NewsCausal intelligence cut one manufacturer’s defects by 50%Read the story
Shelfmark
Talk to an expert

AI visual inspection and production intelligence for decorated apparel

Catch defects like banding, head strikes and white-ink dropouts in real time, before they ever reach a customer. Turn what you learn into fewer reprints, less waste and smarter production.

What if you could catch defects right when they happen, and even stop them in the first place?

CATCHING DEFECTS EARLY MATTERS

The cost of a single missed defect quickly compounds.

What one escape costs
A 40¢ misprint doesn’t cost 40¢.
A ruined blank
The garment, not just the print
$4
The reprint
Film, ink, powder, press time: paid twice
$13
Expedited freight
Rushed to still make the ship date
$22
A customer chargeback
They caught what the spot-check didn’t
$300+
WHAT 40¢ BECAME
$339 & the account
The reorder doesn’t come back. The buyer who got the bad box now inspects every shipment you send, or quietly moves the program to your competitor.
Your line’s numbers may differ.

Decorated apparel lines just got smarter.

The print defects we can catch

  • Banding
  • Head strike
  • White-ink dropouts
  • Registration drift
  • Nozzle-out streaks

The specs

Line speed
500ft/min
≈ 152 m/min
Channels
CMYK+ white
incl. underbase
Smallest defect
0.1mm
sub-millimeter
Inspection
100%
every sheet, every part

We can predict defects before they happen.

Your defect rate, connected to your facility’s environmental data.

Avg Daily Humidity vs Defect Rate
Humidity (%)Defect rate (%)
304050607080Humidity (%)0246810Defect rate (%)3 Jun4 Jun5 Jun6 Jun7 Jun8 Jun9 Jun10 Jun
Move your cursor across the chart to watch the defect rate follow the 8 Jun humidity spike.
How It Works

We manage the system that lets your line learn.

Built to catch defects across anything that’s printed, with no reference image required.

01

Camera

The eyes

A vision setup that's flexible, allowing us to tailor to the specifics of your web, your substrate, and your line speed.

02

Hardware

The edge

State-of-the-art NVIDIA compute, on-prem in a rugged box wired straight to your line and the vision system.

03

Software

The platform

A browser-based live dashboard that allows you to view any line from anywhere, generate audit-ready report cards, and visualize predictive data.

04

Machine learning

The intelligence

A menu of large, custom-built models that allow us to find defects without a reference image across hundreds of SKUs.

We don’t sell you a camera and wish you luck. We manage the technology, so you get a smarter line, not more work.

What Shelfmark delivers on a decorated-apparel line

up to
7×
ROI
inside year one
up to
90%
waste reduction
vs. manual review
 
1/2
inspection labor needed
on the line
 
99.5%
inspection accuracy
on any SKU

We're deployed in facilities around the world doing just that.

Wholesale DTF manufacturer
Private · apparel & printing
Read their story
High-volume screen-print decorator
Private · digital screen
Read their story
Independent graphics & apparel decorator
Private · 1 plant
In the platform

The questions buyers actually ask.

What happens the moment a defect is found?

The floor is alerted immediately, an alarm at the press and the defect image on screen, tagged to the exact sheet and position. Your operator decides what to do with the run; nothing ships with a defect nobody saw.

How does defect prediction work?

We pair your defect feed with environmental data from your floor, such as humidity and temperature, then surface the correlations. When conditions drift toward the range where your defect rate climbs, you hear about it before the defects do.

How long does install take, and does the line stop?

A single press is typically instrumented and inspecting within days, not months. We mount cameras at the press, calibrate to your substrate and speed, and tune against your real defects. No teardown, and you never write a rule.

What is it like to work with Shelfmark after install?

It’s a managed system. Our team watches model performance, handles tuning and drift, and ships improvements continuously; your crew just sees defects caught and acts on them. You have a named expert, not a ticket queue.

How is it priced?

As a service, an operating expense, not a six-figure capital purchase. Before you commit, we model the payback against your real scrap rate, reprint costs, and chargebacks, so the math is yours, not ours.

Do we own our inspection data?

Yes. Every sheet stays on the record and is yours, queryable across presses and plants, exportable any time. The platform is the single source of truth for your quality data, not a black box.

What defects can Shelfmark catch on a decorated-apparel line?

Across decorated apparel, both DTF and digital-screen, we catch banding, head strikes, white-ink and underbase dropouts, registration drift, nozzle-out streaks, and color drift, down to roughly 0.5 mm. Every sheet is inspected in line, not a sampled audit.

Will inspection keep up with our line speed?

Yes. We inspect at production speed, typical DTF and digital-screen lines run 300 ft/min (≈ 90 m/min) and the cameras and models scale up from there. Inspection never becomes the bottleneck.

Does it inspect white ink and underbase?

Yes. The white layer is inspected as its own channel, not just the CMYK on top, white-ink dropouts and underbase coverage are among the most common defects we catch on DTF lines.

Talk to a
Shelfmark expert.

See if it’s a fit.
In 30 minutes you’ll know whether we can catch your defects, on your substrate, and your line speed.
See what’s possible.
We can show you the real thing. A line with every defect caught automatically; fewer escapes, less rework, and capacity you didn’t know you had.
See if we are full of shit.
We are a young company doing things that have never been done before. We own that, and we will answer any questions you have.