Okay, we know that we would have called it something else in Canada (we say “zed” and the Americans say “zee”) but just this once let’s indulge them and go with the “EE-ZEE” thing because it really does describe this product which is “easy” to use and “easy” on the budget too. In any case, ”EE-ZED FILM” would just be wrong; like if they had won the hockey gold medal – it would just be wrong.

This film is ideal for mesh counts of 110 to 156. We recommend it for use with standard textile plastisol inks. It is not recommended for water-based inks.

Here’s a quick list of why coating a screen with EZ-FILM is a great alternative to liquid emulsion: it is fast exposing; it dries faster than emulsion; it needs very little training to do; you get perfect stencils every time; you get consistent stencil thickness; you have fewer pinholes; it is convenient; there is no mess or waste; and the trasparent magenta colour allows for easy inspection and registration. So, what can you lose by giving EZ-FILM a test? Call us for a free sample pack of 5 sheets.

 Screenflex stocks EZ-FILM in packs of 50 sheets in two sizes, 15″ x 17″ for only $78.50 (Canadian) per pack or 17″ x 24″ for only $111.50 per pack.   You do the math… it’s an offer you can’t refuse. Just call Screenflex at 1 800 661 7766 or email info@screenflex.ca  And remember that we have free 5-sheet sample packs in the 15″ x 17″ size for testing.

Finally some good news out of the U.S. for Canadian screen printers! A letter from Ulano to its distributors dated January 18th, 2010 and signed by Gary Gayton is interesting for the fact that it is not a usual manufacturer’s annual sorry-but-we-have-no-choice-but-to-increase-prices whine.

Quoting from the first paragraph…

“As Al Guercio mentions in his column in the January issue of the Ulano Worldwide Distributor Report, our sales – your purchases from us – have been on the rebound for some months now. No one can be sure we’re out of the recessionary woods yet and there are continuing risks of higher energy and chemical costs, inflation, and devaluation of the US Dollar. Nevertheless, we have decided not  to increase prices at this time. We think this is supportive of you and our mutual customers in what is still a difficult, uncertain economy.”

Notice…  Ulano has decided to NOT increase prices.

Screenflex applauds this news. Finally somebody seems to appreciate what the surviving textile screen printers have been enduring lately, particularly those on this side of the border.

We have lost a business associate and a friend. It is with sadness that we report that Nick Kondrats of Tekmar in Santa Barbara passed away last Wednesday the 13 th of January, 2010.

Nick, seen here on the right of the picture, finally succumbed to the cancer  that he had been fighting for some time.

There are some people who, when they die, leave you wishing that you had had the opportunity to spend more time with them. Nick was such a person. I don’t know anyone who knew him who would not say that he was one of the kindest, most gentle, most caring, unselfish people that you could hope to meet.

Even if you had hardly known Nick at all and  had only spoken to him for a few moments at say the Tekmar booth at the Long Beach Show, you would know what I mean. You would have been aware of it immediately. Chances are that if you had bought one of Tekmar’s spray adhesive applicators from him, you would have walked away with a couple of free gallons of adhesive for no other reason than that was just how Nick was. It might have driven his business partners crazy on occasion but that never deterred Nick from being Nick.

It has often been said that how someone relates to animals tells you a lot about their nature. I know of at least a few dogs and even a rescued bird or two who, if they could talk, could give us first hand accounts of Nick’s gentle, caring nature. I could add to their accounts by telling how once we knew that he had cancer, I would call to see how he was doing and he would instead want to know how I was coping with my cold. When he could have been preoccupied with his own health issues, he instead worried and cared about others. And he did so to the end.

We will remember Nick fondly. One of Margaret’s memories will always be how she and Nick made a point of  getting together for oysters each year in Long Beach. For me, the above picture of a business meeting with Nick, Jim and Simon in Santa Barbara will always be an example of how business should be conducted – relaxed and casual, just the way Nick lived. If the rest of us are smart, we will let him be a lasting reminder to us that life is too short for it to be lived any other way.

Jim and Simon will carry on running Tekmar in Santa Barbara, Screenflex will continue selling Tekmar products in Canada, we will all continue to meet up at the Long Beach show once a year, oysters will continue to be eaten, and jokes will continue to be exchanged by email. But none of it will be the same without Nick.

Stanley’s Calgary office will continue to serve printers in Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Territories with exactly the same range of products and services that Screenflex provided as well as products and equipment that Screenflex did not carry. Wendy Wenzel has moved over to Stanley’s to manage the business acquired from Screenflex. Printers will therefore be assured of a relatively seamless transition and will still have access to Wendy’s friendly and knowledgeable assistance. Stanley’s Calgary office can be called toll free at 1 800 661 1553 or at 403 243 7722. Wendy can be emailed at wendy@stanleyssignsupply.com

Screenflex will now focus on Central and Eastern Canada (from Manitoba east) from our office and warehouse in Cambridge, Ontario. All contact information for Screenflex remains unchanged. The toll-free number is still 1 800 661 7766 and the email contact is info@screenflex.ca

The Bests want to thank Western Canadian printers for not only their business over the past 21 years but also for the many memories, the laughs and the friendships. At the same time though we remember with fondness the staff and customers who, for one reason or another, passed away during the past two decades.

So, after 21 years in Calgary, Screenflex has left the building…

At the moment this is a U.S. issue that only affects Canadian producers of imprinted childrens’ garments destined for the U.S. But as we all know, sooner or later, what happens in the U.S. in our industry will cross the border and happen in Canada as well. Therefore, all Canadian textile screen printers need to pay attention to this issue.

