Welcome to Ideas. Fulfilled: a podcast by Printful Enterprise with your host
Ilze Folkmane. In this bi-weekly podcast, we’ll meet with ecommerce and retail professionals to
chat about burning topics in the retail space, as well as the challenges and sweet moments
of victory they’ve experienced in the labyrinths of ecommerce.
Today, I’m joined by the CEO of Coloreel, Torbjörn Bäck. Coloreel is a textile
innovation and embroidery technology company born in Sweden. They have created a unique
embroidery thread coloring solution making complicated embroidery designs more accessible
for customers. To put it simply, the thread is colored during the embroidery process,
so you can have any imaginable color in the design at the same time.
Hi Torbjörn, thank you for joining us today.
Hello. Thanks. You’re welcome.
It’s really nice to meet you. And I’m very happy that you have joined us. And in the beginning,
could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Okay. So I’m Torbjörn Bäck I'm the CEO of Coloreel,
which is a Swedish technology innovation company in the textile industry.
And for those of our listeners who don’t know yet what Coloreel is, what do you do?
So we have a new innovation mixing print technology into the embroidery business.
So it’s a brand coloring unit. So you color the thread instantly in
a digital process so you can get any color you want into the embroidery.
And at Printful we've been doing embroidery for like, I don’t know, seven years definitely by
now. And we know that most embroidery machines are limited by colors, right?
Mhm, yeah.
And Coloreel is not.
No, we are not. So traditionally, maybe you have like 15, or 16 reels on an embroidery machine.
And then if you want to do something different, you have to change all those reels. And then
one design normally is sort of limited down to this number of reels. But we have, since it’s a
printer and it uses CMYK cartridges with ink, you can do millions of colors out of a white thread.
So at the back of our units, we have a white thread of recycled material and
then you design as you want on the computer and you just print out any color you like.
It’s amazing. I think we only dreamed about this when we started doing embroidery at Printful.
Yeah, it’s a really, really cool technology.
And I don’t even know. Do you have any sort of competition or is it just you only doing this?
So we are unique in doing this, taking the thread directly into the embroidery machine and that’s a
unique technology for us. And we’ve also sort of developed it over a long time period of time and
collected IP around that. So so we are alone in the market, driving the development in on-demand.
That must be a good feeling. Yeah, it’s amazing and it's really nice.
When I read up on Coloreel and when we started implementing it at Printful
I think one of the main selling points you have is actually that
it’s a quite sustainable solution for embroidery. Is that correct?
It’s a very sustainable solution for us to only produce what you need. So you don’t need to build
a lot of stock of different colors. And what we can see many companies doing on-demand or
if you do profiling work where you throw away a lot of threads that you don’t use because you
have to buy new colors for the new season, or if you have a new customer having this
item and then you can’t have like thousands of thousands of threads, so you throw them away.
Also, we don’t use any water in the coloring process since it’s a printer.
We only use a little bit in the washing. So with the traditional way of coloring,
you’ll use 50 times more water than we do. So it’s very sustainable. And then also now we are
using recycled material in the thread also. So different aspects and I think that’s also
been a driving force of creating the technology and developing us in the right direction. We
see the interest from producers and brands and also from the investor community to say: “Oh,
this is a good, sustainable solution and we want to be part of that.”
So that’s good. Yeah, definitely. And you’re based in Sweden and so is Coloreel. But do you also feel
interest from other markets like the U.S.? Mhm, yeah. So we are based in Sweden,
but already today we have units in 21 countries and we work with a distributing network in almost
20 companies in these countries. So we have, uh, people employed also in the US market in
the UK coming up in other countries also. And so, we are coming out from, from Sweden, but
we are already in the, in the global market in. In general, about embroidery like we at Printful
have been talking a lot about the fact that embroidery is getting more and more popular and
now that’s when it started, it felt like it might be just a trend that passes in a couple of years,
but I think it’s proven itself to be steady. Is that also something that you feel when
talking to suppliers and distributors and people who are using Coloreel technology?
