Nick Roccanti | Threadbird | Shirt Show 287

Shirt show. All right, let's go. Shirt show. All right, episode 287 of Shirt Show. We're talking with Nick from Threadbird in Florida. Let's go.

Hey, guys. If you're new here, my name is Dylan. I am the owner of Upstate Merch and the host of the Shirt Show Podcast. Podcast. My guest today was Nick from Threadbird. It's funny, I get right into it with him where basically, like, I've known about them my entire. My entire career, basically. We've been in the same circles. We've been in the same forums. We've been, you know, kind of around this whole time. So it was kind of cool to be able to talk to somebody who's kind of gone through a lot of the same similar things as far as, like, growth and Internet and all of these other things that have to do with our industry. So it's kind of cool. Nick talks a lot about how he went from kind of, like, the music industry from, you know, being a promoter and getting bands to different labels and all these other things to how important Merch is to them and then figuring out that that's kind of where he wanted to be. And then also, like. Like I said, I. We dove into this whole, like, you know, thing called MTS that we were both a part of, which is kind of like a forum for printers and designers and kind of seeing that world and what's important to these people and the designs and the styles, and that kind of made him pivot into this other part of printing. So once he discovered what he really wanted to do, it's been, you know, like 17 years of just kind of hammering it out every day and growth and changes, and that's. That's mostly what this episode is about. No matter where you are, when you're listening to this episode or watching it, the best thing you could do is to tell your friends about us. If you could share on Facebook, Instagram, let me. Let me know in stories like where you are and what you're doing when you're listening to this episode, that would be great if you could hit the like button and leave us a comment on YouTube. That would be awesome. I. In the comments, just any point in this episode, if there's something that stands out to you or something you have a question on, leave me a comment. I want to be able to respond to you. Also, if you want to dive deeper into these episodes, there's a newsletter that I write every week. You can sign up@shirtshowofficial.com Newsletter uh, and it's pretty cool. It's got stuff from me. It's got industry news, it's got tips and tricks and shop hacks. There's a bunch of stuff in there. This show would not be possible without our amazing partners. It all starts with a screen. Whether it's new stretches or restretches, Frank and his team do it the best. To find out more, go to graphicscreenfashion.com greatfuckingscreens.com or ffffrank.com Cleaning screens is no fun, but easy way makes it way more funner. Their line of eco friendly chemicals and equipment make reclaiming screens a whole lot easier. 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If you're new to the industry, if you've been here a while and you just want people to talk to you that know about your woes, check out shirtshowofficial.com Discord. It's free, it's, it's patrolled. There's not any trolls in there that are going to come after you or think your ideas are stupid. Get in there, join a group, talk to people, ask questions. It's a great place to hang out. I just want to say I appreciate you all who listen and watch the show. It means a lot to me. If you have any feedback or you think there's anything we can improve, any guests that you think we should ask, any topics you think we should tackle, leave me a comment on YouTube or DM me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. I appreciate you all. Thank you very much. Enjoy the episode. What's up, Nick?

Hello, Dylan. How's it going, man?

Good. I sat down, got ready to record right at three, and then a massive train decided to go by. So I figured I'd wait for it to leave before we hopped on. So it wasn't the whole time.

Yeah, always fun. Yeah, well, like, my whole day was just blowing up up until this point and I was already stressing myself out. I'm like, oh God, here we go. Why is it like, you can't, like, you got to go do something. You gotta be focused, in the mood, and like, you feel like the world's blowing up around you?

That's me. Every day.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, I, I, I used to try to record these. We used to do them in the middle of the day, which right now we're kind of doing that. But then when I kind of started doing this by myself, I was like, you know what, let's make it like 4:30, 5 o' clock so that, you know, it's the end of my workday. I can chill here Tuesday night so I can get it done and go home. But you know, things happen and people are like, hey, I want to hang out, or I want to do this, I want whatever. And it's like, all right, cool, well, let me move it around and put it back in the middle of the day. So I don't know. It is what it is. You know, our world is chaos every day and you can't plan for anything.

And I literally put a big sign on the Door saying, recording, podcast, do not disturb. Because if not, somebody be literally knocking on my door the entire time.

Yeah, for sure. So how's things, man? How's it going?

It's a crazy. Yeah, I can't believe it's literally about to be December and we're wrapping up 2025.

I just. I do a weekly newsletter, and that was, like, the headline of my newsletter this week was just kind of like, I don't know about you, but, like, basically by September, to me, it feels like the beginning of the year because I'm, like, cool. Like, you know, like, taxes are done and this is done, and, okay, I'm prepped, ready. Let's get this year going. And it's like, dude, it's November already. And it's like. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, it's not only November, it's the end of November. And it's like, we have one month of this year left. And.

Yeah, and it's such a weird time of the year. You know, I know every print shop's a little bit different, but, like, it's such a weird time of the year, too, with, like, all the holidays, people taking off. Like, you're just either, like, slammed, like, all of a sudden, and then it's like, no orders, and then it's, like, slammed, and it's just, oh, my God. So up and down.

Yeah, it's crazy. And, like, right now, too, is when you start to see the different areas of our industry go different ways. Like, for me, we usually slow down. Like, we're gonna be, you know, oh, slow. Ish. And then January, February is going to be like, okay, we have enough jobs to keep the lights on. And then March, it'll start to ramp back up. But then there's a lot of shops right now that are like, oh, my God, no. I do nothing but retail. And it's like, I'm going to be slammed until then. So it's kind of weird to see the. See the differences.

Yeah, I'm sure, like, we'll probably get a massive influx next week of everybody needing a quick reprint of something, but it's like, everybody got their orders out. So, like, this week was, like, dead.

Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Right before Black Friday. Well, we've kind of. We've never met, like, in real life, I don't think, but, like, we've been in the same circles for, like, 20 years. Yeah, I remember we were both on empties at the same time.

Oh, yeah. Good old empty days.

And then. Yeah, I don't know. It was like a weird world back then because, like, I was just starting out, like, 2007 ish. And, yeah, I was on empties and I was doing designs, and I had just started my button company, and I was outsourcing T shirts and stickers. And then I went to work for a print shop in Atlanta, which was Terminus Teas, and I was on MTS a lot by myself, but also for them. So I was on there for, like, two platforms. And, yeah, Threadbird was kind of like. I don't know, you were. You were pushing into it really hard, like, you were going after a lot of the designers to get a lot of that kind of work. And I know I was trying to remember it, and I actually had to scroll back through your YouTube to find it, but I was like, there was a guy who had a channel who would, like, review stuff all the time, and I was like, I am the trend. I am the trend. Yeah. I ended up. I ended up writing it down, and I was like, what happened to all those people? I feel like most of those people fell off. And if you weren't a print shop, like, the whole design side of people kind of, I feel like, just went away.

Oh, yeah.

What was your world in that whole thing?

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, there's so much we can go down and start at the beginning, but, like, you know, just kind of touched on that whole, like, error of things, and then we can kind of jump back from the beginning. Like, it's funny because, like, I've heard on, like, a previous podcast, you talked about, like, you working for a print shop in Atlanta, and I've always, like, I wonder which print shop it was, like. Because there was definitely a few, especially back in the day.

