Kornit’s Digital Printing Glossary
C
Custom Apparel
Custom Apparel
What Is Custom Apparel?
Custom apparel is clothing or accessories that have been personalized with a specific graphic element. It can include T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, uniforms, fashion garments, and footwear.
Custom apparel can be produced for individual customers, businesses, sports teams, and events. Orders can range from a single personalized garment to thousands of items featuring the same design.
Several decoration methods are used to produce custom apparel, including screen printing, embroidery, heat transfer, and digital textile printing.
How Custom Apparel Is Produced
Common methods include:
- Screen printing: Uses individual screens to apply layers of ink onto a garment. It is commonly used for larger quantities of identical designs.
- Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing: Prints digital artwork directly onto the garment without creating screens. It supports detailed graphics, multiple colors, and short production runs.
- Direct-to-film (DTF) printing: Prints a design onto a transfer film before applying it to the garment.
- Embroidery: Uses thread to create designs and is commonly used for logos, uniforms, hats, and workwear.
The production method depends on factors such as order size, garment material, design complexity, and required turnaround time.
Custom Apparel and On-Demand Production
Digital printing has changed how custom apparel can be produced. Traditional production often requires minimum order quantities and preparation before printing begins.
With digital printing, businesses can produce garments directly from digital files. This makes on-demand production practical for individual orders and short runs.
It also enables mass customization, where many garments can be produced within the same workflow while featuring different designs.
Benefits of Digital Printing for Custom Apparel
Digital textile printing offers several advantages for custom apparel production:
- Design flexibility: Detailed artwork, gradients, photographs, and multiple colors can be printed without creating separate screens.
- Personalization: Individual garments can feature different names, numbers, graphics, or other design elements.
- Faster setup: Digital files can move directly into production without screen preparation.
- Flexible quantities: Producers can efficiently handle everything from individual items to larger production runs.
- Reduced inventory requirements: On-demand production allows garments to be decorated in response to actual orders rather than produced and stored in advance.
Kornit’s digital textile printing solutions support custom apparel producers when they want to combine personalization, quality, and scalable on-demand production within a digital workflow. Contact us to learn more.
D
P
R
S