High Hope Clothing: Brother GTX from MHM Direct GB
Lloyd Field, director
Tell us a bit about your business
High Hope Clothing is a family business, which my brother Jake and I set up in a garden shed. Our mission was to create simple, eye-catching designs on affordable and eco-friendly garments. Within the first six months we both needed to commit to working full-time for the brand due to the growth and demand of orders. With over 20,000 orders in 18 months, and a social media growth of over 60k followers, we’re constantly working hard to keep creating new, nature-inspired designs on sustainable clothing and products while investing the profits into new DTG machines and equipment.
Which DTG printers did you buy?
We purchased two Brother GTX machines from MHM Direct in May 2019.
What prompted the purchase?
We bought the machines to replace our previous set-up of four Polyprint Texjet DTG printers.
How much did the GTXs cost?
The total cost of our new machines and heat presses was £35,000.
What other machines, if any, did you look at before purchasing this one?
We looked at investing in one of the Kornit Storm machines with a conveyor dryer.
Why did you choose your machine? What are its main advantages?
We visited the showroom at MHM Direct and were very impressed with the overall speed, quality of prints and ease of everyday maintenance on the Brother GTX machines. For us, the main advantage is the use of eco-friendly inks, which is very important for our brand. Speed was also a big factor when choosing to upgrade our equipment, as our previous machines were working at approximately eight minutes for a full CMYK + white print. The new Brother GTX machines can produce the same print in less than two minutes!
Is there anything you’d like to see in an upgrade or don’t particularly like about it?
It would be great to see an upgrade with built-in pre-treating system to compete with some of the other machines on the market.
What’s it like to use?
They are easy to use and we’ve seen a big increase in production since we purchased them. The machines are used for printing T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts. We’re currently printing approximately 250-300 garments a day from two machines with one operator.
What other machines do you have? Does your DTG machine work in combination with any of them?
We have a Schulze Pretreat IV Machine and two of the latest Hotronix heat presses with automatic release. These work great with the Brother GTX machines. We’re also looking to invest in a conveyor dryer soon.
What would be your advice to others thinking of buying a DTG machine?
DTG machines are a great addition to any companies looking to produce small runs at a great quality and cost. We operate on a print-on-demand basis so DTG machines give us the flexibility of providing lots of designs across different styles and colours of garments without holding huge amounts of stock.