I think you remember me telling you now that I worked for Terminus is the first time I've ever mentioned it on this show. Yeah.

Because I don't think I've ever, like, actually known. And part of me was back in my head, there was a shop called Raw Talent. Do you remember them from back in the day?

I don't think they're in the Atlantic area.

And they were a company that, like, exploded and then literally felt like overnight, like, went under.

Yeah, that happens.

Yeah.

I. I haven't really ever talked about the term this thing, just because, like, I don't have any bad blood or anything. I learned a lot from that experience. Like, I went working in literal basement. There was a futon that I slept on, and then my computer desk, and that was, like, my entire setup. And then I. I went to Atlanta. I started working for Terminus because they wanted to hire me because I was really good at sales. I worked for them for, I don't know, a year, almost two years maybe. And it was great. Like I. I got a lot out of it. I got a lot of experience as far as just like learning how to do more high end sales stuff. Because you. I'm going from like middle of nowhere to like Atlanta basically. And so I never had like the walk ins. I never had the easy ness of like getting a client in the city and just going and having lunch and being like, oh, let's work on this. Like, you know, large order or whatever and going to shows all the time and seeing bands and getting those relationships and whatever. Like that was cool. And then, yeah, I decided like, you know, back then it was tough because it was a good thing and a big thing for me to be there, like doing sales. And it was, you know, a good employee kind of deal of like, oh, this person is getting it and likes it and is passionate about it. But I just didn't feel at home in Atlanta. Like it wasn't for me, you know, And I was like, all right. You know, me and my wife got pregnant and it was like, all right, we want to move home and be with family or whatever. And then it was kind of, what do I do? Do I work remotely in New York for this company in Atlanta or do I just say I'm going to start my own thing? And to me I was like, I already started my own thing. And then I got. I sold that to Terminus and then I did everything there I was like, I could just go home and do this all over again by myself and like, not have to work for somebody else, whatever. So anyway, me doing that, it just, you know, obviously they weren't stoked on my decision. So I. I never really talk about it again. I have no bad thing with anybody. I'm just, you know, here. And at the time it was kind of a rough transition, but. But yeah, I've always been. Even when I moved back up here, that was kind of still a thing like the empties world. And then it ended up being like mintes. And then that kind of fell apart too. And then, you know, it was just a different world. But yeah, I want to hear your start back then and kind of your take on the whole empties thing because I miss that, you know, I miss getting in there and having this community of designers and printers, like all in one area.

Yeah, it was again, it Was such a different time back then. And like you said, it was different, but it felt like just, I don't know, awesome in a weird way. Right. Like, things first off felt, like, simpler and, like, yes, there were shops. We're all competing each other within reason. Right. But, like, I just felt like it was, like, different back then. And, well, it was the era of.

Message boards, basically, because that's all MTS was, was kind of like a. It was like a rate your design, like, daily best design thing. Basically, designers would go in and put in artwork, and then it would get rated by their peers, and then it would rise to the top, or it would be like, hey, this is a piece of. And then people just had the message boards to comment on and everything. And then with any kind of message board, there's the people who live there, which is. Which ended up being a lot of us printers and designers. And then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I know you've never heard this before, but it all started in the music industry, right? Like. Like, when I was 16 years old, I. I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and got really into the, you know, the underground hardcore music scene, all those type of stuff and shows and meeting people and got really involved with, like, concert promotion at, like, at the age of 16 and, like, helping put on shows and bringing bands in. And we're talking, like, under oath and Dashboard before, you know, he blew up, right? Like, remember seeing Dashboard, and it's just like, five people there. It's just Chris grabbing his little acoustic guitar and everything and, you know, just like that just kind of like, era of music and, you know, with that, like, putting on concerts, you just kind of got to meet everybody because it was such a small world, especially in Florida. We had so many, like, amazing bands here. And then everybody was coming through town and. And so I started actually managing a band. Started out literally as a joke. Like, I was just helping a local band out, and because I knew all these people, I was like, oh, I helped them get a show in. I think it was like, Jacksonville or St. Augustine or something. And so I traveled out there with them. Literally one day, they were like, oh, you know what? Talk to our manager, Nick. He'll take care of it. Blah, blah, blah. And they're like, yeah, we're going to just throw all this stuff on Nick. Let him do. And I'm like, okay, fine, I'll take care of it. And then it's like, next thing you know, like, sign them to a record label, like, get them on these big tours, national touring, Agency, right, Booking agency, all these things. And I'm like, oh, my God, I really turned into a manager. Like, no idea what I'm doing. Which is going to be like, the story of my life. Like, a lot of times I have no idea what I'm doing. I just go out there and, like, figure it out. And I'm one of those people that's like, if you work hard enough, like, you'll figure it out, you know, like, if you try to do it.

Not to steal from your story, but that's the truth with any of these people, is nobody knows what the they're doing. They're just like, making it up as they go along. And eventually you figure it out enough more than the other guy. And then you look at, like, the expert in that field, but really you're like, dude, I just stuck. I just got by in the skin of my teeth. Like, I have no idea what I'm doing. So continue.

So, you know, did the band stuff for a few years, and then I got connected with a really large guy in the music industry, managed some of the biggest bands in the world, all that type of stuff. And he was actually getting ready to kind of come in and help me take the band I was managing at the time, which they were called Forever Change. They were only around for a few years, signed on a small indie label, and then basically broke up. And right when I was getting ready to do this kind of deal, they. They broke up. I'm like, well, I have no idea what I'm going to do now, because this has been my entire life for the last few years. And the guy that I met was like, well, hey, I need help. I just, like, founded this new band that's kind of blowing up right now that I think has a lot of potential called Paramore. You know, I think they're going to be kind of big, so I need help with them and a few other things. And Atlantic wants me to do this incubator label, so come work for me. I'm like, all right. So literally started doing that for a few years. Just, you know, it was a really kind of cool part of my life. And. And one thing that I've learned over the years as, especially when I was doing the management side, is like, I mean, the merchandise is the lifeload of bands. And one of the things I just got really good at was making sure the bands I was working with had really good merch. They always sold really well, but it was always a disaster working with every. All the merch companies that I work with. And this is early. Like this is really kind of pre Internet age. Really, like the Internet was around, but there really wasn't a website. You didn't go order online.

There wasn't the, there wasn't the connectivity of the Internet that we have now.

