What is "Tag Printing" or "Tagless Printing" or "Tagless Label Printing"?

Tag printing - also known as "tagless printing" and "tagless label printing" - is perhaps one of the hottest trends in apparel manufacturing and promotional apparel industries today.

Apparel manufacturers started looking for alternatives to sewn-in apparel tags several years ago, mainly because they were trying to make the consumer more comfortable in their clothes. The most popular solution used to be thermal transfer labels ("heat transfer labels"). However, thermal transfer labels were usually still not soft enough to the touch (not "soft hand" as people in the screen printing industry put it) and not convenient for short-run production because they have to be purchased in high volumes. So recently another alternative has been found: pad printing.

A pad printed printed tag can be very soft, almost unnoticeable on touch; it costs a fraction of a cent and gives the flexibility to modify the image in-house any time. The challenge that most printing supply companies face is to formulate ink that not only stays in place after repeated washing, wearing and stretching but also produces opaque images - opaque enough to stand out on dark textile - without oversaturating the fabric and making it stiff. Another absolutely unquestionable requirement is to provide well-adjustable printing machines and quality printing plates, pads and accessories - so that even the finest letters and graphics are readable.

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