I’ve been thinking about a tiny printer for my mother’s Etsy plans. She makes handmade pieces and has considered opening an Etsy shop for about a year, but still hasn’t listed anything.
Image Credit: Inkwon
My head of content pointed me toward the Inkwon TAG, and I started wondering how it might fit into her packaging. Could it handle labels, tags, and other paper inserts for each order?
Then I got to the funding page and slowed down. More than HK$6.1 million from 2,861 backers against a HK$100,000 goal is hard to ignore. The campaign also credits a growth agency and Jellop’s ad tech. That made me curious about how much of the attention came from the printer.
The pitch fits on one line. Inkwon sells the TAG as a way to “Tag Your Life Anytime, Anywhere,” and underneath the slogan is a 600 DPI CMY inkjet, about 105 x 97 x 45 mm, that prints temporary tattoos, adhesive stickers, iron-on fabric transfers and small photos. Four jobs, one cartridge, no mains socket.
What I’d have her print
Heat transfers make sense for one of my mother’s designs. She could print it on light-fabric transfer paper, iron it onto a tote or plain tee at home, and see how the artwork looks on fabric. That gives her a way to test a design before buying equipment or placing a larger order.
One of her finished paintings could become a small batch of bags without finding a supplier or paying for a screen-printing setup. She wouldn’t have to commit to 50 bags before knowing whether anyone wants one. For a shop that hasn’t opened yet, making a single item at a time makes more sense.
After that, the unglamorous half. Sticker paper with an adhesive back covers price tags, care labels, seals for the outside of a mailer, a logo on a kraft box, the whole apparatus of looking like a business rather than a hobby. Inkwon already points its Cubi label printer at small retail with a “Price Ready” tagline. The TAG inherits the same idea and adds color.
The stall, the refills, the charge
A craft fair is where the tattoo feature starts making sense to me. A kid could pick a shark from the app, get it printed on their arm, and still have time to wander over to my mother’s table. Inkwon lists EN 71-3 and ASTM F963 for the water-based ink, too.
Refills are where I’d hesitate for my mother. A three-pack costs $59, and Inkwon rates each cartridge for 60 sheets. That’s about 30 cents per print before the paper or whatever else she uses with it.
For the kind of orders my mother would handle, battery life shouldn’t be an issue. Inkwon says the TAG can produce about 60 sheets on a charge. Should she run it down, USB-C gives her a way to keep printing. Bluetooth covers the wireless side, and AiYin’s guest mode means she can get to a label without another account.
The black ink problem, and three more
No dedicated black. The TAG mixes CMY to fake it, and mixed black on a 3.5-inch print goes grey. Whatever logo she eventually settles on will almost certainly be black linework on white, so black reproduction is the first test I’d run.
One sheet at a time, no tray. Forty order labels means forty hand-fed passes and forty small moments of standing over a printer waiting. Borderless printing isn’t on offer either, so every sticker carries a white margin she’d have to trim off or design around.
The figures above come from Inkwon’s campaign, so I’d keep that in mind when weighing them. Price is another sticking point. Early birds paid $169, but the target MSRP is now $299, with late pledges still available through Indiegogo. Color-heavy artwork gives the TAG a stronger case. Black text on labels doesn’t.
Who I’d hand one to
My mother doesn’t need a printer for a full production run. She’s after something she can pull out on a Sunday, make a few labels, try a tote design, and put the results on Etsy that night. 30 labels and a handful of transfers would be plenty for her.
A market seller could get more out of the instant side of it. Someone asks for a name or a small graphic, and there’s no waiting for another order to arrive.
My call, pending a wash cycle
I’m close to buying one. Four print modes cover most of what a one-person shop needs in its first month, and 30 cents a print is cheap enough to be wrong with, repeatedly.
Before I put one in my mother’s hands, I’d want to see what happens to black ink and a washed transfer. Does black stay black? Does the design still look decent after a 40-degree cycle? Good answers on both and the Inkwon TAG becomes a birthday present. Bad ones, and it’s a party trick with excellent certifications.
Grigor Baklajyan is a copywriter covering technology at Gadget Flow. His contributions include product reviews, buying guides, how-to articles, and more.
