FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#256 Revolutionizing Garment Decoration: The Digital Transformation of Fashion
Phil Oakley takes us on a fascinating journey through the garment decoration industry, revealing a sector surprisingly behind the digital curve despite enormous potential for transformation. Drawing on four decades of experience across printing technologies, Oakley illuminates why he founded On Point Supply to tackle inefficiencies plaguing fashion supply chains.
The statistics he shares are eye-opening: of the 600 million t-shirts consumed annually in the UK, half bear decorations, yet only 70 million are produced through digital processes. The remaining 230 million rely on traditional methods, generating a staggering 40,000 tons of CO2 yearly. This disconnect between modern retail demands and outdated production methods creates a perfect storm of inefficiency, environmental impact, and missed opportunity.
What makes Oakley's perspective so valuable is his laser focus on workflow efficiency beyond just printing technology. He describes the evolution from a triangle of print value (image quality, speed, cost) to a square that now includes versatility. Throughout our conversation, he unpacks the fragmented software landscape where no single solution addresses all challenges for bulk production, requiring consultants like himself to identify specific pain points rather than attempting wholesale system replacement.
Perhaps most compelling is his comparison of the fashion industry to a car with a Tesla exterior (sleek e-commerce front-end) powered by a gas-guzzling Cadillac engine (outdated production processes). This visual perfectly captures why brands struggle with bloated inventories and unsustainable practices despite sophisticated consumer-facing technology.
Ready to explore how digital transformation could revolutionise your garment decoration business? Connect with Phil on LinkedIn or visit onpointsupply.co.uk to learn how focusing on workflow efficiency might be the key to reducing costs, minimising environmental impact, and meeting the demands of today's rapidly changing fashion landscape.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the latest episode of the Future Print Podcast. It's Marcus Timpson here, really happy to have with me today Mr Phil Oakley from On Point Supply as a first time guest on the podcast. So welcome to Future Print Podcast, phil.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Marcus. Thanks for inviting me along.
Speaker 2:No, no, I'm going to have an interesting conversation, I know, so go straight in, I think. Phil, to start off, tell us a bit about OnePoint's consultancy-driven approach and how your background really shaped the way you support businesses in garment decoration supply chain. This is an area that we covered a little bit, but it's be good to learn more.
Speaker 3:um that opens with you know, um with that really um well, I kind of let me go back to come forward because, um, you know, when I started my career, did I did? I think I'd be in and around a fashion supply chain? No, I didn't. Um well, and on point, supply services, we I started trading in October last year. So I'm still kind of nine, ten months into startup um a business.
Speaker 3:But if I really last kind of four decades, I've spent probably four decades predominantly in imaging and printing industry, whether it would be Kodak for ten years in in a production environment, and all commercial but in a production environment, a non-commercial but in a production environment, running high production on pre-digital photography, so kind of a development process of 35mm film from central high production facilities to then the hundreds of one-hour laboratories that Kodak had within retail outlets as well. It's quite some time ago now. Then my kind of 17 years in HP, 12 of that was running a business unit for HP in a large format in the graphics industry and that would have been point-of-sale. That would have been point-of-sale graphics, cad graphics and sign-on display. And then most recently, the last four, four and a half years to five years in Kornic Digital, which are an industrial manufacturer, or I should have said, a manufacturer of industrial textile printing technology, two technologies, one being direct to garment printing and one being a direct to fabric printing. So really, through that you have what I've always seen is this kind of this pyramid, if you like, or triangle of value proposition in print, and it's interesting that that triangle of value proposition really cuts across any print technology, whether it be an image quality, speed and cost. So you know everyone that's investing in a piece of technology or running a commercial print business. Those are the three things that they focus on.
Speaker 3:Arguably, I would say that that triangle, I would say in the last probably 10 years, has now moved to a square. I think in that you can add another point of value that I think investors need in technology, and that's versatility of value that I think investors need in technology, and that's versatility how can you make that investment do more while still not compromising image quality, cost or speed? If you start to bring that to garment decoration, I'll come to that in a second. What's always interested me, though, through those points is, rather than the value proposition, it's the production efficiency. That's much more than about devices. It's kind of really the workflow efficiency through a production facility. That's interesting, and I would say that that's why I've centered my business on garment decoration, because it's got so much more maturity to drive and efficiency to drive in it.