You had a call, you know, like, I gotta call this number, give him a credit card over the phone and then somehow work out with them, like, oh, we're gonna be at this date, can you drop ship Merch, right? And it was crazy because I went through so many different merch companies trying to find them. I think Terminus Thieves was one of them back in the day. And you know, because they did a lot of band stuff and, and I, one thing I, I just picked, started picking up on this pattern, which is like, man, all these companies, like, they're kind of a mess and I would just do things very differently. And yes, you can always sit back on the outside and be like, oh, I can do this better, right? But it was like little things of like, man, why is it that every time I place a shirt order? Because if you're a band and you know, you're in a van with a trailer, there's only so much merch that you can take with you. So you're really trying to order like enough merch to last you a few weeks. And then you're all constantly just placing reorders, right? And I was like, man, why is that every single time that I place a reorder it comes out different? The print's a different size, the ink colors were different. Like, like, how can we have consistency? I'm like, why isn't somebody just doing like a digital mock up or something, right? Like recording some type of tools and whatnot. Yeah, yeah. And I just started always getting frustrated. I was like, somebody has to do this better. And I just remember like jumping around the different merch companies. And so I did the music industry thing for years. And then when I was at the record label management company, I was working with my roommate at the time was like, hey, we should start our own merch company, right? And I have all this experience and so we can take all the bands that are, that we're already working with, also go to all of our friends and, you know, sell them. And all we're going to do is go through, like to another, you know, print shop and you know, basically do contract printing. But like, we'll be the middleman and we'll bring all the sales, right? And so that's literally what we did. So we started this company called Downtown Arrivals. And it was 2006 when I started it. I was 22 years old at the time. And we got money to fund it and start it from my boss. And so technically, the record label owned the company, and we just kind of had jobs. And it was really my roommate who was running it, and I was still doing all the record label and management stuff. And so we did it for about a year. And a big part was, like, we wanted to build, like, this online store, right? So we can do our own for all of our bands. And so we built. And that's really where the money went, was to, like, fund this E commerce platform. And so we built that, and we were about a year into it, and all of a sudden my roommate comes to me, and it was like, hey, this other merch company here in town basically just approached me and made me an offer I can't refuse. And so I'm leaving. Peace. And I'm going to go work for this other company and help them launch something. And out of respect to people, like, I'm not gonna name who that company is. I have no beef with them or anything like that.

I know who that is. It's okay.

Yeah, yeah. But, like, my roommate went. And honestly, he did a fantastic job. But it was kind of like, especially being at that age and young and naive, and you're like, oh, my God, like, you totally screwed me as our friendship, right? Like, why did you ditch me in this project? And at that point, boss was like, well, you know, you need to go and take over and run this merch company now. Like, I just invested all this money. You need to take it over. Well, that was really the first time me being on the other side of it. And so I spent the next year figuring it out, making a lot of mistakes, but really figuring out. And I learned a lot. Like, I'm the one of those people, like, you learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of freaking mistakes during that time. And. But, like, I learned. And I looked at the business model that me and my roommate had, you know, written to start this company. I was like, this is all wrong. We did it all wrong. So I was like, I'm gonna figure out, make this better. So I literally, like, wrote a whole new business plan, was really proud of it. I'm gonna sit down with my boss and be like, all right, I'm gonna pitch it to him, and we're gonna, like, do something amazing. And so I sit down with him. I'm like. And I go to give it to him. And he's like, what is this? I go, well, you know, I spent the last year.

This is the realistic business plan.

Yes, this is. This is the business plan that's actually going to work. Because right now we're not making any money. I know you gave me a bunch of money and we kind of like, not really lost it, but like, we spent it all. And I was like, our current model just isn't ever going to become truly profitable, right? And become a real company. But here's my idea to actually make it profitable. And he goes, before you get into anything, are you about to ask me for more money? And I go, yes. He goes, I'm not giving you any more money. I'm like, yeah, but if you just would, like, look at the plan. He's like, I'm sorry, I can't. And of course, like, I'm like broken at the time. Like, oh my God, I'm looking back, I'm 22, 23 years old, something like that. I'm like, I don't blame my boss. He's a smart one. I was the idiot for even asking for the money, right? And so I was already at that point kind of really burnt out on the music industry. Like, I'm somebody who, especially coming from more the like, concert promotion and the management side of it, like, I was very, you know, artist first, I guess you can say, and then doing the record label and doing like anr. I didn't like where it was going and some of the things that were maybe like asked of me to do and all this, and I was like, this is not me, right? It's just not me. And I can't. I cannot do the job that they're paying me to do. And so I decided at that point I'm just going to walk away and go do something else. And at that point I had no idea what I'm going to do. So literally walked away. It is 2008 at that point and, you know, wrote that business plan. Well, I went to this guy John that I knew who was the one helped us build the platform, the E Commerce platform, because I needed him to kind of price out, like how we're going to do all these changes, right? And so he followed up with me, said, hey, so did you get the money? And I'm like, no, it's not going to happen.

So are you, at this point, are you. I was going to say, are you not connected to that guy anymore? It's kind of going to be your own thing. Moving forward.

Yes. So I walked away from the record label and going on my own. And literally at that point I didn't know what I was going to do. And so the programmer guy that was working with was like, well, hey, why don't we still launch your merch company and let's do this and I'll build everything you need for free and we'll just be partners. I'm like, that sounds amazing, right? And when I left the record label, my boss was even like, well, with you're not going to be there, I'm not going to really like, he just, he couldn't find somebody to like take over running it. And again, there was no money. So like it was a dead business as it already was. And so he was like, well, you can keep the printing stuff or whatever those clients. And so I was like, all right, well. Well then me and this guy John, we literally spent the next few months building a whole new platform. And we finally launched in 2008 and it was called Storenvy.

Right? Okay.

And so it was a. We were trying to build like a free.

Our.

Our mindset was let's build a free E comm platform. Back then it was all big cartel. Big Cartel was the big player, right? Like that's where all the bands use. And I was like, well, let's build something that's it's free and let's fund it by offering printing, right? Like, let's offer our free online store software. You ship it yourself and you will, you know it's free. So like free is easy to sell, right? And so we knew all these bands, let's get all our friends on it and then once we have them in the platform, we'll sell them printing and that's how we'll fund the whole thing. So that was literally the entire business model that we spent during that whole thing. Because we didn't have any money. We really needed another guy in the team that kind of a front end designer. And so we. Somebody was like, hey, I know this band guy who tours and does like websites on the side. He might be a good fit. So we literally call this guy up and, and his name is Scott and he's like, yeah, I'll do it. He was like, we're like, hey, we can't pay you. We need you to all this work for us. We can't pay you, but we'll give you equity in the business. He was like, I'm in. And so literally the of us, we launched Thor Envy. It took off and we Were proud of it. It was like a really good, you know, software.

I remember it being very prevalent at the time.

Yeah. And like, I was proud of what we built. Well, about two years later, we get a phone call from a big company out in San Francisco called Y Combinator. And it's an incubator company. If you're from the tech world at all, like, you'll know what this is. But it's basically like they find or most time submit themselves. But they look at like startups, tech startups, and say, oh, we think this has a lot of potential. We are going to invest into them, we're going to put some money into them, work on their business plan, make them basically real sexy, and then help them pitch to big VC companies. That was their whole business plan. And we got invited and we're like, wow, okay, this is amazing. Except for there was one major problem. I hated the idea of vc. Like, I was, I don't know, like, it scared me. And I've always just grown up because my dad's own businesses, my grandparents owned businesses. Like, the reason you own a business is that you get to do whatever you want. It's, it's your business, it's your rules. Nobody tells you what to do at the end of the day. Right. And as soon as you get vc, that all goes away.

