Our Printing Process Journey

In the first years of YIREH, one of our factories hand-printed all of our fabrics. It’s a beautiful process: mixing each color individually and stamping each portion of the design at a time, layering until it comes to life. While we love this ritual and the softness it brought to our fabrics, hand printing uses quite a lot of water and left a lot more room for inconsistencies and discoloration. We found ourselves reprinting yards of fabric and we were left with slight variants of color between styles and lots of waste. We knew this wasn’t a sustainable practice and we had to make some changes.

After lots of research and trial + error, we found a digital printer that we love nearby our current factories (making it SO easy to get the fabric to them and for all of us to communicate!). Our new digital printing process uses eco-friendly dyes certified by Oeko-Tex and NO water. We are able to sample in smaller swatches to get the color just right and achieve consistency through any amount of yardage and reprinting. The process is SO fun to watch (see a video here!) and while it’s a significant cost increase to us, so far the results across the board have been worth it.

Our Process
Step 1: Design print with an independent designer

Step 2: Send design files to the printer who creates test swatches. We work together to get the settings and colors just right.

Step 3: Swatch approved and shared with our factories. The fabric is printed and then sent to the factories who quality check the final product against the approved swatches.

Step 4: Garments are sewed and sent to Hawaii to our fulfillment center, and then on to you!