Fabrino

Among the oldest ways to print, screen printing is even today a very tedious process wherein every screen needs to be created individually from scratch… they can’t be copied. Even with technology coming in at the designing and the final printing stage, the skill and creativity of setting up the screen manually remains. Capitalizing on the opportunity for newer applications, Amit Mehta, a young entrepreneur in Noida has made manual screen printing so very creative and cost-effective that it has generated a lot of curiosity and also business for Fabrino, a company started by his father Anil Mehta 40 years ago as a processing house…

Till Amit joined his father about 14 years ago, Fabrino had five clients with steady business, but this young NIFT graduate gave the company a new identity and today the company has 175 customers across India catering to the international brands and retailers by supplying innovative fabric with unique printing and washing to the manufacturers of bags, accessories, footwear, garments and home furnishings. “The way of doing business has entirely changed in this last 14 years; I cannot fully take credit for the change, as I only responded to the changing need of the market,” says a modest Amit. He adds, “Fourteen years ago we were working with 4-5 major customers and the quantities were so huge that we didn’t feel the need to add more customers; also the customers at that time were providing us the designs or coming up with the specific requirements. But, now we work more as a design house where we develop our own creations with our extensive R&D. We refer to a lot of forecasts, trend magazines and get a lot of inputs from NIFT faculty, the buyers and my designer friends.” Based on forecast for the next season, Fabrino is already out with its S/S’15 prints and colours.

Equipped with dyeing and table screen printing facilities at its Noida unit, Fabrino outsources weaving with its own specifications to various weavers. “We follow all international compliance norms; we have AZO free, GOTS and REACH certifications,” informs Amit. He adds that screen printing has changed so much that in certain designs one cannot make out whether it’s done manually or on automatic screen printing machine. “These days everything is computerised; the artworks, design creations, uniform overlaps; it’s as good as done on rotary or a flat bed. The basic preparation of screens is the same as done on a rotary or flat bed, only manual screen printing requires expert labour that can apply uniform pressure and control the screen skilfully,” adds Amit.

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“I believe in one thing, rather than expanding in terms of volumes it’s better to grow in newer things. I don’t want to print ordinary things which others are doing; I want to create new designs.”

“I am doing big volumes for customers like Walmart, Primark and Carrefour. There are a few buying houses who recommend us to these buyers as we met all their compliance standards. We use the best of raw material available. Recently we got some orders from Primark; the order quantity is generally from 25,000 to 30,000 metres for one project. My monthly capacity is about 3 lakh metres/month which I process in my factory.”

“Exporters from all over India visit our showroom in Noida and Naraina (Delhi); they collect the samples, they give displays to their buyers; if the buyers want certain changes in colour or prints in our designs we do that for them with our own inputs too.”

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Though realising the advantages of movingon to automation which has advantages like saving on space cost, warehousing along with faster bulk production, Amit justifies his preference for sticking to manual printing. “In my view people prefer more variety than going for bulks. The quantity per design per colour has really gone down, though no doubt the overall business has increased because the number of designs and colours has increased, so the volume business remains the same. In manual screen printing you can print any volume… very small to a very big lot, say 100 metres to 2000 metres…, the flexibility is there and any variations can be controlled on screens. I even do 10 metre orders,” he argues.

Breaking the myth that in manual screen printing only 5-6 colours can be played upon, Amit uses 19-20 colours with ease. “There are certain designs/finishes which are really difficult to do on machines because there are certain factors which one can control only manually like keeping a gap between the two repeats so that you can allow it to properly dry for better colour production before putting next screen on to the design which is generally not possible in the automatic machine because it moves at a constant speed,” informs Amit.

Finding no difficulty in colour consistency though colour mixing at Fabrino is done manually, Amit claims that very rarely the recipes fall short in perfection. “We keep checking the colour consistency all through the production; if there is any deviation we control that,” says Amit, adding that while there are minor variations in printing, in dyeing there is a ‘lot to lot’ variation which cannot be controlled so easily, yet they still prefer to do the process manually. He adds, “I do all the designs myself and based on these, specialisations are developed. Basic strength lies on how you conceptualize a project… rest works on the systems which we have developed. There are a lot of my designs which people tried to copy but they couldn’t.”

Sticking to 100% cotton and other natural fibres, Fabrino is mainly catering to companies which are making products from canvas or twill linings from 6 to 24 ounce. “The best thing that the customer gets from me is that they can freely share their creative desires – fabric of one, colour of another, print of third, and we can get it done. Even if they have their own designs we do that too,” says Amit.

Interesting & Innovative Creations by Fabrino…

Amit shares that pastel shades are going to be strong in S/S’15; combination of pastels and neon tones, a lot of floral designs, washed effects, wax and oily finish are in for leather goods and leather bags. “We are soon coming up with folk embroidery patterns. It is not the conventional embroidery with thread but it would give the feel of embroidery on the fabric and created through printing with certain textures over it. This will drastically reduce the cost of the fabric and it will give options to the customers to highlight the embroidery at certain places to give it an embroidered look and not to do overall embroidery which will make the production faster and cost-effective,” shares Amit. The other interesting development is leather suede look on canvas bags; which according to Amit amazed even leather bag manufacturers. “When I think about creating any design I just think how to bring down the cost and give identical and equally appealing product to my customers,” continues Amit.

Certain designs done by screens, which look similar to that of digital printing, is another very fascinating development by Fabrino, as it cuts down cost substantially. “We have developed prints with photo tone affects all done on screens and they are extremely cost-effective; we have sold a lot of this particular project to Target Stores,” reveals Amit. The cost of digital print look fabric is 1/10th of the digitally printed fabric and is available for mass production, the buyers who are not so particular about the intensity or the sharpness of the colour are now opting this option, as they get a ‘look-alike’ option for digital prints at much cheaper price.

The other eye-catching development is different weave effects like herringbones, hound’s-tooth effect through screen printing which looks very exclusive. “We have developed vintage look, fox linen effects; these are cotton fabrics which would give you the effect of linen, a good substitute for pure linen. It’s all done with finishing and printing but if some special texture needs to be given then that’s given at the weaving stage,” avers Amit who has also done enzyme wash and stone wash effect on fabrics with screen printing along with denim look for Coles on Canvas; if one doesn’t see the back side, it would look 100% denim.