AnaJet.com - Defining Digital Apparel Printers @anajet-blog - Tumblr Blog

AnaJet Customer Advisory Board Meets

On Wednesday, August 22, AnaJet held a Customer Advisory Board meeting with ten customers representing eight different market segments in multiple industries. The meeting took place at AnaJet's Costa Mesa, California headquarters. This was our first formal customer advisory meeting since before launching the mPower in August 2011. The advisers on the board provided excellent input to our team, who included engineering, product management, sales, support and marketing managers. We hosted representatives from screen printing, embroidery, promotional products, retail, apparel manufacturing, sign and large format, and home-based businesses, plus higher education. They own products ranging from the FP-125 to SPRINT to mPower, some of them using more than one model. Their contributions will help AnaJet to better focus its resources on the areas that matter most to our customers. Thanks again to everyone who participated. We look forward to interacting more, integrating your ideas and growing with all of our customers in the future.

Color Image Designs Recommends AnaJet University for Hands-on Training

AnaJet University's mPower training has been underway since early December. Among our first mPower students was a trio from Color Image Designs, a custom garment printer based in Florida. AnaJet's tech support team, who supports all AJU training, typically takes extra time when customers want to see different techniques and applications, so this was no exception. Our customers expect a higher level of service from AnaJet because that's one of the many things that sets us apart from everyone else, and we're ecstatic to receive such a warm acknowledgement! Susan, Heather and Gene, we hope you now have the tools and the knowledge to build a huge business and we look forward to hearing from you. ________________________________________________________ To Whom It May Concern, We are writing to tell you how impressed we are regarding the mPower Anajet training we attended on Dec 1st. The training was well organized and the pace of the training was perfect. We were able to take notes, ask questions and see all the examples without feeling rushed. The trainers were very knowledgeable and went above and beyond on everything they did. We asked numerous questions and each time they answered the questions easily and with great detail to ensure we had complete understanding. There was nothing we threw at them that they were not able to answer. The trainers also stressed that they would always be there if we needed assistance going so far as to offer assistance with graphic problems and insisting that we call before setting up the printer. We have attended many training classes with other companies and normally you sit there and they go through materials on a projector. In the mPower training the projector was used properly as one method of training in conjunction with hands on experience, discussion and the training manual. The training manual was put together with detailed step by step instructions. We feel confident that anything we forgot from training we will be able to refer back to the manual and be able to complete the task easily. Majority of the training was done with hands on experience. Being able to print on as many black and white shirts as we wanted made us much more comfortable with the machine, but also led to even more valuable unplanned training experiences. The machine we had didn’t have the ink monitor so it had run out of ink and air got into the lines. They had replaced the ink before training but we had numerous times where a color disappeared during printing. Instead of just fixing it for us they walked us through how to fix it and explained what had happened and how it was corrected. If we had only been able to print one shirt we wouldn’t have had this invaluable training. We were also able to see how the pretreatment was applied. Then we were allowed to do the pretreatment on our own and to really understand how much to apply and all the little tricks to do it correctly. This is only two examples of the hands on experience we received in this training. Almost everything they trained on they showed us and then we did it ourselves. All of us learn best by doing, so this was the most helpful part of the training. We were told the training went until 3 pm but we didn’t actually leave until almost 5:30. The training had gone well past 3 and then John and your sample production crew dropped everything to show us printing on glass, plastics and wood. We had asked for this training and John set it up with less than 24 hrs notice but we also asked them to show us foil after 5 pm and they were more than happy to oblige. After we left we decided that we also wanted to get training and experience on the canvas painting. John and your sample production crew dropped everything once again and let us come back the next day to show us the process along with all the tips and tricks. I think you can see that we have numerous reasons to be beyond excited about the mPower training we received from your company. Please pass on our appreciation to the trainers, sample production crew, John and anyone else that had a hand in putting this training together. Thank you, Susan Asplin, Heather Valen and Gene Wodzicki Color Image Designs [email protected] 813-480-3148 _____________________________ UPDATE, August 21, 2012: Susan, Heather and Gene are realizing tremendous success with their mPowers in the business. Check out their latest report to us.