Yeah, now in general, embroidery is growing. And you can also say that the decoration part
of all the apparel and clothing is moving into Europe and the US and a lot of the integration
is taking place in the local markets and I think that’s driving embroidery also. And I think the
development in digital print and print-on-demand has sort of created the market and now you want to
have a different expression of what you’re doing. So sometimes you like the print and you sometimes
like embroidery, it gives a different structure and a different feeling. And I think that it’s
just growing. The overall decoration and the embroidery are taking part in that also. I think
that it’s really interesting to see and we can see that in the exhibitions, or when we’re meeting
customers and that many companies now coming from print and they maybe started without that.
They try that and now they see it’s a possibility to expand the market and add
another dimension also moving into embroidery and then there have been traditional companies
working with embroidery and they say with Coloreel they can use different designs,
they can have access to much more different colors, and they also have all the colors
in stock. So I think there are several sorts of dimensions of developing the embroidery market.
Oh, yes, for sure. I think our team when we started testing Coloreel, they had so much fun,
just embroidering all kinds of designs. It was crazy. Just stuff that just comes out when you’re
just used to like six colors maximum. And we talked a little bit about sustainability and
I noticed that in your like career history as well, you’ve worked for several companies that
are sustainability focused. Is that something that
you’re personally interested in as well? Yeah, I think if you can have that dimension
into the business, that’s what you do. Also, it has a positive impact on the environment. That’s
sort of–I like the combination of the business and the technology and the sustainability, and I think
if you add that to as many of the businesses as possible, you help out to create a better future.
I think that’s important for me. But still, you can see it’s more and more
important in society. So it’s a good, good trend and good for us, I think.
Yeah, I think so. And I think it’s gotten much stronger in the past years. Like five years ago,
people didn’t care as much, at least businesses perhaps didn’t care as much.
That’s true. And how do you
stay ahead? Okay. I understand at this moment you don’t have much of a competition, but in,
I think the modern world that might not stay like that for long because people catch up very
quickly. How do you stay ahead? How do you come up with the next thing that you’re going to do?
So I think there are two dimensions of that. One is that we have our own team sort of
pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with our technology and the limitations, because we
cannot only look at customer demand because we wouldn’t have any Coloreel units, because no one
could think about it. So they do a great job and really create future application areas.
And then also now we are having a dialog with so many interesting customers and they come with
ideas and suggestions and improvements. So I mean, we work with customers in 20 countries, we work
with all these great brands of embroidery machines and digital printers and others, and you get a lot
of influence on the ideas from that also. And then we have our people, we have people
coming from embroidery, we have people coming from other sorts of businesses and fashion,
and so on. And they also bring a lot of knowledge and ideas into the company. So
it’s a mix of all the different influences. So I think that’s a very good mix to have,
like the customer and the business perspective. That’s perfect.
Do you feel like there’s some resistance to change in the embroidery industry because people are
so used to how things are? Or do you find it easy to sort of sell Coloreel as a concept?
I think that the concept people like, people are very enthusiastic about it, and that’s sort of:
“Wow, amazing. And we should have thought about this a long time ago and this is perfect.”
But then to actually implement it in your daily business,
that sort of requires an effort and you need to change a little bit the workflow and so on.
So there you have a resistance, but I think people see the value of the idea and that is
going to be part of the future, but then changing an established way of working, I think that’s
a little bit take some time and so on. But then you have some pioneering companies
like Printful showing the way that it’s possible and that’s really great for us.
Thank you. It’s also great for us. So we’re all up for it. So do you think that this
change that’s happening with the embroidery as well, is it impacted by ecommerce or are there
other factors that you think brought it on? No, I think ecommerce has has a big impact and
you’re creating this from the customer or from the brand through the production chain. It makes
it possible to see a new design much faster and you can get sort of a feeling of what
it would look like. And you can also see it’s possible to order smaller batches.
You order one or you order five or you order 20 of something—that was not possible before,
that sort of segment what we call small batch production and sometimes you call it on-demand,
but it’s a little bit wider than on-demand. I think that’s very much influenced by having
a digital workflow that’s possible through ecommerce. So it has a great impact on us.
And I also think, I mean, if you go into shopping today,
you can have like in one store a thousand different of decorations on a t-shirt and so
on. And that’s impossible to do in the normal physical stores. So that’s also opened up the
possibility. And then you want more colors and you want to have it faster and so on.
So I think it will influence a lot and has already influenced a lot.
And how do you see it evolving even further? What do you think? Like if we meet in ten years
and have a catch up about, okay, how’s it going? Where do you think it’s going
to be? Where is the embroidery going to be? Yeah, I think we’re moving the process of going
from an idea or from a logo or a picture into embroidery. That will happen in the coming year.
