Press Releases

M&R Introduces “Rags of Honor: a Screen Printer Success Story”

Published

8 years ago

June 9, 2016

M&R is pleased to introduce a video profile of Rags of Honor, the latest addition to M&R’s video series about successful screen printers.

Chicago-based Rags of Honor was founded by Mark Doyle following a year in Afghanistan on an anti-corruption task force. When he returned home and saw “the unemployment rate, the rate of suicides, [and] the rate of homelessness among returning veterans”, Doyle decided he had to do something. That something was Rags of Honor. He started the company with no real plan beyond his determination to provide employment to homeless and unemployed veterans.

Doyle started by putting six veterans on the payroll, but the company wouldn’t own a screen printing machine for the first nine months. Instead, the veterans spent eight months training on a small rented press in the basement of a screen printer and former Marine. Rags of Honor veterans also received free training at M&R’s corporate headquarters.

However, in the eleventh month, a new manual press was donated to the company, and the team moved into a one-thousand square-foot facility. Since then, Rags of Honor has acquired an automatic press and moved to a ten-thousand square-foot space, printing shirts for local businesses, Big Ten conference schools, professional sports teams, and the NFL. Along the way, they decided to print on American-made shirts and adopted this motto: “They Had Our Backs. Let’s Keep the Shirt on Theirs”.

When asked about his goal for Rags of Honor, Doyle said, “The mission is simple: be the largest employer of homeless veterans in the country. But we’re going to take all veterans if they need a job. And if you want to help a veteran and you want to make a difference, just go to RagsofHonor.US(http://www.ragsofhonor.us/). Buy a T-shirt or give us some business—and you’ve just helped a vet.”

To watch the video, click here or paste http://www.mrprint.com/honor into your browser.

You can follow Rags of Honor on Facebook by clicking here.

To read Chicago Tribune reporter Rex Huppke’s 2015 Rags of Honor article, click here. To read his follow-up piece from April 22, 2016, click here.

Other videos in this series are available online at www.mrprint.com/success.

Let’s Talk About It

Creating a More Diverse and Inclusive Screen Printing Industry

LET’S TALK About It: Part 3 discusses how four screen printers have employed people with disabilities, why you should consider doing the same, the resources that are available, and more. Watch the live webinar, held August 16, moderated by Adrienne Palmer, editor-in-chief, Screen Printing magazine, with panelists Ali Banholzer, Amber Massey, Ryan Moor, and Jed Seifert. The multi-part series is hosted exclusively by ROQ.US and U.N.I.T.E Together. Let’s Talk About It: Part 1 focused on Black, female screen printers and can be watched here; Part 2 focused on the LGBTQ+ community and can be watched here.