For the custom apparel printing industry, 2025 wasn’t the year customers changed what they wanted. It was the year they changed how they buy and what they expect from the shop on the other side of the order. Across the industry, three forces kept showing up in the same conversation: DTF maturity, portal-driven ordering, and outsourcing as a normal growth move. The result was simple: the shops that felt the most momentum weren’t always the ones doing the most production in-house. They were the ones delivering outcomes reliably, expanding what they could offer, and running tighter systems from quote to fulfillment.
The 2025 Apparel Printing Industry Story In One Sentence
2025 was the year custom apparel printing industry shifted from “add more equipment” to “build smarter workflows,” as DTF became more competitive, orders got smaller and more frequent, and outsourcing became the default path to scale.
What The Trade Show Floors Said About 2025
Trade shows are where the custom apparel printing industry accidentally tells the truth. You can feel what’s growing by what gets the biggest crowds, the most demos, and the most follow-up questions.
Impressions Expo, Long Beach, California, still felt like the apparel decorator’s kickoff. It’s the place where education matters, where you see a broad mix of apparel workflows, and where shops show up trying to learn what to do next, not just what to buy.
Printing United, Orlando, Florida, felt like the scale-and-equipment gravity well. Bigger rooms, broader categories, and a stronger “systems thinking” vibe, less about one method, more about how production, software, and automation connect when you’re trying to move serious volume.
And then there were niche events like the DTF Expo, Mesa, Arizona, a clear sign that DTF is still dominant, but also a reminder that the market is entering its optimization phase. The question isn’t “should I get into DTF?” anymore. It’s “how do I produce consistent, repeatable quality, and do it profitably, when everyone else has a printer too?”
If the show floor in 2025 had one loud message, it was this: the winning shops are building a business model, not just buying machines.
DTF Printing In 2025: From “Accessible” To “Professional”
DTF didn’t cool off in 2025. It grew up. A few years ago, the advantage was simply having a DTF printer. In 2025, that stopped being enough for the custom apparel printing industry. The market got crowded, prices kept compressing, and quality became the separator. Not “can you print it,” but can you print it consistently, match brand colors, and repeat it on demand without drama.
The most meaningful shift was the rise of expanded-gamut DTF (8/9-color setups). Not because customers suddenly started sending more complex art, but because the industry needs tighter control over the same reality it’s always had: logos, spot colors, and brand standards. When the work is repeat-heavy (portals, employee stores, ongoing programs), consistency becomes the product.
And the hard truth many shops learned this year: the printer isn’t the magic. The RIP and profiling are. The shops hitting “home runs” aren’t just buying hardware. They’re treating color as a system: dialing profiles, measuring output, and building repeatable standards instead of living on default settings.
In short: 2025 made DTF less of a hack and more of a discipline.
Screen Printing In 2025: Still King At Scale
Screen printing didn’t lose relevance. It lost the spotlight. For big-volume runs, it’s still the most efficient answer. But the middle of the market shifted. As order sizes shrank and ordering portals grew, many shops found themselves living in a world of more SKUs, more reorders, more “one-offs,” and more deadlines. That’s not where traditional screen print shines without heavy process and automation.
What rose in its place for many small-to-mid shops was a hybrid strategy:
- Keep screen print for what it’s best at (high volume, repeat programs, predictable runs)
- Use DTF for flexibility and speed
- Outsource strategically for volume, specialty, or anything that would force you to hire, expand, or distract your team
Meanwhile, the screen print shops that are winning hardest are doing what they’ve always done, just more efficiently: fewer manual steps, more automation, and tighter workflow control from screen room to packing.
So the story isn’t “screen printing is going away.” It’s that the custom apparel printing industry is splitting into two lanes: high-volume specialists and flexible fulfillment shops.
Embroidery In 2025: Higher Expectations
Embroidery in 2025 looked more modern, not because stitches changed, but because the machines did. More systems are moving toward digital controls that reduce guesswork and make repeatable results easier across operators. That matters because embroidery has always been a process where small setup mistakes create expensive outcomes. When the machine helps stabilize tension and consistency, training becomes faster and production becomes less fragile.
At the same time, expectations increased. Customers are ordering nicer garments, more premium placements, and more mixed-order programs (portals again). That pushes embroidery shops to tighten up their fundamentals: hooping precision, placement repeatability, and clean handoffs from art to production.
And the pain point that stayed loud in 2025: digitizing quality. Even with better hardware, embroidery still lives or dies in pre-production. Strong digitizing makes the machine look brilliant. Weak digitizing makes even great equipment look inconsistent.
2025 didn’t make embroidery “easier.” It made the shops with clean systems faster, more repeatable, and more scalable than the ones relying on tribal knowledge.
Apparel Printing Industry Shift Of 2025: Be A Marketer, Not A Maker
The biggest change in 2025 wasn’t a new printer. It was a mindset shift. More shops learned that growth doesn’t come from adding one more process in-house. It comes from becoming the person a customer trusts to solve the whole branded-visibility problem. Not “we do screen print” or “we do embroidery,” but “we help your brand show up everywhere, on time, on budget, with zero surprises.”
That’s why outsourcing accelerated. Not because shops stopped caring about quality, but because they started caring more about the outcome. Customers don’t buy “in-house.” They buy confidence: the right product, the right decoration, delivered when it matters. The service is often everything around production, sampling, guidance, approvals, timelines, packaging, and coordination.
For the custom apparel printing industry in 2025, the shops that won were the ones who stopped building their identity around being a maker, and started building it around being a one-stop solution provider with a reliable partner bench.
Takeaways For The Custom Apparel Printing Industry
If 2025 felt like chaos, the answer isn’t “work harder.” It’s to build a smarter business.
If you’re screen print-heavy: Keep screen printing as your advantage for volume, but stop trying to force it to do everything. Build a flexible lane for small runs and reorders through DTF or trusted partners. The goal is to protect your throughput while still saying “yes” to modern buying behavior.
If you’re DTF-first: Treat consistency like your product. Get serious about profiling, repeatability, and process control. If your work comes from portals or repeat programs, color accuracy and reliability will beat “cheap and fast” every time.
If embroidery is your margin engine: Invest in tools that reduce variability and speed up training, then tighten pre-production. Great hooping and clean placement help, but digitizing quality is still the hinge. Build standards so results don’t depend on one person’s touch.
If you want growth without chaos: Stop measuring success by how much you can make in-house. Measure it by how reliably you can deliver outcomes. Build a partner bench. Offer more solutions. Sell like a marketing guide, not a production shop.
The simplest move you can make is to pick one thing to systemize this month: approvals, reorders, production stages, or outsourcing. One tightened system beats five new pieces of equipment.
