The Printer on Tonight's Shark Tank….

[GypsyGraphics]

Tonight's Shark Tank isn't a rerun, yet there's a guy with a printer claiming to have a patent on a set-up that enables him to print directly onto shoes, like Converse and Van's, and therefore the ONLY guy doing this. But I saw what looked like the same set-up at the Long Beach NBM Show, nearly 3 years ago.

Directly from the AVE venice website: "Prior to The Ave opening in 2010, we spent endless hours inventing a process the custom shoe market has never been seen before."

The kid has zero business sense and his business model seems to be ripe for, or possibly even built on copyright infringement. He talks about people bringing in pictures of anything they want and having it printed on their shoes. Even mentioned printing the images of customer's tattoos. Aren't tattoos original artwork?

Anyway, the sharks didn't bite… but they never even hit on what I thought some of the hot points would be.

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

Come on now. What kind of ink would hold up to foot odour?

 

[GypsyGraphics]

well if ya bought a used wrap... CHEAP... at least you'd know when you got it, how the ink held up after being abused.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

is the printer like this? http://www.shoesprinter.com/shoesprinter/503.html

 

[GypsyGraphics]

it's covered so you can't see which printer it is.... but it's a beast... not a little pup like the one in your link.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

hmm... whats funny is every description I can find on their printer is that its a mechanical process similar to airbrushing, I wonder what they came up with?

 

[GypsyGraphics]

he says it's a digital garment printer and that the costs is 55k
claims they're the only one's doing this..... ridiculous!

 

[ProWraps]

dye sub. old news.

 

[GAC05]

Italian wrapped kicks.
Extra cheap - no printer needed.



wayne k
guam usa

 

[GypsyGraphics]

dye sub. old news.

which would make sense if this was a rerun... but it's not, it's from 2012.
he's claiming to be the only one doing this and that he's the one who modified the printer (in 2010) to be able to print the shoes.... and that he has the panted.

 

[phototec]

I have seen a few different direct to shoe printers on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F7kfSyxqxQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=KWle-YGk8S8&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNE5lZ3-ZCQ

 

[binki]

Just watch the 2 min clip. This guy didn't invent anything as far as I can see. It's a brother printer and he fab'd a platen to hold a shoe.

It is great he got on the show though.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Why would anyone want to print on shoes?

 

[jkdbjj]

I'm with Watson, am I missing a growing market segment?

Are advertising now paying people to brand there shoes? I've heard of mortgage companies allowing a tenant to wrap their house to pay the mortgage. So who knows!

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

Why would anyone want to print on shoes?

GG's got like 750 pairs she wants to pimp out.

 

[GypsyGraphics]

GG's got like 750 pairs she wants to pimp out.

ugh... Cheap, were you on my closet trying to squeeze your big feet into my shoes again?
And FYI... CFMP's, by definition, don't need no pimp'n.

 

[Williams Signs]

And FYI... CFMP's, by definition, don't need no pimp'n.

7's or 9's?

 

[GypsyGraphics]

7's... but why did you skip 8's?

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

The kid has zero business sense and his business model seems to be ripe for, or possibly even built on copyright infringement. He talks about people bringing in pictures of anything they want and having it printed on their shoes. Even mentioned printing the images of customer's tattoos. Aren't tattoos original artwork?

Tattoos are original artwork. They are usually the intellectual property of the tattoo artist or they are reproduced from tattoo flash that is the intellectual property of the flash designer. But I don't know what kind of legal dispute a tattoo artist would have over this kind of thing. I know tattoo artists themselves are guilty of copyright infringement all the time. And although Disney has tried things in the past to dissuade tattoo artists from reproducing their artwork on skin, I don't know of any case that has ever been successful. In my thirteen years as a tattoo professional, I was even guilty of it. We made money tattooing everything from Captain Morgan to the Chicago Cubs logos on people's skin and based on past experience, the odds of a lawsuit is likely one in tens of thousands.

Here are a few I did over the years that are totally not my own intellectual property. Not that I'm necessarily proud of it. But we got requests to reproduce other people's artwork almost daily. A lot of bands, companies, organizations, etc. even post pictures of people's tattoos with their logos on their own websites. It seems, for whatever reason, that copyright infringement is almost completely tolerated in the tattoo industry.

 

[Replicator]

It's just a modified direct to garment printer . . . big deal ?

It was cool though, but the thing he did wrong was trying to run the business, instead of selling the machines to the industry !!!!!