We visited Colour Cartel a full-service design and textile printing business located in Melbourne, AU. Take a closer look inside the Colour Cartel workshop and get some inspiration for your brand.
What is Colour Cartel and how did it all start?
Colour Cartel is a design and textile printing company. We deal predominantly with Screen Print, Digital Print and Embroidery in our Epping factory and service Australia wide.
Why is quality so important to you?
Whilst we live in a McDonalds society now, increasingly customers are more aware of what they’re buying, where it comes from and how it's made. All of these factors influence the ‘quality’ of a product and to service the customer the way we set out to do, ensuring that all avenues are met is paramount.
"... in terms of service offerings - meeting the quality mentioned above means you need to have the machinery capable of producing it."
What machinery do you use?
Our main game is Screen Print, Digital Print and Embroidery. These are our ‘big 3’ in terms of service offerings - meeting the quality mentioned above means you need to have the machinery capable of producing it. We use Roq and Vastex machinery in the screen print portion, multiple DTF printers ranging from 5 colours to 9 colours for digital and Melco machinery for our Embroidery.
What are some of the trends happening within the industry?
Consistently we’re seeing new decoration trends come through, from massive prints across chests of shirts to applique embroidery, we’re constantly having to evolve our practices to keep up with the demand for new and innovative end results.
"You can’t beat a traditional screen print... the skill and knowledge it takes to create a premium screen printed product is worth it for the final product."
What steps do you take to minimise your environmental impact?
One of the recent initiatives we’ve moved to is a digital order note system. The only pieces of paper printed for each order is the packing slip that goes in the box. Proofing, Order Picking, Printing Notes are all run on tablets with the staff. This is a huge benefit to our environmental impact when you’ve got jobs with 20+ different designs and we’re not printing proof sheets for each.
What is your favourite AS Colour product to work with?
I’m a traditionalist (in certain areas!). My favourite product is a solid AS Colour Classic Tee in White, with a nice black print on it. Crisp and sharp, fresh off the press and ready to go. Until I cover it in dirt and have to make another one.
"Everyone knows the quality of AS Colour here in Australia and its comforting as a print company business owner..."
Why do you use AS Colour blanks?
AS Colour has been the OG forever. Whether you’ve bought a t-shirt from your footy club or your barber, odds are in the past 20x years it’s been an AS Colour. Everyone knows the quality of AS Colour here in Australia and its comforting as a print company business owner, knowing the prints we spend so much time on are going on a product that will do it justice. When clients come in asking about why we recommend AS Colour, I always go back to the consistency. There are other good shirts on the market, but nothing that has the AS Colour backing. From the cotton sourcing, to the quality assessment and the vast range on offer - it makes our job really easy.
How would you describe your style? Where do you draw inspiration from?
I spend most of my spare time riding motorbikes, mountain bikes, bmx etc. There is a specific style to a lot of those industries in terms of marketing and branding and I’ve always been heavily influenced by it. We provide design to a large amount of our customers and this particular style is generally one of the reasons they’ll reach out in the first place too.
What are the next steps for Colour Cartel?
Like all businesses, we’re continuing to automate our procedures as much as we can. Things like screen print, digital print and embroidery all have elements that require human involvement and I don’t see that changing on a scale that we could implement in the immediate future, but the laborious tasks outside of the actual printing like cleaning, sorting, picking and planning can all be improved with technology. What this means for our customers is a quicker turnaround on their product and better communication throughout the print and order process too.
Find out more about the high-level services Colour Cartel can provide for your next project on their website here. Follow their journey @colourcartel
Photography by: @chipmooney