WHAT HAPPENS when you distill five years of case studies into one feature? You get lessons from a gymnast-turned-printer, a historic Seattle bar, a LEGO-obsessed entrepreneur, and shops that turned misprints into pillows. These tips cover equipment, training, marketing, production, and the occasional “don’t do what I did.” Learn from their experiments.

EQUIPMENT

Portable Pays Off

Want to print where the people are? Wendy Nowakowski, founder of U Brand Yourself in Bel Air, MD, chose compact equipment specifically so she could take her show on the road. Her one-color press fits through doorways and her tabletop conveyor dryer slides into the back of her Jeep. She sets up at a local park three times a year for free community print events. The result: visibility, goodwill, and customers who remember you did something cool for them.
September-October 2025

MARKETING

Partner Up Locally

NJ Ink Shop went from garage operation to community staple partly through one smart move: an exclusive partnership with hip-hop group Naughty by Nature. Rapper Vin Rock makes promotional videos from the shop, showing fans the quality firsthand. The shop gains credibility; the artists get authentic merch. “Can you think of a local music group, restaurant, company, school, or club that you could exclusively partner with?” Bond over shared passions. Execute on a shared vision.
January 2022

MARKETING

Imagine Your Ideal Customer

T.R. McTaggart didn’t just identify their ideal customer — they named her. After weeks of data collection and team discussions, the Michigan print shop created “Jennifer,” a fictional persona representing their target market. “Jen represents a sort of North Star for us,” says GM Lindsay Carpenter. “Everything we make, everything we design, we ask ourselves, ‘Will Jen like this? Would she buy it?'” If the answer is no, back to the drawing board.
May 2021

SUSTAINABILITY

Misprints Are Money

Stop throwing away your rejects. Wendy Nowakowski of U Brand Yourself partnered with local artist Emily Reed to turn botched prints into pillows and one-of-a-kind wearable art. “Even when you train staff, mistakes are made, so we’re constantly looking for ways to repurpose things,” Nowakowski says. Bonus: Those pillow-making workshops bring in curious customers who then sign up for screen-printing classes. Waste becomes revenue becomes marketing. Not bad.
September-October 2025

MARKETING

Why Beats What

T.R. McTaggart in Standish, MI, spent decades marketing their services: screen printing, embroidery, promotional products. Nobody cared. Then general manager Lindsay Carpenter had a realization: “There are a lot of companies who do what we do, so we needed to think different. We needed to focus not on what a customer can get, but why they should get it from us.” Their new slogan — “Memories Made Here” — connected emotionally with tourism clients. Result: their best first quarter ever.
May 2021

PRODUCTION

UV Opens Doors

Kenneth Fritz of Upbuild Fabrication in El Cajon, CA, prints on brass, acrylic, wood, glass, anodized aluminum, stainless steel, laminated veneers, leatherette — even baseballs and golf balls. His UV flatbed printer made it all possible. “Because my UV printer allows me to print on just about anything, finishing and customizing is easier than ever,” Fritz says. “It’s a device that really improves things for my business.” When you can print on anything, you can say yes to almost anyone.
July-August 2024

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Extras Win Clients

Want repeat business? Surprise your customers. When Amber Massey of Tshirts for Hope in Fortson, GA, shipped an order to Bikes, Bagels, & Brew, she included two extra shirts in colors she had lying around. Owner Ryan Meyer loved them so much he ordered more in those colors — plus reorders. Massey also suggested a better design layout than the client requested. Little touches, zero cost, lifetime customer.
March-April 2022

Wendy Nowakowski of U Brand Yourself insists her team members understand screen printing’s fundamentals before letting them touch an automatic press.

TRAINING

Buttons Aren’t Skills

Before your new hires touch that automatic press, make them learn manual. Wendy Nowakowski of U Brand Yourself insists that her team members — many fresh out of school — understand screen printing’s fundamentals first. “If everything is automatic, all they’re doing is pressing buttons,” she explains. “They need to understand the science behind screen printing as they develop that essential trade.” Automation is a tool, not a teacher.
September-October 2025

BUSINESS GROWTH

In-House = 5X Sales

Seattle’s Central Saloon outsourced their branded T-shirts for 30 years. Then they brought printing in-house. The result? Merch sales jumped from $2,000 per month to upwards of $10,000. “We’ve created a new revenue stream by controlling our supply based on seasonal demand,” says co-owner Eric Manegold. If you’re already selling shirts, the question isn’t whether you can afford to print them yourself — it’s whether you can afford not to.
July-August 2025

SALES

Train First, Print Fast

The Central Saloon invested in on-site training when they launched their screen-printing operation. Worth it? Eric Manegold thinks so: “Proper training from the beginning has ensured consistency and quality, which eliminates mistakes and — most importantly — helps us produce T-shirts for sale faster.” Translation: A few days of learning saves weeks of headaches. Band members seeing their name on merch for the first time never ceases to “wow” them, Manegold adds.
July-August 2025

PRODUCTION

Heat Press Speed Wins

Forget embroidery’s machine time. With heat-applied appliqué, decorators can execute a garment every one to two minutes, making it one of the fastest apparel decorating methods available. Josh Ellsworth, Chief Revenue Officer at Groupe STAHL, notes this makes the technique “perfect for high-volume, on-demand environments, such as at events or in retail locations where quick turnaround is key.” No heavy machinery. No giant footprint. Just speed.
May-June 2025

TECHNOLOGY

NIL Is Your Opening

Name, Image, and Likeness rights have created a massive opportunity for print shops serving sports retailers. Fans want jerseys featuring their favorite college athletes — personalized, now. Heat-applied appliqué lets retailers stock blank jerseys and customize them in real-time. “This meets the growing demand for NIL-based customization without the need for large inventories,” notes Josh Ellsworth of GroupeSTAHL. If you’re not offering this service yet, someone else is.
May-June 2025

Garrett Milks turned a weird obsession with LEGOs into a successful business.