It's a different game.

Yeah, it's a different game. And I was like, I don't know if I want to do that.

I don't want to talk too much about it because obviously I've never, I've never done it and I don't want to do it. But there's a lot of companies that I know of that I've worked with that have gone that route, and I feel like it ruins all of them. Like, I don't know any that are good, that are like VC owned. Yeah. Like, like, it's just, I'm sure there's some good ones. It's just about making, it's just about making the money. It's not about the people anymore. It's not about like the product. It's just like, all right, well, what in this can we bleed for? All that we can is what it seems like from the outside.

And that's, and that's honestly the thing, right? Like, you work for somebody else and your one goal is to make somebody else a lot of money. You know, they don't care about anything else except for how much money you can put back into their, their pocket. Right.

Yeah.

And so I was kind of like, hey, I think this is a great opportunity. I think we'll learn a lot. I don't think I want vc. And so literally, because part of the Y Combinator is we have to actually move to San Francisco for three months, go through this whole program. The day before we're about to get on the airplane to move to San Francisco, John, the other partner, calls a meeting. And I won't really talk about what was said, but it was not great. And it was basically had a massive falling out. It was me and Scott versus John, very different pages. And long story short, we said, we're not going. He went out anywhere. He tried to actually show up that Y combiner without us. He walked in, they're like, like, where's Nick and Scott at? And they're like, oh, they're not coming. Don't worry, you don't need them. It's me. And they're like, yeah, if Nick and Scott don't walk in this door tomorrow, like, you're not welcome here. So then of course he's calling. They're like, oh, please come out. And like, no, like, you've already just burned all your bridges. We're on very different pages on what we want at the end of the day. And so basically we get. A lot of lawyers got involved. We decided to split the company. He took the store, Envy side, the whole E Commerce platform, and me and Scott took the printing division. And at that point we rebranded as Threadbird. And that was 2010. And so that's really how the whole thing kind of got started, I guess you can say. I mean, it was a crazy time, like, going through that. And yeah, that's what a lot of.

People don't realize too, is it's like a lot of things at that time in that age. I mean, obviously, obviously people are going through it now, but for us back then, it was kind of like, like you said too, without a lot of the Internet, it was a lot of just like figuring shit out on your own and, okay, well, I'm gonna try this, try this. And like you said you were 16 to what, 22 when you were doing the band management stuff. And then it goes from that to, oh, well, I need to sell merch and I'll start this other thing. And then you don't know, like, you don't know what things are until you try them. Like you're saying, like, at that age, you're like, oh, well, someone's coming along. What seems like a goose to be like, hey, we want to bring you in we want to grow you into this company, and you're going to make this money and you're going to do this thing. At that point, you're kind of like, this sounds amazing. Like, I remember that with a lot of things in my life that I'm kind of embarrassed about at this point, where it's like, someone came along and promised me all these things, and then it just usually turned into. Well, really all it is is them trying to get something out of you, and they don't really necessarily care what happens to you. And I think it's for the better. Like, just hearing your story and knowing what's going on now, like, it seems like you kind of walked across hot coals for a little bit to get to where you are, where you actually really needed to be. Which, when you started the merch company for the. The label, it's kind of like what you wanted to do then. You just didn't have the funding or the backing or whatever. And then you just kind of had to jump through all these hoops to get to the point where you're like, okay, we can actually do Threadbird now with the plan, I guess, that you wanted to do in the first place.

Yeah. And, you know, like, there's two parts to it. Right? Like, one, it's about what do I want and what's going to make me happy. Right. And to me, it was like, I had no interested in trying to blow up and do this big tech startup and get, you know, millions of dollars dumped into it. And by the way, the guy John, you know, went off and raised something like, I think it was like $7 million in VC. And sadly, the whole thing blew up in his face afterwards. And literally the same story. And he eventually got kicked out and of the, you know, the board of directors kicked him out because he blew $7 million or something and a bunch of other stuff. And, you know, and I was like, that's not the story. I want to go. Like, I just. I want to build something for myself, do it in the way that makes me happy at the end of the day. And just, honestly, I just want, like, the flexibility to say, I can do it my way. I don't care if there's a better way to do it or whatever. It's like, it's whatever in my heart feels like it's the best way. That's what I want to do. And I'm going to do things not the traditional way of doing business sometimes. And that's okay, because that's what makes Me happy. And so, like, I wasn't. I didn't want to go try to become this, like, millionaire. This or that. Right. I was like, I just want to be able to put, like, a steady, you know, salary in my pocket.

Yeah.

And be stable and. And be proud of what I do. And that's what I think would make me happy. Like, I want to love what I do, and I want to have the stability.

You're describing what's in my heart right now. Yeah. It's funny. Christina did the pre interview with you, and she. She kind of called me after and was like, you know, this is what he's thinking. This is what he's feeling. I was like, I feel like we're all very much on the same page on a lot of these things right now, because the same thing, like, when I started. When I came back and started upstate, like, what I knew the most was bands. And it was like, all right, we're going to be very band heavy. We're gonna go through this whole thing. And it kind of describes a little bit of your feeling when you worked at the record label of, like, just getting burnout so fast on bands because it's so chaotic all the time. It's so this person wants to work with us. Oh, I love that band. I really want to work with them. I really want to work with them, because if I work with them, it's going to get me into this world where I'm going to get these bands and do this and do this. But it's just a lot of promises and not a lot of, like, actual return. It's like, oh, well, I want to work with this band, but they can only give me this much money, and then I have to front this and do this, and I'm constantly chasing people, and then I'm getting let down by my heroes, and it's just like, this is all this mess that I'm like, dude, I. I don't want this anymore. And I know there's a lot of people who listen to the show or whatever that deal with bands that, you know, always tell me, like, oh, it's great. I love working with bands. And then I get them in a room and I start talking to them. They're like, yeah, dude, it's a show.

Yeah. But I. Yeah, I am. I. I literally feel like you're preaching to me because, like, starting out, yeah. Bands were our client. Bands might be the worst clients out there. Like, I'm sorry. And yes. You can't say all bands are that way. But if you really think about it, they have no money. They need you to front everything. And they'll hopefully pay you back at some point.

Hopefully.

But then their van breaks down and they don't have the money to pay you back. But don't worry, if you front some more merch for me, I'll be able to sell that and then pay you back. And it was always this revolving cycle of, but don't worry, I also need the merch as cheap as possible so you can't actually make a profit.

And they would leave you to go to another place for 5 cents.

Yeah.

And it was. Yeah.

And like I say, I just bent over backwards to, like, help you out. I overnighted merch to you for your show on my dime.

Yeah.

And then you leave me for somebody who's five cents cheaper.

Yeah.

If I never work with another band, I'm fine with it.

