The Start of My Screen Printing and Embroidery Company

I can remember many years ago as a young man going to Northwest Plaza which back in the day used to be one of the best malls around and having lunch in the food court. It was winter time and I owned an asphalt company. The asphalt business gave the illusion that you were making money fast during the warm months as you were working seven days a week and putting in 14 and 15 hour workdays. It’s an extremely hard way to make a living as it is not only physically demanding, but you are also at the mercy of the weather. As if the actual work wasn’t difficult enough to deal with especially when it was 95° outside and you’re working on top of 300° material, but there is also the element of trying to schedule the jobs. You can call up your customer and tell them that you are planning on stopping by on Tuesday but Monday it happens to rain and that means that everything is now backed up and has to be rescheduled. I can also remember when winter would arrive and I would go from not having enough hours in the day and wondering how am I going to get everything done in time, to business coming to a complete standstill for approximately 4 months until the weather would warm up.

I remember praying to God to deliver me into a different type of business and one day as I was just sitting at the mall because there was nothing else to do I happened to notice that everyone who walked by was wearing some type of custom T-shirt or cap. I can remember thinking to myself that I could sell that but I didn’t know the first thing about the custom screen printing industry. I went out and got some business cards made and just started knocking on doors and asking that the next time they happen to be in the market for some additional custom T-shirt printing or embroidery if I could please just have a chance to give them a competitive bid. If I can’t make the best offer, then I would recommend that they not use me but on the other hand, I would try to come up with some kind of incentive in order to make it worth their while for them to give us a chance. I thought that if we can at least just get the opportunity to prove ourselves, then we can go the extra mile in order to not only get them there order on time, but also throw in a little something extra in order to give them a reason to remember us. At that point the repeat orders as well as the great referrals I thought would simply take care of themselves.

Eventually I was able to wean my way out of the paving industry and exclusively cater to custom screen printing as well as digital T-shirt printing and embroidery. I’ve heard it said that there is no substitute for hard work but that being said, it is a whole lot more beneficial to work smarter instead of just harder. A good effort is certainly noble, but when it comes time to paying your bills, nobody cares how hard you tried. All they want is their money.

I was just in the mood to blog about how I got my start in the Columbus, Ohio shirt business. So now you have a little insight on my humble beginnings. Please keep us in mind and give us a call the next time you’re looking for Columbus, OH T-shirt printing as well as custom embroidery and digital garment applications.

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