Chicago Area Demand for Custom Printed Shirts Drives DTG Growth

A reporter for Northwestern University's newspaper contacted us about an article on the rise of social media as a sales driver, particularly for custom printed shirts and other digitally printed articles. There is a killer marketing strategy described here: get local. Shops who are attuned to their neighborhoods or regions, tourist attractions, major annual events, school functions, public contests, non-profit groups, athletic centers, local interest groups and other "area" activities can create demand for their products with something as simple as a single printed sample, worn or displayed in the right place. When you understand the things that people want to identify and associate themselves with, you can create a "brand" that they are attracted to. This is the nexus of the Soul Project in Laguna Beach - a previously featured AnaJet customer. The article paraphrases me a little confusingly here: “With social media, online stores are able to cater to customers on a personal basis. Mass personalization allows even larger screen printers to make small, short run jobs.” Allow me to revise this with my original statement. Vendors (esp screen printers and other garment decorators) who have an online presence in social media venues, like Facebook and Twitter and others, can have immediate and personal presence with their followers. Factor in the profit potential of a digital garment printer - you can realize profit on a single garment. Now you have the perfect storm of mass personalization. Hundreds (or thousands) of your company's followers can send you a specific custom digital image and you can merchandise it, print and sell it, PROFITABLY, in runs of one, three or twenty, while gaining the approval and repeat business from a community. So, if you are already getting business through your Facebook page, you would be passing on a huge opportunity to leverage that vehicle for maximum bang if you did NOT invest in direct to garment. This is why shows like the ASI Show - Chicago and other major cities - are becoming bigger occasions for AnaJet as the original equipment manufacturer of direct to garment printers. The barriers to entry have not disappeared, but... in the past ten years, the overall quality of digital apparel printer output has risen while fully-burdened finished-goods costs have shrunken, to the degree that smart retail business owners and frankly anyone in the imaging industry can make the investment without breaking the bank. Link to the Northwest Passage web site or download the PDF of the article.

Join Us at ISS Las Vegas Sunday through Tuesday

Booth#406 was very busy yesterday and today at ISS Las Vegas, happening at the LV Convention Center through Tuesday. We got some good shots of the booth. Be sure to stop by to talk with Brett, Ken and Deana. We are running the SPRINT and the mPower mP10 model. [gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Commercial Sign Maker Grows Business 35% Overnight using mPower

Andy Buchholz has been in the printing industry since 1989. He recently has been building his business, Eastern Shore Signs in Cape Charles, Virginia, mainly with a large number of jobs for routing and vinyl cutting. To diversify his product lines, he bought an AnaJet mPower mP5 garment printer. According to Andy, almost overnight, the AnaJet printer enabled a 35% increase in business. With around 3,500 garments printed since March 2012, Andy realized $21,000 in total business sales in the month of June with orders distributed about 50% signs and 50% garment and other fabric printing on the mPower. In fact Andy signed on to a webinar recently and let me know that he had crossed the 4,300 mark and was still printing like mad. Eastern Shore Signs is essentially a one-man operation in a small town of about 1,200 people. To an outsider, this might make his explosive success pretty remarkable. Andy says that he gets a lot of business from retail stores in nearby Virginia Beach, businesses that cater to tourists, restaurants, and lately a coffee company. He also discovered a significant volume of business after joining the Chamber of Commerce - beginning with a $1,200 job immediately upon joining. So the secret is not so secret - he's marketing a low-cost product through viral means -- word-of-mouth and Facebook -- to industries that thrive on short runs, on-demand fulfillment and personalization. As a veteran large format and inkjet printer operator, Andy is amazed with the mPower digital apparel printer's performance, reliability and ease of use, especially how simple it was for him to get into full production right away. He's also a fan of AnaRIP, the proprietary software that comes with every mPower. With his strong background in printing, and having used the very first RIP programs in large format, Andy say that AnaRIP is, "Simple, yet powerful.” Exactly what we have been striving for. Many thanks to Andy, and check back for the full story on our blog next week! [gallery link="file"]