Yeah. That's how I felt back then too, because there were so many bands that we, like, looked up to that we were printing for. And we would literally, like, bust our ass and stay all day to get this done and tweak things. And then if we mess something up because we were new and didn't necessarily know what we were doing all the time, we would, you know, re. Buy the blanks on our dime and not charge the band because we want the band to know that we messed this up or whatever. And then, yeah, we would work all night. You know, there were times where like, me and Chris or whatever would, like, be at the shop all night, get a job done, and then we would drive it two hours to the show and then like, drop it off at the venue and like, all this stuff and like, be like. And again, it was like, oh, I need this as cheap as possible. Do all of that. And then a week later they'd be like, oh, we decided to go to so and so else because, you know, they ultimately were a little bit cheaper or whatever. It's like, dude, you didn't. You don't understand the blood, sweat and tears that went into this. It wasn't just a normal nine to five. Oh, we did your job. We shipped it. Oh, I guess they went somewhere else. It was like, no. We put all this extra time in our own hours of our own lives into that weren't paid. You know, I don't need to drive two hours to a show to drop off merch for you. That's not like something you're paying me for. And it was just all these expectations. There was just such a. Letdown so many times. It was such like an emotionally taxing thing, especially when it's a small business and it's yours. It's like people don't realize there's no separation between, like, the emotional side of it and the business side of it. Like, there's not. We can all say, oh, it's just, you know, it's just money, it's just whatever. But we're emotionally connected to every Google review, every comment, every everything. Like, it's our. It's our baby. And I just got, like, really burnt out on it. And then when we first started getting, like, real clients that were, you know, some corporate client or some, you know, bigger company or whatever, and it was like one email deep. Here's our payment. No questions, no whatever. It was like, dear God, why am I doing? Bands like Target wants to order 5,000pieces and it's one PO done and out the door. And we made all this money. We didn't have to chase anybody. We didn't have to argue with anybody. They didn't even ask us about the price. They were just like, we need shirts.

Yeah.

It was like, okay, cool. Sounds good. Give me more of these.

Yeah, yeah. And that's why I was like, I eventually got to a place where I'm like, I mean, if a band comes to me and wants shirts, great. I'm not going to pursue any bands at all. And eventually we just got away, away from it. And I feel like every single band that we end up working with over the years, I'm just like, it doesn't. It just never felt worth it at the end of day.

And there were also bands too, that you would work with, that you became kind of friends with. And you were like, oh, this is cool. This is a great relationship. Because, like, you were talking about Paramore, but it's like, okay, I don't want to use Paramore as an example, but they go from being like a garage band to, you know, club band and whatever, and you're with them the whole time, you know what I mean? It's like, all right, well, let's make your merch. We're making. We're doing 25 piece orders. Okay, you're getting a little better. We're making 100 piece orders. And then they get to a certain point where they're like, okay, I'm actually going to go on a tour now or a bigger tour or whatever. And you're like, oh, cool. I put in my, you know, I paid my dues, now I get to collect of like, I'm going to work with this band who's going to be ordering thousands of pieces all the time, and it's going to be this whole huge thing. But the reality is then they go to management. Like, they get some new label or some new management. And then I remember back then, for me, all the time, it was like a Victory Records or something. It was like someone got signed to Victory and then it was like, oh, well, Victory sends all their merch to one company. And it was like, cool. I'm glad I, like, built this band up to this point with merch help. And then now they get signed. You don't even talk to the band anymore. It was the manager calls you and it's like, actually, we only work with X Print Shop or something. It's like, cool. Well, this is completely gone and out of my control and I have no say and I can't do anything. And I just lost this client that I put all this. All these years of effort into. Now we're just complaining.

Oh, I know, right? But it's funny because we started out being like, oh, remember the good old days, you know? Yeah. And. But yeah, so, like, I think we're at the place too. We start talking about empties and so, like, you know, empties popped up, if I remember. Didn't Big Cartel own mts? Wasn't that what it was?

I can't remember. It was something like that because it was very. I don't remember who owned the first one. I feel like it was just whatever. And then I remember it went under or went away or couldn't be managed anymore. And then some of the people were like, oh, we're gonna start Minties because we want this to keep going and we want whatever. I don't remember. I just remember like you said back then, almost everybody on the platform was using, like, a Big Cartel. Because what it was is a lot of these people that were in there were designers that were designing merch for the bands that we wanted to print for or they were designing for the. The clothing brands that we wanted to print for. So a lot of printers were mixed in there too, like, you know, giving their feedback on artwork and whatever. Like, they weren't necessarily contributing to the shirt of the day or whatever, but they were there and being vocal almost to the point of like, well, work with us, work with us, work with us.

So, yeah, and. And for us, that's what ended up happening is, you know, I guess there's two parts, right? So, like, the trend back Then was these high color counts, jumbo prints, like, very loud, a lot of bright colors, and that's what was popular on the site. And so, you know, I sat down with my head printer at the time, and I was like, all right, we need. Like, this is the trend, but we need to be able to print this better than everybody else. And so what do we need to do? And, yes, Discharge was around back then, but, like, that's when for us, we started really experimenting on, all right, well, what if we just use Discharge as the underbase? And. No, like, other people have tried that before. So we're like. We were like, oh, the first ones ever. But we're like, let's really put our time into, like, figuring this out and make that our, like, our standard, right? Because we feel like if we can figure that out, we would be able to print all this stuff and it'll be still bright, but soft and still be able to do these massive jumbo prints. Right? And so we put a lot of effort in that. I feel like we got really good at that. That style. And then we started, like, working with a bunch of designers. And so designers on there started trusting us. And so whenever a clothing brand would hire them to make some designs, they're like, who's printing it? Oh, no, don't use them. Use Threadbird. Because I know they're going to do my design works Only going to look.

Good if you go through this place is kind of what happened.

All these designers became our best sales reps at the end of the day. And of course, we're like, great. And so the best thing we ever did, and we did it twice the first time. So what we did was we went on there was like, all right, who is the coolest designer on the platform? Let's go there. Let's hire him to make just a killer design that looks like it's in crazy. The print. Let's print it and then literally give it away for free to everybody on the platform, right? Like, we're going to make 500 shirts. And so the first time we did it was with God Machine, and we just did this crazy shirt. I still got one laying around, actually. I hung one up the other day. So I found it. I was like, oh, my God, that's that shirt. And, like, that was, like, the best marketing we ever did, because we just told everybody.

I think I had that shirt, to be honest. I remember those. That campaign of you guys doing that, and we're like, it's so weird to think about that. It feels Like, a lifetime ago.

It really was. And so, yeah, like, we literally told everybody, as long as you're, like, a graphic designer or, like, we had a few, like, you can't just be anybody, right? But, like, if you fit one of these, like, three buckets, submit your information, like, who you are. Like, gotcha. It's like, it was like, the original lead gen, right? And we got everybody's email and their address, and we shipped everybody a free shirt. And I think we did, like, 500 shirts, and all of a sudden, we got 500 fans that were telling everybody about how amazing we were. Like, well, this was amazing. So the next year, we're like, we're gonna do it again. So this time, we hired Dan Mufford to design a shirt. And, you know, that went well. And, like, I really felt like that was the tipping point for us that honestly kind of built our name around it of, like, people saying, like, oh, these guys know what they're doing. Like, they're cool. And because we wanted to focus on, like, the craft at the end of the day, right? Like, yeah, there's a lot of printers out there. We want to be the printer that can do it. Right. And we care about the technique and the quality of it to make people proud. And doing those big giveaways is really what kind of like, you know, put us over the top in that point. And again, it kind of felt like is what cattle, like, you know, made us shoot off and making a name for ourselves.

