HOME DECOR NEW DIGITAL PRINT TECHNOLOGIES AND PROSPECTS FOR 2020
The Home Décor Sector is huge, the global home decor market size was valued at USD 663.1 billion in 2018 (Grand View Research)
Smithers Research - The Future of Decorative Printing to 2023 - forecasts the market to grow 5% annually from 2018 to 2023.
As the Millennial and Zed generations gain market prominence, so the coming decade presents many challenges and opportunities in the Home Décor sector.
Whether it’s Extinction Rebellion or just the insistence of common sense, the sustainability agenda will only grow in the years ahead. This combined with the ever-increasing demand for customisation, speed to market, and personalisation, will be the backdrop for the Home Decor Community as the new decade dawns.
In a sector where Design and Taste have held sway for so long, Digital Technology is now seen as offering solutions to the many questions that are being asked:
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, is the change that Digital technologies have wrought in reshaping Home Sector business models. Driving this has been the Digital Textile Printing phenomenon. Reflecting the decline of traditional Retail roads to market, digitally printed, on-demand Textiles sales are a huge growth area for ecommerce. With new technologies for online retail, interactive online-video, augmented reality and real-time product choices, the on-line business model has taken flight.
Social media, is driving the sharp increase in sales and the continued emergence of a creative reform, all offering design entrepreneurs the platforms and technologies for ecommerce retail. The increasing penetration of e-commerce via smart devices like mobile phones and tablets with easy payment and distribution options has increased the adoption of online home décor products as a medium of shopping.
In this profitable model, massive finished goods warehouses are a thing of the past because products are produced in an on-demand environment, the stock, such as it is, consists of base white fabric awaiting print and the Digital Textile Pattern files ready to go down to print.
This model is only made possible through the use of Digital Textile Printing technologies, where, what used to take weeks, now takes a matter of hours.
Machines like the new Presto model from Kornit Digital illustrate the many benefits of this new and growing technology.
The Kornit Presto prints onto a wide variety of fabrics (including natural, synthetics, and blended textiles) with a single ink set. This means that production carries on without a pause whether the Fabric being used is Cotton, Polyester or Polyester Cotton. Developed based on years of digital pigment printing experience, the Kornit Presto eliminates the need for additional technical or chemical procedures making it the fastest direct-to-fabric printing single-step solution.
The Presto is perfectly paired with the most robust pigment ink set on the market. The pigment ink set has a short curing and adhesion time, enabling high-quality production and finished product within minutes.
Running fabric in a one-step process, an operator can print over 5,000 metres in a single shift delivering quality product with true speed to market.
Software plays a huge part in this new era of web-to-print production, order processing is electronic, with files being transferred instantaneously by the cloud, using the Kornit Konnect analytical connectivity platform.
“While businesses need to deliver high-quality faster than ever to maintain customer loyalty, they are also challenged to maximize their efficiency and productivity,” said Omer Kulka, VP of Marketing at Kornit Digital. “Konnect empowers these businesses to make better-informed production decisions and act on them, with greater visibility and control over their operations success”.
In this business model, where payment is made before dispatch, and where there are no returns (close-outs) neither fabric quality nor fabric performance are compromised, Home Décor manufacturers have found a niche that fits perfectly with their growing clientele.
But it’s the way that Digital Textile Printing Technology combines its speed to market business model, with sustainability and eco-awareness, that gives this technology the real legs to face the challenges of the next decade.
Digital Textile Printing, particularly with pigment inks, ticks all the boxes.
From the start, Kornit's commitment has been to create digital textile printing solutions in an environmentally responsible way. From their processes to their products, they have developed ways to achieve stunning, vivid prints while simultaneously cutting water waste, preventing toxic run-off, and conserving energy. Here, virtually no water is used during the process, energy requirements are less than 20% of traditional printing and there is no polluting waste-water effluent.
Environmental savings for Digital Textile Printing are exemplary in an Industry which is the second largest polluter on Earth, with some saying that it accounts for 10% of the world’s carbon footprint and 20% of all the waste-water produced (United Nations).
New Ink systems demonstrate this, such as the Kornit Neo Pigment™ Robusto System which is waterless, absolutely free of heavy metals, formaldehyde and Alkylphenol Ethoxylates (APE), making them non-hazardous, non-toxic and biodegradable, and which follow the highest international sustainability standards including: OEK TEX 100, and GOTS.
Omer Kulka, Kornit’s VP of Marketing and Product Strategy commented;
“Kornit is on a mission to reinvent the textile printing industry with game-changing sustainable technologies for growing market segments. We continue to see demand growth for on-demand production in fashion and home décor. This revolutionary technology is further proof of Kornit’s commitment to address the textile industry’s most urgent needs.”
This growth is seen among many of the most prominent Home Décor design houses and Interior Designers.
In London, Osborne and Little and Designers Guild offer extensive Digital print collections on fabrics and wallcoverings, while at Andrew Martin, digital printing enables their designers to add further weight to their unique take on design and colour for the home.
All achieved within the winning proposition of a business model that balances profitability and speed with the unique environmental benefits that Digital printing provides.