ASI Chicago Exhibit High Turnout

Thank you to all of the customers and prospects who stopped by our booth at ASI Chicago to watch a demo, ask questions and even buy printers. Even with four people staffing the booth all day long, we were amazed at how busy the show turned out to be. Maybe it was the fact that self-help guru Anthony Robbins was the keynote? The promotional products industry is becoming stronger than ever. We feel very much at home when we are talking business challenges with distributors who are looking at ways to capture greater margins. We're going to be submitting more articles, and doing another webinar in November with Stitches Magazine (an ASI publication), because we really believe that distributors have an untapped opportunity. Our promo products customers are using direct to garment printers to produce on demand, full-digital-color printed apparel, promotional bags, hats, socks, scarves, personalized items and more. If you've weathered the storm of the past few years, then you surely know how to market your business - which is the #1 most difficult thing for startups to do when they offer a commodity service. We will definitely be back on the ASI Show circuit in 2013! [gallery link="file"]

"But can you REALLY print 100 shirts in an hour?"

Like most other companies, we monitor the buzz and interact with customers through social media. Recently one discussion led to a suggestion: if we can really print 100 shirts in one hour, why don't we PROVE IT? We truncated the "order size" down to 25 so that we could encapsulate it all in a video of reasonable length. I asked one of the participants of the discussion, an actual AnaJet customer, to send me a graphic that might represent a typical customer image. We would run 25 shirts and show the complete process, from opening the graphic file in AnaRIP to the final heat press. Multiply by four to get an approximate time for 100 garments. Well, we didn't know for sure what would happen. The image was larger than our speed test file - 13" x 13" rather than 12" x 11.5" - so it would take longer than 16 seconds. We had been told by other customers that they could jam out 50 shirts in an hour on the mP5 with one operator. [caption id="attachment_1624" align="alignright" width="300"] 25 shirts in 18 minutes[/caption] See for yourself. At a smooth, steady pace, Deana and Gabe ripped, printed and pressed 25 white shirts in just under 18 minutes. We fast forwarded most of the production for you, so it's about 7 minutes. Now, would you normally run 100 shirts in Speed mode? It depends on the market and the expectation. Each job and each customer dictates the necessary speed and quality. Do you have a customer who was referred to you by a screen printer, because they wanted a 300-shirt, six-color print by tomorrow morning? Or is this a high margin retail job where you're going to clear $13 per shirt for absolutely perfect results?[gallery link="file"]

AnaRIP 2.0 Released

We recently released a major new version of our AnaRIP software and delivered a series of popular theater sessions on it at NBM Indianapolis. Here's a link to the brochure and the product web page. We are scheduling two webinars to cover all of the big new features. Tuesday, July 10 and Tuesday, July 24, both at 10:00 a.m. Pacific. A three-part online demo is here: http://anajet.com/landing/video/mpower_RIP_showcase.html The software actually had even more improvements done after this video. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AnaJet Releases AnaRIP Version 2.0

Costa Mesa, California, July 2, 2012 – AnaJet, makers of the best-selling digital apparel printer, announced that they have released AnaRIP™ version 2.0. AnaRIP, which is an abbreviation for AnaJet raster image processing (RIP), is the proprietary software that enables AnaJet’s mPower series direct to garment printer to faithfully reproduce images onto garments and other products. “This release of AnaRIP is remarkable because it contains a number of dramatic enhancements that will help our customers save time, control costs and improve fidelity to the source image,” said Paul Green, product manager at AnaJet. “Our customers depend on our equipment to produce custom-printed garments faster than any other direct to garment printer in the industry. They need to have the best RIP software to support high production, on-demand business environments. I think they will be excited to take advantage of the new version.” Most high-end specialty printers require RIP software to translate digital images into pulses of ink droplets through a print head. Controlling and fine-tuning the RIP process is critical to high-quality output. The mPower digital apparel printer prints digital-quality, full color images with resolutions ranging up to 1200 dpi. The new version of AnaRIP includes a number of outstanding features. The most remarkable improvements include:

A built-in Ink Cost Calculator, which can provide an estimate of the cost of ink used after the file has been ”ripped”, but before actual printing takes place. This enables operators to price jobs more accurately.