Today you need to have manual steps and you need to create some files. I think a lot of work will
be done, making it a digital automatic workflow. I think that’s happening and also the big interest
from the print on demand industry in embroidery is also so pushing this in this direction.
So I think that that will happen. And probably also the sort of cost of doing embroidery will
go down also and the sort of machines you can use to produce something. So I think we
will be seeing more embroidery in all different directions and sizes, and it will be easier to do
that. I think it’s beneficial for everyone. Also, what we will see is the development
of all the additional materials into embroidery that will be easier to use.
I think that’s also coming in the coming years. So very interesting developments.
It sounds like you’re already working on some of them by the confidence of what you
said. Have you ever been, you mentioned that you work with a lot of customers in several
countries. Have you ever been surprised by how they use Coloreel something that, you know,
you didn’t expect to hear from your customers? I just know that at Printful we’re sometimes like:
“Oh, that’s how you use us, that’s interesting.” Sort of opens new segments.
Yeah. I think it’s interesting to see what different customers
can do in terms of design or how to create the workflow or which part you want to use the
Coloreel. Sometimes it’s just part of the apparel, not the whole decoration. You see that, okay,
people want to have access to 500 different colors instantly and that’s how are you going to use it
while others want to create something amazing. Maybe you’ll see it in different colors,
producing different shades and patterns, and so on. And it’s sort of, wow, this is really cool.
So it’s both from the design point of view, you see what people can create and what they
can do. But also from the sort of efficiency of workflow innovation. So it’s several aspects.
It’s very, very interesting to see. Can you share some of the examples of
customers you work with or you’re not legally allowed to do that?
It’s quite a few that actually have publicly announced that we work with them, but
one collection was done this autumn by Supreme New York that was produced in Portugal, and made
a really nice embroidery on t-shirts that sold out quickly. So a couple of hours. So an example of
streetwear, high-level fashion. And then there are several on-demand producers like Printful.
And we also have had some customers from Printful who are using us for like high-fashion shows. And
I think it’s amazing to see how technology can also help the fashion industry as a whole. And
I also read about you, a digital fashion collection, if I remember correctly. Can
you tell me a bit more about this? I think it was with a designer called TOMBOGO.
Yeah. And so yeah, they had them in lots of digital fashion designs earlier this
year and they had created the designs using Coloreel. But the sort of fashion show was in
the Web3 environment. So you could see the sort of digital version of all the different designs and
then if you wanted to purchase them in the real world or if you wanted to have a digital copy.
But if you wanted to have it in the real world, the Coloreel units could be used to
produce this fantastic design with it. So it’s a combination of the digital world and the physical,
and the ability to do all the cool designs they did possible through Coloreel.
I think it's a good metaphor for how Coloreel and Printful function. It’s a combination of
the digital and the physical. Is there something that you’re excited about in
the nearest future or something that you see as a challenge for Coloreel?
I think we’ve covered most of the aspects, but I would say that it’s real growth in
the on demand and the small batch production, but also that you’ll see this high level fashion, the
fashion brands. So they exist in the two different segments and some of the needs are similar and the
all other driving forces are different. But it’s an exciting journey and
we started off really going commercial in 2020, and then last year, 2022, where we sort
of expanded globally, we had customers like you and others, and now we see it’s a huge
interest and we’re certainly going to multiply these sales many, many times this year. So it’s
very interesting the year coming up now. Oh, I’m looking forward to seeing lots more
embroidered designs on the streets. Okay. Thank you very much for joining
us. It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.
One more question that we have. Could you please share where can our
listeners read more about Coloreel, where they can find out the newest information that you’re
giving to the readers, etc.? So if you want to find out more
about Coloreel, you can go to Coloreel.com. We are also very active on social media—Instagram,
LinkedIn, and Facebook, and we also have loads of videos on YouTube where you can see more about the
design or how you use it, and so on. Anything more you wonder about, you are free to contact us.
Thank you for listening to our conversation with the CEO of Coloreel Torbjörn Bäck. If you’re
interested in learning more about Coloreel, feel free to check out the links in the description
and stay tuned for the next episode of Ideas. Fulfilled. by Printful Enterprise.