I think the hard thing about that, though, too, is, like, and I don't know if this happened to you or not. I'm just saying from experience of, like, seeing these other people is sometimes companies come along like that where they basically start saying, oh, we're the best at this, where the whatever, here's whatever. And it kind of gets built up to a certain point where some people are just like, well, those people, like, I don't want to work with them. Or you guys might do a job, like, every print shop where it doesn't go right. And then it's like, it's almost like you get put up on a pedestal where it's like, it's so much easier for you to fall at that point because your work, like MTS, was the place to go if you were in our merch world designer. So you were working with some of the best designers. And it's kind of like, that's what's scary about it, too, is if you piss off one of them, then you're gonna piss off the Group, and then you. And then you're gonna be like, well, what the do I do at this point? Because all the people that I want to work with now don't want to work with me. I don't know. I've just seen it with a couple people. Not saying that happened to you at all. I'm just saying that, like, it's hard to do that sometimes to get yourself in that world with certain markets, even today, you know, I could. I could be like, oh, I'm gonna. And this. This happened to me. Like there was a. There was a world of, like, trades people basically, that I got in with. And then, you know, I think, like, something happened. There was like a. We messed up a turnaround or something, or there was a job that just wouldn't go right because they had too high of expectations on something that wasn't actually doable. And then it started to be this cascade of people talk to each other, and then it was like, all right, well, that guy. They wouldn't do our job, whatever. And then it just. All of a sudden you're like, where did everybody go? And you're like, oh, cool. It's because I built this up. That, like, we're the end all. Be all of printing in this world. And then it just. It comes down crashing so much harder than if you kind of just stayed middle of the road kind of thing. You know what I mean? So you said that you did it. Then what happened after that? Did you. Did you kind of just keep those clients and build that going or.

Yeah, I mean, we saw, like, every year, honestly, like, steady growth, like, you know, like 15, 25 growth, like, year over year, like, every year. Like, we. We were doing great, like. But I felt like that was what kind of really kickstart us and really getting our clients and building the name and. And, you know, you brought up I am the trend, Right? And so Adam, who started it, you know, again, got to meet him, became friends. He actually came to work for us at one point, became a sales rep for, you know, Threadbird. And he actually eventually was like, stop doing in a trend. So we actually purchased it. I actually owned the domain iamthetrend.com and then we were going to keep it going and honestly just got too busy and never did anything with it. But it was. Again, it was just a cool platform because he was reviewing things, and I took over. I did it for a little bit, trying to review some stuff, but it was just a cool platform. That's just not really something like that around Anymore. And I'm sure there are stuff like that, But I think back then, it was such a small niche at the end of the day that everybody knew about it, and now it's all over the place. But, yeah, we just, you know, we kept just doing what we did. Like, we just said, hey, we want to focus on doing things the right way, focus on quality, focus on customer service. We're never going to be the cheapest, we're never going to be the fastest out there, and we're okay with that, but we want to focus on just trying to do things the right way. And so we saw steady growth year over year.

Back then, I don't know if we talked about this or not, because you kind of went from leaving the record label to trying to figure out to do this print shop. Did you end up just working with another print shop as a broker, or was it starting your own shop and building it up from there? How did that transition go from where you were to now you're offering discharge, underbasing, and everything else?

Yeah, so the. Basically what happened was after. I mean, we started working with a shop before the kind of the fallout, right. With Storenvy, but we were working with a shop, came really close. That's who I was working with really closely about doing the, like, the discharge under base and all that. And they were basically our, you know, our home shop. And then eventually we kind of had, like, a little bit of falling out, kind of were on different pages on certain stuff. And. And there was this guy named Dan who was blowing me up and was like, man, like, I've been buying all your samples. I've been teaching myself how to print. Like, I was determined to figure out how you guys were doing it. And he's like, if you ever need help printing something, like, you know, I would love to do it. And, you know, he just kept blowing us up. And so we. It was. I think it was around 2012, and things were kind of going south with this other print shop. And so we were like, all right, Dan, let's. We're gonna give you your chance. And he, like, he was printing out of his garage at the time, and he was like, all right, if I go, you know, move into a bigger place, could you start sending me orders? Like, all right, we'll start. We'll do that. And it was going really well. And we're like, okay, well, maybe we partner up and we. We make this, like, a real thing. And so we ended up, like, investing into him, helped him get into a bigger Spot brought in a few more machines and he basically became our in house print shop. And we did that. And we still work together. We're still very close. We still work together. They do a lot of our production. And so for a very long time they were our print shop. Again, it's one of those things where we kind of saw it as technically we operate as two separate companies. the time they saw us as the sales team, they were the production side of things. But like we literally, our teams worked so close together. We, we did all the scheduling, we did everything. Like, but we got to a point where honestly we got so big that we couldn't continue to, they couldn't handle everything. And so we got to a point where like, all right, we need to expand and expand rapidly. And so that's when we're like, all right, let's go start a second. So we'll have two locations now.

Yeah. And that was the west coast kind of thing.

Yeah. So it was a north and south situation for us. But like that's when we were saying, all right, technically we don't own the print shop, even though like we operate as one company. So let's go ahead. And we're not going to get rid of those guys. Like we, again, we still work with them, they're a big part of our team. But we're going to start a second shop. And so that's where, you know, I'm here in Orlando. That's where our shop is to today. So yes, we have in house production, all that type of stuff. Again, we still have basically both locations. We work very close with each other. You know, technically we're two separate companies, but we operate as one. And again, yeah, I mean it's a.

Good, it's a good year now that.

We'Ve been working together.