AnaRIP’s TrueView™ lets the operator preview a close facsimile of the resulting print, because it takes into account the background fabric color as well as the white underbase (if used).

Unique underbase adjustment sliders allow operators to fine-tune for red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow and gray, so that the RIP delivers maximum fidelity to the source image.

For digital garment decoration, high-end RIP software typically costs several hundred dollars to well over one thousand dollars, with annual fees for updates. However, AnaJet does not charge mPower owners for software updates for the life of the printer. There is no cost to these owners to download and use AnaRIP 2.0. Registered owners can navigate to the AnaJet tech support site and log in. AnaJet launched the mPower in August 2011 along with the initial version of AnaRIP and enjoyed an overwhelming response to its new printer. “The mPower family continues to grow at rates beyond our initial expectations,” said Greg Nathanson, president and CEO of AnaJet. “The new features in our proprietary RIP software were developed from direct customer feedback, which should result in a more powerful operating platform for our current customers and solidify the business case for any buyers who are considering AnaJet.” AnaJet printers are made in the US with internationally sourced components. AnaJet sells all printers, inks and accessories directly to customers in the United States. Outside the US, AnaJet certified distributors provide sales, support, training and service in more than 40 countries. Interested parties are encouraged to visit AnaJet at ASI Chicago, July 18 and 19, Booth #2217, for an in-person demonstration. For more information, visit www.anajet.com/AnaRIP. About AnaJet Privately held, AnaJet, LLC manufactures, distributes and services digital apparel printers and related consumables. AnaJet was established in 2004 and is the recognized market leader in digital garment printing systems in the US. For more information, visit www.anajet.com.

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Eyedentitees Reports Success with AnaJet mPower

[caption id="attachment_1609" align="alignnone" width="300"] Left to right: Kris Baskara with his certified AnaJet distributors, PT Samafitro: Tji Fung and Herman[/caption]

Left to right: John Schutz of AnaJet, Kris Baskara and Josep Domingot of AnaJet

A customer in Indonesia recently wrote to share their success with their new mPower. They wrote in two languages. "We started using our AnaJet mPower Digital Apparel Printer one month ago. We bought it because we knew that there's a huge potential for this business. A big challenge for us is that we're not a big factory that really needed a daily large production [capacity], but from the first time we did a business plan, we realized that our strategy would be to target social communities, an iconic role model who would directly influence their followers, and to be sensitive to current events. Our AnaJet mPower already proven its capability for about 500 t-shirts so far. Our relations with the Anajet mPower local distributor for Indonesia, PT. Samafitro, have been pretty good. Their service always has a personal touch. Their technical support is quick to get through to and all of the support staff are professional yet friendly and have a great working knowledge of technical matters. I would happily recommended the AnaJet mPower to anyone. Keep up the good work and always be innovative! - Kris Baskara, Jakarta, Indonesia - www.eyedentitees.com ------------------------------------ Kami mulai menggunakan Anajet mPower Printer DTG 1 bulan yang lalu, kami membelinya karena kami tahu bahwa ada potensi yang sangat besar untuk bisnis ini. Sebuah tantangan besar bagi kita bahwa kami bukan pabrik besar yang benar-benar membutuhkan produksi yang besar setiap hari, tapi dari waktu awal kami lakukan rencana bisnis, kami menyadari tentang sasaran kami untuk mendekati seperti komunitas sosial, Ion Model yang akan memberikan pengaruh langsung kepada pengikut mereka atau bahkan tentang peristiwa saat ini. Anajet mPower telah diuji produksi selama lebih kurang 500 kaos sampai sekarang. Hubungan kami dengan Anajet MPOWER distributor lokal untuk Indonesia, PT. Samafitro, cukup bagus. Layanan mereka selalu memiliki sentuhan pribadi. Dukungan teknis mereka cepat dan semua staf pendukung profesional, ramah dan memiliki pengetahuan yang baik dalam hal-hal teknis. Saya dengan senang hati akan merekomendasikan MPOWER Anajet kepada siapa pun. Terus bekerja dengan baik dan selalu inovatif! - Kris Baskara, Jakarta, Indonesia - www.eyedentitees.com

ASI Stitches Webinar Archive Posted

Thank you to Stitches Magazine for hosting and participating in the webinar yesterday, Getting Started with Direct to Garment Printing. The registrations were very high and we were amazed at the turnout. ASI has posted the full recorded version. It's valuable to scan through this by the slides - look for relevant questions. Jimmy Lamb and Chuck Northcutt had very pertinent responses and anecdotes to help a small business or a start-up think critically about their business model and how d-t-g might fit into it.