Speaker 3:It's the least digital industry that I've worked in um and I'll give you, just to give you, some indication of what transformation still got to go ahead in that industry let's just take t-shirts right, t-shirts are makeup probably 50 percent of all garments manufactured and consumed in the UK even though we're still a very kind of wet country, but we we wear a lot of t-shirts about 600 million t-shirts a year the UK consumes. Out of those 600 million, about half half of them have got some form of decoration on them, whether it's print, whether it's embroidery, whether it's transfer, whatever it is. Only 70 million out of that 300 million that is decorated is digital. Roughly speaking, it's growing, but only 70 million is digital. That means there's a massive 230 million T-shirts that are printed in volume, mass produced, of which a significant number are offshore and in today's environment when social media driven retail, it's kind of a completely outdated model.
Speaker 3:That's about 40,000 tons a year of CO2 gas that's created just from those T-shirts. So there's a whole issue here on supply chain waste, but a business model change of on-demand or short-run unsure that can have a significant impact on UK businesses but also UK economy and then again UK environment. So for me, the workflow efficiency is what really interests me and why I started On Point Supply, connecting brands to fulfillers in the most efficient way and driving a digitally print, a digital print supply chain for the fashion industry, while you know, driving efficiencies in the whole end-to-end production.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting talking about that segment and the amount of e-commerce in the segment as well. You would imagine that the link with digital print production would be appealing, right, and it's interesting you saying it's still at quite a formative stage in terms of adoption.
Speaker 3:E-commerce and social media is an on-demand, print-on-demand business model and obviously you know Shopify and e-commerce is driving that. The retail high street and where the volume of it is is still an analog process. But if you look at some of the major global brands and retailers today, especially the ones that are public businesses, what they'll always talk about is inventory. They have bloated inventories. They can't forecast what the consumer wants now and therefore, if you think of going back 20, 30 years when you'd have seasons of clothes and you'd have maybe four to six seasons of clothes in a year, now you're looking at four to six collections every two or three weeks and that's very difficult to keep up with in a traditional supply chain manner yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, in terms of on-point supply, you work exclusively with Print Factory's cloud-based management, colour management workflow software and very focused on the UK market the garment space there. What makes this solution a good fit for your clients?
Speaker 3:So colour management is one element of control in that supply chain for efficiency. And I'm exclusive with Print Factory on the garment decoration space. Obviously, print Factory cuts across many different industries. Actually a significant industry that I used to work in with the sign and display market of large format graphics that that's not, that's not my bag anymore. There's very successful partners for a long time who are working for print factory, but it's relatively new.
Speaker 3:On garment decoration and I would say, first and foremost, hitting spot color. It's in Pantone colour for brands. If you think of colour consistency whether it's going to be a sign and display poster advertising the garment, to then the colour reproduction on the garment. If it's a brand that you're really well known of, you know, think of Coca-Cola Red or, for example you've got to hit those colors absolutely perfect. On textile, though, there's an additional element. You know, if you're printing on a 2D substrate for a poster or a board or anything like that, then it's. You know it's all about the color and effective use of ink. If you're printing and reproducing that color on textile you have, because it's wearable. You've then got to think about the breathability of a garden, not just the color. So color management is much more than just the color reproduction. It's about effective use of ink so that you don't destroy the natural properties of a garment and you've got breathability. So again it goes back to for me, colour management and print factory is a component part of an effective supply chain.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and you also mentioned that no single workflow automation provider currently solves the industry's problems end to end. What do you see as the key gaps, perhaps, or even friction points that still need solving?
Speaker 3:wow. So, um, if I, if I talk about, and actually what's interesting is the supply chain here, I kind of talk about the different parts or modules of it. It could be very similar to a web to print driven workflow of packaging, labelling, any kind of print medium if you like, which are those parts are kind of very mature. Now Garment decoration can be a little bit more complex in some respects. So if I think of, you know, order intake, then you've got pre-production, artwork, approval, production itself, post-production. So you know, you think of how do orders come in? There's two types here and print on demand in that e-commerce space, which is the smallest space but still growing, does have an end-to-end workflow. Now, typically the it's grown up over the last 20 years almost like as a cottage industry and there are a few players in that space that do have an end-to-end solution for print-on-demand, for example, stahl's Fulfill Engine is one example to come back to.