Our industry sources in the U.S. tell us that as of February 10th 2009, printers of childrens’ apparel for the U.S. market are going to have to produce certification that the ink used in every delivery contains less than 100 PPM (parts per million) of lead.

One might assume that users of Wilflex ink could merely point out that it has been free of lead for about 30 years…  so what’s the problem? But apparently, in terms of the new legislation in the U.S., that is not good enough. Certification of the print has to be done by an accredited laboratory, of which there are apparently only 4 or 5 in the entire country. We understand that the cost of certifying a print “lead free” is about $300.00. This is bound to cause irritation. We have already heard of a case where a fist fight almost developed because a printer refused to certify a print on the grounds that the deadline of 10th February had not yet arrived, and the customer refused to take delivery because he would be selling the garments after the deadline at which the law would come into effect.

And furthermore, lead is not the only sticking point in the pursuit of “safe” imprinted garments. Phthalate (pronounced “thalate”) is also black listed now as bad for the health of American children. Phthalate is the component of regular plastisol and some water-based inks that gives them flexibility. Ironically, I.V. pouches and blood storage pouches as well as a multitude of other medical supplies are made flexible with Phthalates.

The Europeans were the first to focus on making textile products Phthalate-free. The U.S.A. followed suit by setting February 2009 as the deadline, however, we have just been told that that deadline might be pushed out quite a bit. Apparently, among other issues, it has been realized that strict enforcement will put most, if not all, of the used clothing retailers and charities out of business.

Regardless of whether there is going to be a deferment of the deadline or not, certain large sporting goods and childrens’ wear suppliers are requiring certification from printers as if the legislation were already in place. There are also have a number of Canadian printers who are protecting their global childrens’ wear business by not waiting to be forced into compliance. They are preparing to switch to Wilflex’s Phthalate-free Epic line of inks.

Wilflex’s Epic Phthalate-free colours have been available for about 5 years. More recently a full range of bases, pigments, and specialty inks like Fashion Soft Base, gels, metallics and High Density Clear have been added as well.

As with all new and far-reaching developments and legislation there can be confusion, misunderstanding and misinformation in the beginning. We will keep an eye on this issue and produce updates and clarifications right here in this newsletter as they become available. In the meantime, if you need more information or technical assistance, call Screenflex toll-free at 1-800-661-7766 or email info@screenflex.ca

If you are going to attend the upcoming Long Beach Show, be sure to visit the Wilflex booth and quiz the experts about this topic.

“Just push a button and watch this machine make money.” I promise you, that was the bold statement right there underneath a video presentation on the web site of a Canadian distributor promoting a brand of digital tee-shirt printers.

The video of a black tee-shirt being printed on the inkjet printer was presumably designed to convince everyone that it is finally possible to produce reasonable digital prints on dark shirts. Down in the left-hand corner of the video image they kindly provided a running stopwatch to prove that the print only takes 3 1/2 minutes.

ONLY three and a half minutes? For ONE print? Not counting the time taken to load and unload? Well yes, and you are right, we should add in 30 seconds for loading, clamping, unclamping and unloading. So let’s call it only 4 minutes per print. Now we need some quick math to do a production projection…  and the answer is…  a maximum production rate of 15 prints an hour!

Hard to tell too much about the design from the video, but we know that it is a straight-forward print with no special effects because direct-to-shirt inkjet printing cannot do special effects. By contrast with the digital printing rate of 15 an hour without special effects, automatic screen printing can produce the same print with special effects at the rate of between 500 and 1,000 per hour.

“Fifteen shirts an hour?” you ask again. How does that pay the bills? I don’t know. You do the math this time. Start with the machine. It costs anything from $8,500.00 for a “refurbished” model to $19,715.00 for the new and latest model. And we are not talking about a top-of-the-line brand here. According to the same web site, the ink will run you anything from $347.00 per liter (that’s about the size of a quart) to $519.20 per liter depending upon the size of container that you buy. That, by the way, works out at somewhere between $1,450.00 and $2,100.00 per gallon. Then there is the labour to run the machine at, let’s say, $15.00 per hour (or $1.00 per print).

See the problem? If you are a wholesaler or contract printer, you know the going rate in your market for a print on a dark shirt, and you also know that it will barely pay just the labour cost at 15 prints per hour. How are you going to pay for the other direct costs like the machine, the expensive  ink, maintenance and repairs? How are you going to pay the overheads and make a profit? Exactly! I don’t know either. And we haven’t yet begun to talk about problems with lint and other issues typical of a textile production environment.

But let’s say that you are not a contract printer, that you are instead a retailer, or better still, you intend selling directly over the internet for the going rate of anything from about $5.00 to $12.00 per shirt. In that case you might be able to justify the high cost of the digital print, but then you had better be selling a fairly high volume.  Before splashing out $8,000.00 to $20,000.00 on a single-station inkjet tee-shirt printer you should be pretty sure that you can do the volume to justify the expense. I’m sure that you would be realistic enough to expect others to also be chasing that volume. How many others? You might want to Google “custom tee shirts” and review the 240,000 entries by your potential competitors.  

For our textile screen printing customers, the vast majority of whom are contract printers and not retailers, “Just push the button and watch this machine make money” might just sound a little far-fetched once they have done the math.

Got a comment? Think I’m full of it? Email me at michael.best@screenflex.ca