NBM Indianapolis Show Education Station

Visit us in Indianapolis at the NBM Show. We’ve expanded our booth and are participating in the Education Station program, so stop by and take a seat. Here’s the DAILY schedule for Education Station. 11:00 a.m.: Building a Six-Figure Line of Business with DTG – Paul Green, AnaJet 1:00 p.m.: Online Marketing for Direct to Garment – JP Hunt, InkSoft 3:00 p.m.: Have a RIPping Good Time with Graphics – Paul Green, AnaJet

Printwear Direct to Garment Pre-Treatment Article by Paul Green

Product manager Paul Green is featured in this month's Printwear Magazine - link to the full digital edition or download the article only (PDF, 1MB). Paul discusses at length the right and wrong way to pre-treat shirts, how to attain the best results and troubleshoot if things go wrong. The goal is always to get the best possible print for the least amount of effort and hassle, with minimal waste. In the article are actual shots of our production setup. Yes, we frequently use the large Viper pre-treatment machine because it delivers the most consistent results. It requires a little more maintenance than a Wagner sprayer but because we ship out thousands of samples every quarter, we need to maintain consistent quality and cost control. Remember that Paul will be presenting one or two Education Station sessions at NBM Indianapolis, next week! Come and see Paul and our product array at booth #201. JP Hunt of InkSoft will also be talking on how to use online design, custom web sites and e-commerce to grow your garment decoration business.

DTGReady Offering Pre-treated Shirts

AnaJet customer Chuck Northcutt has started his own blank garment business line - pre-treated shirts for direct to garment printing. The shirts have been specifically treated to operate best on mPower and SPRINT and Chuck is selling small lots of a dozen to US customers for testing purposes. Stitches Magazine editor Chris Ruvo interviews Chuck for the lowdown.

New Dark Shirts Eliminate DTG Pre-Treatment Process

For years, Chuck Northcutt Jr.'s wife listened to him complain about the time-consuming challenge of pre-treating dark shirts so they can be embellished by a direct-to-garment digital printer. If it is that much of a hassle, his wife politely suggested one day, why don't you do something to make it better? Says Northcutt: "She said, 'You've been doing this a while and you know a lot of people in the industry … you've got to be smart enough to figure something out.' " As it turned out, he was. The owner of Creative Promotions Inc., a Seattle-based apparel decorating firm, recently started www.DTGReady.com, a website through which decorators can buy specially manufactured dark shirts that are pre-treated and ready to run through digital apparel printers. In a pre-launch phase, www.DTGReady.com has a stock of 1,500 shirts available for sale to decorators in maximum batches of 12. Northcutt hopes shops that buy the shirts will provide feedback – there's a form on the site for doing that – so he can make any necessary tweaks before investing in an inventory of about 60,000 pieces. The shirts have a number of major advantages, says Northcutt. First, they save decorators time, allowing them to bypass the whole pre-treatment fiasco. Secondly, the fabric is treated during the manufacturing process, meaning the entire shirt is coated evenly, resulting in no treatment inconsistencies that can ruin a final design. Says Northcutt: "Before, if someone wanted 72 shirts, it would take hours and hours to pre-treat them, and inevitably you're going to lose a few of them. Now, you don't have to worry about that." Read the rest of the Stitches Magazine article.