Speaker 3:But on the trade side, so if you think of promotional companies, events, what we call as then bulk runs or larger runs, or even if you think of retail stocking for stores and shops, they don't have an end-to-end solution.
Speaker 3:They don't have an end-to-end solution. So you'll, for example, you'll have orders coming into decoration factories, like screen printers, on email, on text, on WhatsApp, on WeTransfer, on so many disconnected platforms, to then come into artwork approval and again that could be offline into photoshop. It's then going to be worked and pushed back into a production environment. You then, and then you look at production scheduling. There's so many different tools that people use, so you and, for example, what many of them will use, for example, mondaycom. So you've got many disconnected processes that are running an overall connected production facility and that in itself can give so many different areas for error. Certainly, if you've got humans, that are the only people that are connecting those disconnected processes, and so it becomes laborious, costly, tedious and, yes, on the trade side and the bulk production side, there is no one software platform that I'm aware of globally that runs, that can manage and run that end-to-end process.
Speaker 2:Right, and with that in mind, I suppose, how do you go about identifying the right combination of services and tools for your clients, given the that fragmented nature of um the various solutions?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, and that's the challenge, right? So this there is no magic wand, there's no one software yet to do it all. Um, I think some of the players in the print-on-demand space will be. I think some could be interested in terms of that development into the kind of bulk run, short run space, and that will only improve. But a lot of them today, one of the major challenges with a lot of these new, you know, for example, like styles I use as a good example of one that is very, very, very good for the print-on-demand space is that they want to replace what's already there. So if you look at the print-on-demand fulfillers, the digital fulfillers that have probably grown up creating their own platforms and therefore it becomes quite a distributed, fractious kind of platform space out there. You know things that players like Printful, printify there's a lot of those services out there but they want to own their own production. So there's not one independent software, which is why I come back to Starz, which are an independent print-on-demand software but are replacing.
Speaker 3:I'll use an example of a different industry. It's the only one I can think of right now. There's a company called Palantir. I don't know whether you've come across Palantir Marcus, but Palantir at the moment overlay to all enterprise systems. They don't replace the enterprise systems that an organization will use. They will be an overlay, but a very intelligent overlay to help with very big data decision making, so it doesn't disrupt the enterprise. That's there. It kind of overlays onto it.
Speaker 3:Now if a software is out there that could do this in an environment and improve supply chain, that's a game changer, but I don't see one yet. Therefore, my value as a business is knowing the problem to fix the problem and going into every step of the supply chain to work out where the efficiencies can be driven. So it is a challenge, but it's spending the time and the detail in every single part and knowing every single part of the supply chain to know where to, to know where to focus yeah, and you've got this position where you're relatively independent in the market, so you can put, I guess you can choose, pick and choose the right solutions, and so on.
Speaker 2:Um, it also sounds a little like you're exploring new partnerships. Um, technology is evolving all the time. Getting trapped into one type of technology can sometimes, I guess, limit. Um, how important is it for for your business and service providers like yourself to remain that you know, agile and neutral when, when solving these kinds of technical client problems?
Speaker 3:I think neutral and objective is is my value, because I think, unless you have an end to end solution, as I was saying before, reference kind of Palantir, right that it's an overlay and not disrupting a business that's probably been built 20 years, that wants to replace something because ultimately they want to sell their software and that's a big risk for a departure. So being neutral and objective allows you to focus on areas in a business not necessarily the end-to-end business to make a change. And ultimately, where I think you know the industry, you think of innovations over time, right, if you think of the record industry and the music industry, it's been disrupted three times in our lifetime, you know, from going from vinyl to CD, from CD to iTunes and iTunes to streaming. So, and but if you think of so many industries, you can think of disruption. There's so much disruption still to happen, still to happen, and for me the disruption is or innovation needs to significantly improve the customer experience. And I give an example If you are placing orders, you know if you're in the supply chain today and you're a major brand that's ordering your garments for your retail environment.
Speaker 3:The customer satisfaction improvement needs to be similar to the customer experience of Uber or Amazon Prime or even, dare I say, domino's Pizza, and what I mean by that is, if you order an Uber, it's a little bit like ordering a garment you know what you're paying, you know where it is in the supply chain and you know when it's going to arrive, so it's predictable. So that overlay, that front end for a supply chain, that's the customer service expectation that I think everyone from the front end to the back end that supply chain, it needs to be there. So I think from my side at the moment it is. You know that software is not there right now. That holy grail is not there. So it's about focusing on areas where you can make the biggest improvement.
