Every shop's got a startup story. Mine started with wooden Christmas ornaments and ended with a screen printing press that's still sitting in my garage today.
How I Ended Up Owning a Screen Printing Press
I didn't buy my screen printing equipment to start a t-shirt brand. I bought it to print graphics on wooden Christmas decorations I was making at the time. That was the whole plan. Print a few ornaments, call it a hobby, move on.
Somewhere in there I printed a few wooden signs too. Then, almost as an afterthought, a few shirts.
Dave's Idea
My late friend Dave Bentz always had a hundred ideas rattling around in his head at any given time. Most guys like that, you learn to nod and smile. But Dave was the one who kept pushing me on this one: print the "Shiny Paint Causes Stress" shirts.
So I did. I drew up the logo in PowerPoint — no fancy design software, just PowerPoint — and printed a shirt right there in my garage. Took a picture, posted it on Instagram, and went about my night.
Fifty Shirts, Overnight
I woke up and sold 50 shirts overnight.
I had no idea what I was doing. No website. No point of sale system. No easy way to print a shipping label. Nothing. I ran the entire thing through Instagram Messenger, one conversation at a time, trying to keep track of sizes and addresses in my head and on scraps of paper.
I scrapped a good number of shirts trying to print those first 50. My platen alignment was rough, to put it kindly. Didn't matter. I was hooked. Printing hot rod shirts in my garage just felt right in a way I hadn't expected.
Same Press, Same Screen, 4 Years Later
It's been 4 years since that first shirt, but that press and that original screen are still exactly what I use today. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I still print these by hand, same as I did that first night in the garage. Every shirt that goes out still has a little bit of that original scrappiness baked into it.
If you want one, I'd be happy and humbled to print it for you. Let's do another 50 shirt night. I miss it.