I would have never in my wildest dreams thought that one day one person could heat transfer at a rate of 620 per hour.
- Rum Walia, CEO of SupaColor
The stage was set, the spectators gathered, and the final two contestants in the inaugural SupaStamp Grand Prix stepped up to the ROQ YOU Automatic Screen Printing Press to see who could "press" their luck the fastest and transfer 23 SupaColor Transfers on Allmade Organic Cotton Shirts.
The SupaStamp Grand Prix was one of the featured activations at the ROQ booth during the 2023 Impressions Expo in Long Beach. It featured 8 finalist who competed for a chance to win a spot grand finale and a grand prize of 2000 SupaDollars and a Stampinator signed by Martin Truex JR. "We wanted to show the garment decorating community that you could take a high volume screen printing press like the ROQ YOU, and turn it into a high volume transfer press by adding the Stampinator 480 and platen adapters AND that anyone could learn how to do high end high color transfers at an automatic rate." Ryan Moor of ROQ.US and MADE Lab explained. "We didn't know how it was going turn and and how fast someone would actually be able to go, but we knew it was going to be fun trying!"
After the first day contestants were reaching rates of over 400 per hour stepping behind the ROQ YOU for the first time. During the second day's heat speeds reached over 500 per hour. "It was pretty incredible watching someone step behind an automatic for the first time and being able to transfer at such a high volume," Rum admired, "it really shows what is possible today with high quality transfers and the right automation tools."
The grand finale hosted Sam Lapcevic from Branded Threads and Joe Endieveri of Northeast Stitches & Ink. Sam won the coin toss and deferred to go last. Joe smashed his first time completing 23 transfers in just over 3 minutes but Sam had a strategy and was on a mission. He instructed Jeff Fiorucci (the inventor of the Stampinator) to speed the press up as fast as it would go to start off, after that he didn't slow down. Sam runs a small one automatic screen printing shop in Eighty Four, PA and often finds himself alone behind his press printing. Those long nights paid off because Sam smashed through Joe's time and got the press spinning at 620 shirts per hour, incredibly fast for just his second time behind the press and plenty to walk away with the winning time!
"I invented the Stampinator to do transfers and this was the first time the industry really got to see what it could do," Jeff explained. He hopes more screen printing shops and heat transfer businesses will look into how they can increase their transfers speeds 4-8x with the same overhead and automate their transfer business. Stay tuned, because there will be more SupaStamp competitions to come.