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A Cover-Worthy Collaboration


The embellished fleece garment featured on Impressions’ August issue’s cover resulted from a collaboration among four industry suppliers who all worked together to deliver a superior finished piece.
November 15, 2017

The premise was simple: As with most issues of Impressions, the magazine’s editorial staff sought to partner with an apparel supplier and industry decorator to produce a customized garment for a cover photo shoot.

The August 2017 issue featured a fleecewear trends article, titled “Fleecewear Lightens the Load.” Thus, it was important for the cover to showcase a trendy fleece garment with an appealing, equally trendy design that was not only edgy and interesting, but that also would yield supreme results via the embellishment process.

Impressions cast the proverbial net, hoping to score commitments from at least one industry partner to produce a cover-worthy garment. Instead, the embellished fleece garment resulted from a collaboration among four industry suppliers who all worked together to deliver a superior finished piece.

The process started with Oki Data Americas Inc., Irving Texas, a digital textile printing supplier whose printers deliver transfer output for a wide range of media sizes and weights. OKI partnered with transfer paper/media companies such as Neenah Paper and FOREVER to develop a synergy between media and transfer printers. These partnerships ensured consistent results when printing transfers, according to the company.


The OKI DataPro8432WT printer was calibrated to settings that suited the FOREVER media, and a lower temperature setting allowed for graphics that suited 50/50-blended garments and polyesters. OKI’s revolutionary white toner technology allows colors to be applied to a wide variety of colored textiles and substrates, according to the company.

“OKI offers printers, specially designed to work with transfer papers (straight paper path, redesigned, and adapted firmware and fusers) which really pays off,” says Christopher Sigmann, area sales manager, United States and Commonwealth, FOREVER. “Transfer papers are ‘heavy duty’ for regular laser printers, so consumables like drums and fusers need to be replaced much sooner than shown when using them with other brands. OKI printers deliver great and reliable results with affordable consumable costs.”

The hoodie fleece dress featured on the cover was supplied by S&S Activewear, Bolingbrook, Ill., and the turtle design, which was engineered to translate well for embellishment via heat transfer, was supplied by Great Dane Graphics, Mandeville, La. The transfer was printed on FOREVER media. Stahls’, OKI Data’s heat-press partner, supplied the Fusion heat press to bring together all the aforementioned elements.

According to Sigmann, toner-based heat-transfer systems offer advantages not seen in ink-based systems. “A toner-based system doesn’t require daily cleaning and maintenance,” he says. “It doesn’t produce any unpleasant smells, dirt and doesn’t take up much space in the work environment. When not used, no expensive inks need to be flushed away, which cost a lot of money over time.”

The collaborative effort among these companies fostered an environment of creativity, which not only benefited Impressions magazine, but also decorators who use transfers to embellish garments.

“OKI and its strategic partners have helped modernize heat transfer, creating an alternative to DTG with increased profitability and access for decorators,” says Matt Davies, national sales director, New Business Development, Oki Data Americas. “We will continue to make more partnerships like these that create better, more reliable applications for decorators.” — J.L.


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