NICHE MARKETS

Hobby to Hustle

Sometimes your weird obsession becomes your business. Garrett Milks loved LEGOs as a kid. By 2014, he’d turned custom minifigure printing into The Minifig Co in Kingston, WA. Today he employs seven people across 7,500 square feet. His most loyal customers? Surprisingly, the 30-to-40-year-old crowd. “It truly is a family affair,” Milks says — grandparents buy for grandkids, parents buy for themselves. Your niche might be narrower than you think. And deeper.
November-December 2024

EQUIPMENT

Multiple Machines = Flexibility

Garrett Milks’ Minifig Co. now runs seven UV printers to keep up with the high demand for its custom LEGO minifigures. Why does it have so many? “Having multiple printers at our disposal allows us to meet the demands of our customers more efficiently,” says the company founder. “The flexibility of these machines enables us to quickly switch between different tasks to accommodate various printing requirements.” One printer is a business. But multiple printers is a production system.
November-December 2024

For Carleigh Stillwagon and Carter Meade of Elite Custom Apparel, a four-day screen printing training class was the “best investment we ever made.”

TRAINING

Best Investment Ever

Carleigh Stillwagon started Elite Custom Apparel with a heat press in her dad’s basement. Production was slow, margins thin. Then she and her fiancé Carter Meade attended a four-day screen printing training class. “It was the best investment we ever made,” Stillwagon says. “We went in with zero knowledge of screen printing, and afterward we knew everything we needed to get started.” Before: 100 shirts per week. After: 100 shirts per hour.
May-June 2024

TROUBLESHOOTING

Pretreat Shirt Déjà Vu

Pretreated shirts sitting overnight? They’ve absorbed moisture from the air, and your morning prints are not going to match yesterday’s. Terry Combs, industry veteran and DTG troubleshooter, has the fix: “Always heat press your shirts for just a few seconds before printing, whether they were just pretreated or you pretreated them yesterday.” That simple 5- to 10-second step eliminates moisture that would otherwise mess with your water-based inks. Consistency isn’t magic — it’s a result of habit.
July-August 2024

The top-selling products of media figure Molly Baz’s merch launch were a yellow apron and yellow tie-dye crew neck she wore while promoting her line on Instagram.

MARKETING

Wear What You Sell

The top-selling items in former Bon Appetit editor Molly Baz’s successful 2020 merch launch? A yellow apron and a yellow tie-dye crew neck. Why those specifically? Lea Sindija of Bennu Brands has a theory: “Baz wore them while promoting the sale on Instagram.” With 620,000 followers watching, what Baz put on her body is what fans put in their carts. If you’re selling apparel, model it yourself. Your best billboard is your own torso.
February-March 2021

COLOR MANAGEMENT

Eyes Lie, Numbers Don’t

You cannot measure color accurately with your eyeballs. Sorry. Shelby Sapusek, Color Management Consultant and CMO of ColorCasters, says printers must use spectrophotometers or colorimeters to evaluate color properly. The good news: handheld devices now cost between $100 and $1,000, and mobile apps make verification accessible to everyone from designers to press operators. Color management starts in file creation and carries through to final print. Consistency requires measurement.
July-August 2024

TROUBLESHOOTING

Kiss, Don’t Crush

Getting dull images after heat pressing your DTG prints? You’re probably pressing too hard. Terry Combs, a 40-plus-year industry veteran, says the fix is simple: use the lightest pressure possible. “You only need to touch or ‘kiss’ the garment with the heating element,” he explains. Heat presses are contact heat sources — just touching is enough to cure. Also: let shirts with large color blocks air dry for a couple minutes before pressing. Problem solved. Now wasn’t that easy?
July-August 2024

MANAGEMENT

Start Small, Scale Smart

JC Pro Design in Salt Lake City started in 2016 with just a silhouette cutter and a heat press. Today? Screen printing, DTG, embroidery, and UV DTF. The secret, says founder Justin Leader: carefully designed workspaces for each method as you add them. “When you grow too fast, you spend a little too much money trying to catch back up,” Leader admits. Despite all the additions, heat printing remains central to operations — proof that your first tool can still be your best profit center.
May-June 2025

PRODUCTION

Remove the Guesswork

Stop guessing if your ink is cured. At Elite Custom Apparel, owners Carleigh Stillwagon and Carter Meade run a donut probe through their conveyor dryer with every job. “A temperature gun measures the surface temperature of the garment, whereas the probe measures the temperature of the ink,” Meade explains. “We’re getting more accurate readings without burning or under-curing any shirts.” They retest every 30 to 50 shirts on longer runs. Precision beats crossed fingers.
May-June 2024

BUSINESS GROWTH

Basement to Business

And this one’s for those basement screen-printers dreaming of a brighter future: Will Daley started printing wrestling merch on a Yudu machine in his basement. When featured in Screen Printing in 2021, he was running Burning Hammer Screen Printing on a six-color, four-station Riley Hopkins press. His advice for fellow basement printers: “I did have to upgrade my electrical box, which costs money, but that’s about it.” Also: certain chemicals (like screen opener) will stink up your house, so take those jobs outside. The path from hobby to business isn’t glamorous, but it works.
June 2021