We get asked about materials and production more than almost anything else, so here is the plain version rather than a marketing summary: what BillingtonPix is made from, how it is printed, and where an order comes from before it reaches you.

Made to order, not made in advance

Every product is printed after you order it, not pulled from a warehouse shelf. Nothing is produced speculatively in anticipation of sales, and nothing sits in stock waiting to be discounted or landfilled if it does not sell. The trade-off is a short production window before dispatch (typically a few business days), in exchange for not manufacturing waste no one asked for.

What the fabric is

This varies by product, and we would rather tell you exactly than round it up to sound better than it is:

• Men's leggings and wrestling tights (our core product) are a polyester/spandex blend. Full detail: what are wrestling tights made of.
• Joggers are printed on a fabric that is 95-96% recycled polyester.
• Several of our streetwear pieces, including select tops and shorts, are also printed on recycled-polyester fabric.
• Tank tops, athletic t-shirts and t-shirt dresses are polyester, not currently recycled content.
• Our graphic slogan and print t-shirts are a different line entirely: 100% organic cotton, not polyester.

If a specific product's exact composition matters to you, the fabric content is listed on that product's own page, since it can vary between styles.

Printing and ink

We use two different printing methods, because the fabric decides which one works:

• Sublimation (all-over printing) for the polyester range - leggings, tights, joggers, tanks and t-shirt dresses. The design is printed onto transfer paper with sublimation dye, then fused into the fabric under heat, becoming part of the fibre rather than sitting on top of it. This only works on polyester, which is why our leggings and tights are built on it. Sublimated fabric is cut and sewn into the finished garment afterwards, which is also why some of our pieces are described as hand-sewn.
• Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing on Kornit printers for our organic cotton graphic and slogan t-shirts, since sublimation does not work on cotton. Kornit's printers use almost zero wastewater and less energy than standard industry printing methods.

Both methods use water-based, vegan inks, free of the harmful solvents that older textile-printing methods rely on. Left-over ink is disposed of according to our ink supplier's guidelines rather than down the drain.

Where things are produced

BillingtonPix is designed by one person, Matthew, in London. Production is print-on-demand, carried out through Printful's manufacturing network, and every order is routed to whichever facility in that network is nearest to you, rather than shipped from a single central warehouse. That is a checkable production model, not a claim of UK manufacture: the design is British, the production is regional and close to the customer, wherever the customer is.

Selling into Germany

Germany's packaging law (part of the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) requires anyone selling packaged goods there to be registered with the national packaging register, LUCID. Our production partner, Printful, holds that registration and covers merchants who fulfil exclusively through them - which we do. So orders shipped to Germany are covered under Printful's LUCID registration (DE4402313676935), in line with PPWR.

Why made-to-order matters

Overproduction is a real, well-documented problem in fashion: unsold and unworn stock is one of the industry's biggest sources of textile waste. Making each order individually, after it is placed, is the direct way we avoid contributing to that pile. We are not going to attach a specific industry-wide statistic here that we cannot personally verify, because we would rather you trust the ones we do state.

What we do not claim

We are not a certified B Corp, and we do not hold GOTS or OEKO-TEX certification. Most of our range is not recycled material. We would rather say that plainly than let a bold print do the talking for us. Where a product is recycled polyester, we say so on that product's own page.

Questions

If you want more detail than this page covers, on a specific product or otherwise, get in touch and we will answer directly.