Despite the wildfires that continued to blaze on the outskirts of Los Angeles and a freak winter storm that stranded countless travelers throughout the South, the 2025 Impressions Expo in Long Beach, California, still went off without a hitch.
Special thanks to all those who put in the extra effort to make it to this year’s record-breaking event, featuring more than 300 vendors occupying an incredible 124,000-square-feet of floor space.
Thanks, as well to the people of Southern California for forging ahead in the wake of what remains a critical situation for hundreds of thousands of people in the area.
“While the first Impressions Expo of 2025 proved a great success, we at Impressions remain fully aware of the role the people of Southern California and the decorated-apparel industry as a whole played in making the event what it was,” said show director, Kayla McGarry.
Despite the many challenges they had to face getting there, out on the show floors the thousands of attendees on hand had their pick of the latest and greatest the decorated-apparel industry has to offer—the same as in Impressions Expos past, including the next two events set to take place in Atlantic City, New Jersey, March 20-22, and Dallas, Texas, Oct. 2-4.

Attendees to the 2025 Impressions Expo in Long Beach, California, check out some the equipment on offer. Photo courtesy of Impressions Expo
Standouts at this year’s show included everything from the newly redesigned Gen 4 ROQ NOW Industrial fully automated DTG System; Madeira USA’s new Polyneon green embroidery thread manufactured from 100-percent post-consumer PET bottles; Melco’s Summit 16-need commercial embroidery machine, complete with a powerful set of “intelligent” software capabilities to help streamline the production and tracking process; another newer, larger Quatro DTF printer from M&R; Gildan’s newly unveiled Plasma Print technology, which among other benefits, enhances the direct-to-garment (DTG) printing process by reducing the need for pre-treatment; and much, much more.
Click here to see a full list of the exhibitors at this year’s show.

2025 Impressions Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Russian decorated apparel designer Artem Nadirashvili. Photo courtesy of Ink Kitchen, Artem Nadirashvili
Also taking center stage, both literally and figuratively, was the Ink Kitchen’s presentation of the 2025 Impressions Lifetime Achievement Award—to Russian graphic artist and musician Artem Nadirashvili, an internationally recognized designer with 40-plus years of experience in screen, digital and offset printing fields, and specializing in high-quality screen printing for advertising, POP, posters, industrial and decorative applications and textile printing.
Nadirashvili joins previous award winners screen-printing pioneer Dave Gardner, director of creative embellishment at Gildan; Andy Anderson of Anderson Studios in Nashville, Tennessee; and screen-printing innovator Mike Beckman, now with M&R, in this the fourth year of the awards.
For more on Nadirashvili’s work and the 2025 Impressions Lifetime Achievement Award, be sure to look for the March 2025 issue of Impressions Magazine. For more on the 2025 Impressions Expo in Long Beach, California, including a complete list of exhibitors and information on next year’s show, click here.