Sydney large format specialist Next Printing has shut down its textiles printing venture The Textile Hub less than a year after its high profile launch in March.
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| For rent: The Textile Hub's former headquarters at 9 Burrows Road South, St Peters, NSW |
The Textile Hub’s former 1300 sqm warehouse in the inner west suburb of St Peters is back on the rental market and four staff members including founder Julian Lowe have left.
“We looked at the numbers and the numbers didn’t stack up,” Romeo Sanuri, general manager Next Printing told Wide Format Online. “We’re open to exploring the textiles market again in two or three years but we’re going to halt it for the time being because at the moment it’s just not sustainable.”
The Textile Hub officially opened in March 2018 but had been running a full fabric printing production line since July 2017.
The business offered local designers short runs of printed fabrics with a faster turnaround time than offshore alternatives including China and India. Prominent local designers including Tonia Bastyan and Christopher Pearce were among enthusiastic early clients.
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| (l-r) Next GM Romeo Sanuri & MD Tom Tjanaria |
“There is just not the local market to sustain the business at this time,” said Sanuri. “We had to look at the reality and make the right judgement.
“In Europe, the volume of digital fabric is growing at a rapid rate but I think we were ahead of the local market without realising there are so many inter-related logistics on the manufacturing side.
“When it comes to the production season, the clients could not commit to Australian manufacturing, which is weird because when we researched the market maybe three years ago, then started the business 18 months ago, a lot of people said, “Yeah, it will be nice if you can produce in Australia.”
Most of the Hub’s clients remained smaller designers. “The clients were mainly Australian companies that were doing their own label and selling their brands online in Australia and overseas,” Sanuri said. “Smaller companies don’t order too often; their 'regular' is twice a year.
“Being fashion, the cycle from production to delivery ranges from six months to 18 months; it’s a very long cycle, so something they might need to launch at the end of this year, they would need to design it 6-18 months beforehand. We were in a situation where people say, ‘We’ll give you a job next season,’ so we’re waiting on them and the promises didn’t eventuate.
“A lot of companies were also concerned they might ‘lose their spot in the queue’ in China. We said, ‘We offer you an Australian printing solution,’ but printing is only one part of the jigsaw."
Next Printing has ended its lease on The Textile Hub’s former premises and is now looking to sell the textile printing equipment and technology.
“We will refocus on our core signage and POS business, which is going strongly,” Sanuri said. “We’ve picked up a few more major clients, a lot of the high-end fashion and cosmetics, POS and visual merchandising, Australian and international.
“We’ve had to make a judgement to pause the textile printing then revisit it in a couple of years. We don’t have any major debt or anything, we just made sure that we looked after all the suppliers and paid everyone.
"Sometimes you try something and you think, ‘Ah, the market is not quite ready,’ but in a couple of years, we will definitely be looking at it again.”