J&B Sewing Wraps Their Traveling Print Show with AnaJet

Our long-time distributor in the United Kingdom, J&B Sewing Co, recently hired a design and sign team to decorate a trailer using the AnaJet brand and corporate campaign images. We were impressed with the results. We hope this gives some of you ideas for traveling to car shows, swap meets, craft fairs or other mobile kiosk concepts for quick business. Robert Miller of J&B also shared some photos of his trade show booth. [gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Education Station at NBM Indianapolis June 21-23

We're going to be supporting the NBM Show's "Education Station" program with three different presentations each day at the Indianapolis show. If you have been looking around at direct to garment and comparing features, take a few minutes to stop by and view one of these educational presentations. Building a Six-Figure Line of Business with DTG - Paul Green, AnaJet Buying a printer isn't enough. You want to achieve quick ROI! Find out what works, where to start, and how to do it cost-effectively. Paul will share secrets and strategies from our top customers on how they moved from purchase to profit in a matter of months. Strategies include networking, targeted prospecting, referral bonuses, social media, web site, and sampling. 11:00am daily Online Marketing for Direct to Garment - JP Hunt, InkSoft All garment decorators and promotional products distributors need reliable tools to promote their business, personalize their offerings and manage transactions. A strong online application can help. JP will explain how InkSoft enables you to create personalized e-stores for top clients; empower them to design their own products; and enable smooth purchases and shipping, so you can concentrate on other value-adding tasks. Watch the 1-minute demo 1:00pm daily Have a RIPping Good Time with Graphics - Paul Green, AnaJet One of the perennial challenges of owning an imaging business is getting a customer's graphics to reproduce faithfully, especially when a customer expects perfect results from a poor quality source. Paul will show you how, using AnaRIP, to properly RIP images for garment printing. Learn trustworthy tips and best practices for fixing bad source images. View a sneak peek demo of AnaRIP 3:00pm daily Visit the NBM Show site for Indianapolis. Or call your Regional Manager for free passes to the exhibit hall, 877 626 2538.

AnaJet Welcomes New Italy Distributor

AnaJet is proud to welcome Studio Auriga as our new distributor for the country of Italy. Auriga launched in 1957 working in the field of embroidery software, partnering in 1977 with Studio Auriga to market Tajima multi-head embroidery machines from Japan. In 1990 a new company formed, with Studio Auriga as parent company, to better coordinate research and development, programming and implementation of the embroidery software, as well as technical assistance for the machines they market. The company offers all the tools necessary to optimize their garment decoration products. Studio Auriga will launch AnaJet products to the embroidery, screen printing, sign making, promotion, gift, awards, and engraving markets. They have a 600-square-meter showroom in Solaro (MI), while sales and administrative offices are located in Milan. They also have branch offices in Capri, Pistoia, Napoli (Naples), and Catania. For more information about Studio Auriga, or to locate a distributor in your country, visit our Distributors page.

Top Ten Factors for Evaluating Direct to Garment Printers - and Vendors

Here's an article on what to look out for when you are in the market for a direct to garment printer. I'll summarize the factors. These top ten are in addition to price - the #1 consideration. Price is usually the one thing that customers dwell on at the expense of other factors.

Production capacity relative to your needs. In a word, speed. How long does it take to print a good batch of brilliant, full-color prints without a lot of babysitting and hassle?

Ink control. How granular is the ability to control ink drop size, for high resolution, washable prints? This directly affects aesthetic quality and finish.

Durability of components, especially print heads. How long do the parts last in normal use, and how costly is it to replace wear items?

Degree and frequency of maintenance and downtime. How much time and effort does it take to clean and maintain your printer, and are you willing to sacrifice that time?

WYSIWYG: How faithfully can you reproduce an image? Do the printer and RIP software deliver on expectations for fidelity to the source?

Ink consumption and cost per print. How much money can I expect to spend printing a given type of image? This highly variable cost can determine pricing strategy and profit.

Washability of finished goods. How well does my ink cure and adhere to the fabric? How well does the ink work in tandem with a pre-treatment solution?

Availability of tech support. When are techs available?

Training and learning curve. What tools and seminars are available and how much do they cost? How long does it take to become competent with the machine?

Depth of user forums and online community. Are there other people out there doing what I am doing? Have they been able to solve some of the challenges I am facing?

There are many other factors as well, but these ten should definitely be considered in such a decision. Check out the article for more details. Top 10 Garment Printer Evaluation Factors AnaJet

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