Yeah. So I mean, it's one of those things too is like I, I can't remember what episode I talked on about it, but it was one of those things of we were talking about those kids. Like, basically what you were, was you were around a lot at a lot of shows and you became that kid who was like, oh, I can, I can book shows and I can do this. And like you're, you didn't know it back then, but you were just a really, really good broker. Like you kind of just melded the two worlds together and you're really good at doing that. And I always kind of envy certain people who can do that because in this world it's the same thing. And it's like it's really awesome because you kind of get the best of both worlds where you're like, well, I don't have to own the building, and I don't have to own the equipment. I don't have to own this and that. But I. I'm still the one who kind of has all the connections and kind of can make it happen. And. And if it. Technically, if it didn't work with this company you were working with, you can pivot to another one, because you can. Like, you're the one that has the connections. You're the one that has all the things. So for you to be able to do that with them and then now be like, all right, well, we have this other location now to where we still work together. But you have that ability to send overflow to them or whatever it is that you need to do. So that's pretty sweet that you can do that. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's how we've been operating. And, you know, we're going on, technically 17 years as a company. Still blows my mind, you know, never. Growing up, I was like, oh, I'm gonna own a merchandise company, and, man. But I. I absolutely can't get what I do. Yeah. Like, I've had people all the time ask me, like, well, would you ever sell it? Would you go do something else? I'm like, listen, we got good days, and we got bad days. In a day, even during the bad days, I'm still having a lot of fun. And I love being around the shop and being here in Orlando, walking out there, hanging out with the presses, doing R and D, doing all the stuff. Yeah. It would have been so much easier if we just outsourced everything. Right. But it's not as fun. And because I'm a control freak and I care about the quality and the art of screen printing, Like, I just. We had too many issues outsourcing to, like, other companies, like, oh, like, need a company to overflow stuff. Right. We're too busy. And that was honestly a big deciding factor of why we're like, no, we need to go ahead and start bringing stuff in house because we need to be able to control the quality. And we just couldn't keep, you know, needing overflow shops because we had too many orders. Right. But, yeah, I mean, I just. I love what I do.

Yeah. Well, the other part, too, that we kind of have this unique point of view with. This is. Is what I kind of. What I wanted to talk to you about is just, like, there's so many transitions and so Many different, like, waves of what we think we're going to do with our company. And we get to now, because I'm in the same way. Like, I think we're in our 16th year, going to be 17. And it's like, you know, I've done it so many different ways from, like, the bands to, okay, we're gonna do clothing lines. And you get burned out on clothing lines. You're like, all right, I'm gonna do this market or that market. And then now I'm at this point where this is where, like, your pre interview resonated with me is like, I kind of want to just burn the whole thing down and start over. Like, not actually, but I just mean, like, my mentality of, like, how I approach this business and how I go after new markets or how I have whatever. I kind of want to just, like, clean the slate and be like, I'm just gonna start over with, like, everything I've learned over all these years. What I tell people when they, you know, a smaller shop asked me for advice or something. I'm like, oh, well, this is what I would do. This is what I would do. And at some point, I'm like, why am I not taking my own advice? Like, I know how to do this. Like, why am I not just being like, all right, let's, you know, what I need to do is I need to start hitting up this client or I need to start going down this road or whatever. And I think that's what 2026 is going to be for me. It's just like hitting the ground running with a whole new plan. Because what I've got going right now is here, and it works. But I feel like there's a lot of little, like, broken things, and I need to, like, I need to just, like, start over somehow.

Yeah. And we always have those things, like, even now, because we can get on this topic a little bit later if you want. But, like, the industry's very much changed, especially in the last five years since COVID Right. Like, I'm personally seeing a. A pretty big mass exodus of industry people leave the industry right now because, again, it's gotten very hard. It seems to be that if you want to make money and better money and people get to a place where as they get older, they're like, I need to get a bigger paycheck. I'm just not going to be able to make that in this industry. And so I have a lot of people that worked with me for a long time that are going to different Industries right now because they need to make more money because inflation's out of control and things are a lot more expensive. And, like, they just. I can't pay them as much as I would love to pay them or just. It's not feasible. Right.

But that's the thing too, is it's like, with employees, like you said, like, we all grow together and we were all punk kids, but then those punk kids turned into moms and dads and got kids and mortgage and everything else. And it's like. Like there might be someone who's like, at the end of the dryer pulling shirts or whatever, and they're like, well, I need X amount of dollars. It's like, that position is not a $30 an hour position. Like, I'm sorry, like, I don't have another spot for you. But also, like, I don't. I can't pay that much money for that spot. It's just. What. We're a screen printing shop. We're not a doctor's office. Like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell you. Like, yeah, at some point it's like, okay, well, this isn't for you. Or this. This is what it is. Like, I'm not trying to be a dick, but, like, what do you expect?

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's so hard and everything's so expensive now. The costs have all skyrocketed. Right. Like, and yes. I mean, what we pay people, employees now compared to we were six years ago is like, night.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and because of that, you know, we got to charge more with our printing and building costs and supply costs are all skyrocketing.

Right.

Like, it's gotten so hard. And so, you know, you talk about wanting to, like, blow everything up and start over. Man, I definitely have those days. I think what I've. And this is through a lot of, I guess, mentorships and stuff throughout the years and especially recently because, like, I've asked myself, like, what makes me happy. And what I've honestly kind of really, I think, figured out is I love more the educational side of things. And I almost want to, like, teach, like, share my knowledge to, like, clients. Like, my favorite thing in the world is getting on a call with a clothing brand and being like, tell me everything.

This is how you make this actually work. Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, that's awesome. Here's all the stuff I think you're doing wrong. Here's what I think you're doing great at. You want Help. Here's what I think we could potentially do to help you. And that's where I find a lot of my enjoyment nowadays is like, yes, I love getting out there and printing shirts and being around it. I love working with the clients at the end of the day and the more educational. And I think that's where I really want to do. I love, you know, I've really gotten more into, you know, social media recently, in the last, like, two years, and I wish I had more time. And when I can, I try to, like, make some content and like, educational stuff. And like, I love, like, clothing brands is a big part of my company, right? We print for a lot of clothing brands. And I've just. I love that world. It's a very hard world to be in right now. But I love just working with them and being like, hey, what is your dream at least on a production standpoint, right? Like, let me help you get there and what makes sense at the end of the day where you're at as a company and understanding with, like, inventory management and, you know, what the ratios you should be doing, like, how much money should you actually be investing into your brand, starting out all those type of things. And, you know, yeah, I just, I've fallen in love with that. I actually, last year in 2024, my wife and I were like, really? I guess that happened the year before we started talking about it, but we're like, you've helped every single clothing brand around you. Let's do our own brand. And so we did. We launched a brand last year called Palmer. And it's honestly, like, my passion project and I have a blast doing it. And it allows me to be, like, creative in a way that's like, on the other side. But honestly, the best thing about it is the fact that, like, I have a different perspective now because I'm sitting on the other side. So I have the production side of things, and now I'm sitting on the actual clothing brand side of things. And it's like, oh, I see things different. And so when I get on the call with a. With a clothing brand or really anybody, I can connect with them on a different level now and understand what they're going through, understand the struggles that they're going through on a fulfillment side or a marketing side, trying to figure out their messaging, building out their product line, the inventory, like, all of that. And it's actually made me better at my job because I started this the side project. And like, I know again, it kind of gave me a. A spark because there was. I think there was a point probably a few years ago, I'm trying to think exactly when it was where I did feel very, like, burnt out and defeated. And I was like, at that point, I probably could have really blew things up if I really wanted to. And starting my own brand and kind of seeing this other side of things honestly gave me this spark that makes me like, man, I love what I do.

