Let's start from the end. Awservice, a digital printing specialist based in Pieve Emanuele, just outside Milan, now has a catalogue of 1,500 items that it can customise all in-house. From t-shirts to technical sports uniforms, backpacks, caps, mousepads, aluminium plaques, term papers and more. And to think that it all started with... a sheet of greaseproof food paper. “My professional experience dates back to 1986 - says Massimo Leva, 65% owner of Awservice, - when customisation was still unknown. We then made attempts at hot transferring images onto T-shirts, using the papers that butchers used, the ones that had film on the front. This was our first idea, which we developed shortly thereafter creating films on paper, such that we could transfer the image with film, on t-shirts. This idea corresponds to the inkjet transfer and it can be said that we were the first to have it.”

Tee Shock, that was the name of the Milan-based company where Leva started and created customisations with the first Canon Clc 500 colour copiers. Another winning idea was to move two of them to Apulia, inside tourist villages: "Even Canon technicians visited us there,"- recalls Leva- "to understand why we were using such a machine in those villages. We used to get T-shirts, puzzles, and paper and cardboard items. We were pioneers”.

Almost 40 years later, today everything is printed. Awservice, which with its seven employees has built on Tee Shock's wealth of experience, boasts a wide range of innovative heat presses, printing presses, inks and special papers for digital printing, which it uses to decorate any medium and meet the customisation needs of professionals in the graphic arts (printers and screen printers), clothing and advertising (photographers, plaque engravers, promotion studios) etc.

A company that has been able to update its screen-printing know-how in the light of the latest advances in digital printing, Awservice relies heavily on the Dtf technique and its extraordinary versatility. Particular attention was paid to the exclusive use of certified machines and inks: "We rely on printers such as the Epson Dtc F2100 or F2200,"- Leva points out -"which give us complete peace of mind with regard to safety of use”.