Speaker 3:I speak to customers today and they may have a healthy balance sheet. So they'll look at their balance sheet top to bottom and say, ok, well, I'm a garment decoration business and I'm making a great gross profit, my net profit is good and I'm growing. What's the problem? But when you look at the kind of horizontal space and say what is my quote to cash process? So when I get a quote in to, when I get the get paid how we like, how long does that take? How many steps in the process is there and how much cost is there in that step from one end to the other.
Speaker 3:That's where I can really help, so that you can start to look at the time and the cost in that. Can it be improved? Yeah, even though you absolutely can be making a great gross profit and net profit, there are still improvements in the, in those tiny details, and that's where I so I'll look at it in a completely different way. Rather than a balance sheet kind of top to bottom, kind of vertical approach, you look at it as a horizontal approach, taking seconds out of every embellishment, because if you're a decorator or a full filler that could be doing thousands of garments a day. Saving two or three seconds per impression is a significant cost over the year.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and so you mentioned earlier how challenging is colour consistency mentioned earlier, how challenging is color consistency? Um, and you've also talked about workflow automation, and they're clearly both ongoing challenges for garment decoration. How is it you help these clients balance I guess it's a really creative industry, isn't it so the creativity and the expression and the design and the color. How do you, how do you help clients balance that creativity with the need for, frankly, operational efficiency and accuracy?
Speaker 3:so. So the hardest thing for a brand, you know, is is they don't want to deviate from their creativity, otherwise they they can lose that. They can lose what makes them the brand in the first place. But at the same time they have to be in enough detail to know that are they getting a quality product, is it ethical, is it transparent, you know, can they source all the way through? And I see those challenges of a brand that when they get to a certain size and that you know that, where do they focus? Do they focus on operational efficiency? Will they lose then their creativity and the DNA of what they are? I'll give an example of one. I think that is doing extremely well to be able to balance the two at the minute. And they're relatively kind of small brand, but they're a relatively kind of small brand but they're growing at a crazy rate. So they're Manchester, not Manchester, actually sorry kind of Northwest brand called Represent.
Speaker 3:You may have heard of them, started by two brothers about 14 years ago, really only been trading properly, I would say, for about 11 years, like many great brands. They started in a garage. One of them was extremely creative, the other one was very good at selling, and you know, 14 years later they're valued at 125 million. And they started out of garage screen printing their own t-shirts. I think they've really understood the difference and that, and I think, the dynamic of two brothers one creative, one operational or one commercialist why it's worked well. But ultimately, as they've grown, they've gone from out of a garage producing and screen printing in their own garage to really understanding the difference between a front-end e-commerce platform and a digital operation. So, yeah, they're doing it, and again, only, I'd say, in the last two years, probably not even that in the last 12 months have they started to have physical retail outlets.
Speaker 3:So they've effectively built a digital business from the ground up, even though they were doing some kind of analog screen print and that creativity in the early days, but it's, you know, once they've started to understand and work with building digital workflows from day one is now. That's what's allowing them to scale in a global fashion, having opened of what can happen in 10 years with the right brand. Dna so represents a iconic brand being built and that's, I think, really at the core of why they're successful. They focused on what their core competence is, which is what is their brand. Dna competence is which is what is their brand dna. The rest of it, then, doesn't take care of itself, but they know they've got to have a supply chain that can scale with what the brand demand is yeah, it's a fantastically inspiring sounding success story that um yeah, very cool, I hadn't heard of them, but I'm possibly not in their target audience.
Speaker 3:I would imagine, neither am I, but obviously, being in the industry, you look out for these kind of brands of like wow, where do they come from? Right, and it's a story, um.
Speaker 2:So that's an inspiring story. So, but yourself then, looking ahead, what do you think um will drive real innovation in the garment supply chain? And I guess, how do you see one point contributing to that kind of evolution and change?
