Then we started wanting our own line of themed "merch"- tshirts, mugs, tote bag, etc. As luck would have it, my partner is also a photographer who had a fairly, ready-made catalog of high quality photographs on-theme for our business. Ok, even better! How to deploy that line of products became a line of thinking that led us, somewhat, straight to DTF printing.

Sure, we could do one-off products in vinyl. But that has it's limits. Sure, we still love silkscreen printing- to know it is to love it, and while we still do screen printing (in-house products only) it has it's beauty and benefits, it also comes with it's own "burden" that makes it a daunting idea for us to pursue professionally, or for a living. Due respect to all real, true, screenprinters. Direct to garment seems a staggering startup cost, however compelling the results. Dye Sublimation is in there too, excellent results on intended substrate, but it's either limited in range or you will need to do some tricks to get similar results to another print tech: DTF.

Once bitten, several converted Epson printers and supplies later, here we are!
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