We live in a time of constant technological progress, and this also rings true when talking about the printing industry.

The printing industry has been steadily developing for years now, trying to respond to the growing demands of printers all around the world. The industry is changing alongside the fashion industry and its consumers, whose demands have drastically changed over the years.

The printing industry used to only be concerned about printing in quantity, and screen-printing steadily developed to offer the solutions you now see on the market. Machines such as the ROQ Oval Evolution or ROQ Oval Pro are powerhouses able to perform and deliver a quality product no matter how big the number of prints to be made.

However, demands in the printing world never stop changing, with jobs becoming increasingly more about complexity and individuality, a lot of printers have been asking for a more time and cost-efficient solution to deliver those jobs, instead of occupying their main printers to do so. DTG machines are now starting to be the answer to this growing demand and if you are not sure whether you should get one, here are the top reasons why you should add a DTG printer to your shop's arsenal.

Your print designs are often very complex.

One of the best ways to know if you should buy a DTG Printer is to analyze your customer base and what kind of orders you are getting. If most of your jobs have complex artwork and low order amounts, then a DTG printer would be just right for you. Complex designs often take a lot more time to set up in traditional screen printing, and if the order amounts are low, it's just not worth the time it takes to set up and the costs associated to it.

You are mainly focused on the web to print market

The web-to-print market is a fast-growing industry. The age of online orders, e-commerce, is here to stay and chances are the core of your business revolves around it. If you are printing for an online store like Redbubble, Zazzle, Custom Ink, Printful or any other kind of customized clothing print-on-demand platforms, that means you are dealing with a diverse number of jobs with low quantity amounts per order every day. A DTG printer, with its low setup times and ability to print any kind of artwork with ease, no matter the complexity, is the ideal companion to work within this market.

It allows you to tap into a different customer base

As I have said above, the market is definitely steering into a web to print era, and for knowledgeable screen-printers, this might be a tough change, as standard screen-printing machines are not used to working with low quantity orders due to the required setup times that printing multicolor designs entail.

By acquiring a DTG printer, you could tap into this web to print customer base without sacrificing your long-term partners. Adding a machine like the ROQ Now or ROQ Hybrid to your arsenal will make sure that you can enter this new market while maintaining your regular orders.

Which one should you go for?

If after reading this you think moving towards acquiring a DTG printer is the right move for your business, you are probably wondering which model you should be buying. ROQ´s line of DTG printers just released the 3rd generation for its ROQ Now machine. Each of them is more than ready to take your business to the next level, but both of them differ from each other to fit different needs and styles of printing.

The ROQ Hybrid is a fusion between screen-printing and digital printing, combining DTG with Screens. It allows for the speedy screen-printing method to deal with some of the more time-consuming processes, leaving all the colour in charge of digital that offers a larger colour gamut, better resolution options and outputs that you can't find in screen-printing. It also brings the best of both worlds making possible a combination of digital printing with special effects such as flock, foil, glitter, crackle, high density, discharge and more.

On the other side, we have the fully digital powerhouse ROQ Now. By applying ROQ´s know-how when dealing with digital printing and oval format machines, we were able to create an industrial DTG printer that combines this new digital technology with high production and quality. To achieve its high speeds of around 200 pieces per hour - either in variable data or copies of the same artwork for small-run jobs - the ROQ Now is offered with two inline pre-treaters, 4 flash-cures and 4 heat-presses that are all perfectly configured for a complete automated workflow.

Because it was made from the ground up to work with the web-to-print market, our proprietary software will allow you to interface with your own ERP production software, helping you be even more efficient during job management.

The choice is yours.

As you can see, both options are great for what they bring to the table, and it’s up to the printer to decide between a hybrid and flexible solution or a 100% digital machine that will boost their web-to-print capacity. Both represent a game-changing addition to your shop and will make sure you are ready to tackle this new digital era.

Watch both of these machines in action here!