Speaker 3:I think. Well, I'd like you know, I think automation whether that's software automation, but in particular it's got to be be engineering automation has got to significantly improve and this is not just for garment decoration, as in direct to garment printing. One of the most underdeveloped areas at the moment would be automation around the cut trim industry. So if I go back to when I was a kid, my mum worked in cotton factories in the UK, of which now they don't exist. Yeah, all that in the early 70s moved out to the far east and you know, and you know they definitely will still very much in bangladesh, china, um, now there is some definitely in turkey, morocco, egypt, probably a high end in portugal, but it's certainly not in the uk anymore and we've lost all those skills. Now there are now there is extremely niche skills of being able to take fabric and make a high-end garment. They're still there in the uk, but it's extremely niche and therefore very high cost. It's not that I want to completely transform it to be a robotic process to be able to make a turn a fabric into a very nicely cut made garment, but those now robotics are not there yet. I'm sure they will come. So that's one side, but the connecting those together, and then what does the value of the human being be through that process is still very much up for debate.
Speaker 3:Um, I'll give a kind of a really interesting analogy on another podcast I listened to last week, which was and it's not the same industry, but it's got the same components of transformation. If you look at the fashion industry today, and if it was a car, the car on the outside would be a Tesla. You know, if you think of e-commerce today, we're far ahead today in terms of the consumer wanting to buy online and the types of things that you can do online now in terms of, you know, auto fit technology, e-commerce, buying on your phone everything is just very easy and very slick. So that's the front end, that's the outside view of the industry. It looks like a Tesla. The engine, though, is actually a Cadillac Eldorado Very old style, really nice engine, but it kicks out a lot of gas.
Speaker 3:And this podcast I listened to. It was actually a question for one of the most successful fund managers, and the question was asked is what is the one AI stock you'd invest in right now? And it surprised me. I'm not sure I agree with it, but it surprised me the answer, and it was Tesla. And they said because it's at the apex of three of the largest industries on the planet Number one, transportation, number two, robotics and number three, ai. And I went okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Well, transportation they're just about to start the first kind of automated taxis. So you think of where that could go in terms of transportation from goods, commercial goods and everywhere else. They're autonomous, so therefore they're a robot to some degree and they're software driven. So that's AI. So I think, if you think of that as a supply chain, and how do you, how do you get the same principles into garment decoration? That's the future, but that's those are the same principles that we need to be thinking of to drive efficiencies, but it's that it really does beg the question of okay, so what's the value of the human being? But that comes back to creativity, because then that goes. You go back to your question two or three questions ago. The last question you asked is once you truly get that automation?
Speaker 2:the human being's value is our own creativity for the consumer. Yeah, and it's exciting, isn't it? Because, particularly because you're so close to the consumer with the work you're doing and so close to fashion and that is so fast changing, isn't it? It's very individualized, it's very much linked to sort of self-expression, as you said. Social media, absolutely, and um, and in a way it's surprising it's not more responsive, it's not more integrated yet, but I guess that will accelerate along with the way we purchase and the way we buy and so on. So I think it's fascinating stuff and exciting really that you're still at this relatively formative stage. So there's plenty of growth there for digital print and obviously for On Point. How do people get in contact with you then, phil? What's the website? Or LinkedIn, or email?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you can find me on Phil Oakley on LinkedIn Pretty easy, I'm out there, but my website is wwwonpointsupplycouk. I'm very focused on the UK market but through my career in the last kind of 15, 20 years and in particular what's really interesting in the last five years, is there's a lot of supply chain screen printers, brands, decorators across the europe, middle east and africa space that are all really searching for these answers. So the network that I have has got broader I would say broader and deeper in the last five years in particular, and I'm still evolving as a business. You start as one thing and you start to see where those opportunities move and take you to, but ultimately not really moving from a cost-effective, efficient, significantly less wasteful supply chain for the fashion industry interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, listen. Thanks so much for joining us and um you know best of um, I guess. Uh, best wishes for the future, rather than I won't say luck because um yeah, and wishes and luck, I need them both yeah, well, yeah, we will do, don't we?
Speaker 2:at the end of the day, and I think, yeah, you're in a sweet spot there really interesting industry and, um, fashion and and, and, like you say, e-commerce, social media. There's a lot of, uh, fast changing, um, I guess, levers that are that are going to kind of push forward pretty quickly, I would imagine, and you can help accelerate that. So thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for inviting me. I started to look and follow future print because I think print's been in the blood now, like I said, for nearly 40 years. But there's so many different areas that are driving innovation and this is an exciting one for me. That's not just about print, but having a significant impact on the planet.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, thank you, thanks, marcus.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content. Coming up and visit futureprinttech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research and to catch up on content from Futureprint events. We'll see you next time on the Futureprint Podcast.