Yeah. And that's something too. Like, I want to put out there is like, the company, as of right now is good. Like, it runs itself. It has clients. Like, there's nothing wrong with upstate. There's nothing wrong at all. It's just more me personally in my own personal, like, challenges of, like, I. Like you said, like, I want to spark. I want something that now. And I've talked about it a bunch on the show, but it's like, I've done all the renovations to the building. I have all the equipment that I need. I have the staff that I need. Everything is humming and going. It's just like, I want to. Now, when I say blow it up or burn it down is like, my own thoughts and feelings on how I approach this. Because right now, I could walk in every single day and sit down at my desk and just go through my emails and, like, do the thing to, like, maintain the business. Like, that's fine, but, like, that isn't giving me creative, like, juices to be like, oh, this is amazing, and I'm doing this other thing and whatever. It's like, now I kind of want to just be like, all right, well, I'm just going to go about this in a totally new way. Like, I'm going to get a new CRM and I'm going to put all my clients into it, and then I'm going to approach hitting them up in a different way. Or I'm going to build these, like, fun boxes to send all these clients at this time, and I'm going to do this. And maybe I'm going to. Like, one thing me and Christina are talking a lot about is maybe in 2026, is just doing a lot of trade shows that have nothing to do with us. Just, like, other markets where we just go and we meet new people and all these things. All those things are new things that I've never done before. So it's kind of like, I just want to go about doing the business in a different way and see what happens. Like, I did the thing. Like, you're talking, like, not on a scale that you probably have your Clothing line. But like, I started like a New York tea club thing and I had was like, oh, cool, I'm gonna, I know this will work. Like, I'll make all these cool designs. I'll, I'll put them on awesome shirts, I'll tag them, I'll do all these other things. And I made a whole thing and it was like, oh, now I know why a lot of clothing brands spend a bunch of money up front and then we never hear from them again is because you constantly have to be promoting it, you constantly have to be talking about it. You have to visit all these, you have to do all these events and all these booths and all this other thing to like, get it going. And it's like, I don't have time for, I don't have time for that. Like, I can't be doing that. So that made me be like, all right, well, I'm not going to go down that road or I'm not going to go down the fulfillment road, which I tried all that stuff too. Or I did this other stuff thing and now I'm just kind of in this spot where like I say burn it down, but it really, it's my own ambitions is like, I kind of just want to start, like, leave the company doing what it's doing, but the creativeness that grows it or pulls it into another direction is just new and fresh.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that's the best advice I think I can give you is that like, if you built a solid company that can basically run itself right, or maybe you need to hire somebody to run the day to day operations. Like, do that. Like, well, that's what it is now.

Is I don't have to be here. I could leave tomorrow for two months and the place would still be here and running when I got back.

Yeah, like, go do that and go find yourself, right? Like, go find what's gonna make you happy. And like, don't blow up your business because it's your, your livelihood.

Right?

But like, you can go shift what your role is. And that's the joy of being a business owner is what do I want to do? Because we all know there's things we don't want to do, you know, business, like, sadly we get stuck doing the stuff that like nobody wants to do a lot of times. Well, what doesn't make you happy? Go hire people that's going to do the stuff that doesn't make you happy at the end of the day and have them deal with it and go focus on what's going to like. Like go find yourself. And. And sometimes it's just you need a change, you know, like, sometimes you got to go do something different for a year and then become back and be like, oh, I actually kind of missed what I was doing before. Or you have that clear. You're saying, no, this is the direction that I want to go.

Yeah, this is what I want to do. Like, I have no other things. Like, this is my entire life. This has consumed me. You know, the business is my life. The shop is. Is built in the way that I want it to be and hang out and be here. And I do all this industry stuff too. I do shirt show on my free time. I do this, that, and the other thing that has to do with the industry on my free time. Like, this is what I want to do. I just, again, I feel like I'm in a spot where I just need to like a kickstart of, like, finding a new way to approach this, because I've done this for 20 years and I want to do it for another 20, 30, whatever years. But I need something new and fresh that is this. That's where. I don't know. It's just. It's part of our industry right now. You said is going in a different way than it was five, six years ago. But, like, part of that excites me too is it's like it's not just screen printing, T shirts now. There's these digital avenues. There's, you know, all this other stuff. It's like, yeah, it's not quite screen printing quality, whatever, but it's also exciting. Like, it's cool that there's new things. It's cool that there's new ways to go about this. It's cool that, like, flat stock is coming back in a big way. It's like, that stuff's exciting to me. So I don't know.

I.

Part of that is I wanted to bring in too. Like we were talking is like, over the years we find different markets. Is there anything that's new to you or are you trying to find new, like, niche markets that you weren't in before?

Yeah, we. We definitely are. I wish I had all the answers because one of the things for us is we are very heavily within the clothing brand world, right? Especially E Comm. And we're very good at it. A big part of our business is we have our own 3 PL as well. So we do fulfillment. And we're probably one of the, I think one of the larger 3pls in the merch world. And so, you know, because of that, we're very clothing brand heavy. Well, clothing brands are getting absolutely wrecked right now. It is a horrible time to have a clothing brand, and it really hurt us. I just think it's this. The economy is so bad that people can't spend the money that they need. Like, they need to spend their money on essentials and not a, hey, that's an awesome T shirt, or that's awesome, whatever, right? Like. Like, they just. They don't have the money. Right? And so I've seen all my brands across the board, you know, take a big, you know, dip. And when they're not printing as much, well, I'm not doing as much. And so we've had to really look at our business model and figure out, all right, what new industries do we want to go into? And honestly, we're still figuring out every single day. The hard part is the clothing brands are what make me happy. But there's not a lot of money in it right now. You know, some are doing great, not everybody, but that's where I find my enjoyment end. So I want to keep, like, focusing on that. But, yeah, we've had to start testing other, you know, industries. What makes sense. Who needs T shirts? Who needs. I mean, even more like, corporate stuff, right? Like, it's. That's never a world I really wanted to get into. But, like, I find myself being like.

You know, what I did is I printed. I printed 10,000 shirts for Arby's. And you're like, that's. That doesn't fill me with joy. Like, that's just what it.

But it pays the bills right now.

Yeah, it pays the bills. Yeah, exactly.

You know, and I was like, well, I didn't really want to do this, but, like, for the time being, that's what we need to do and not be picky, but, like. And I think that, again, it goes back to the whole, you know, you got to figure out what's going to make you happy because it's impossible to get, like, print for just bands and brands that you love. Right? Like, to stay afloat, you're gonna have to print stuff that you don't really care about. Doesn't make you happy. But. So what can you do to go out there to find that joy? What can you do on the side that's going to give you that, you know, that creativity? You know, you doing the shirt show is amazing. Like, I love the fact that you do it. You bring all these people, you know, on to talk about it, like, that's your creek, your different creativity side that gets you away from the everyday life of owning a print shop.

Yeah, for sure. I think. I think that's the thing, though, is, like, I. Christina's texting me because we. This was an episode we'd done before, but, like, paying the bills makes me happy as well.

Yeah.

And it's, like, right now, finding new clients or getting into new markets or whatever is exciting. And I. I really love the idea of, like, the trade show thing to me, because it's, like, cool. Well, can I just go with the backpack and a conversation, or do I go to certain ones and I set up a booth and I show off what we could do? It's exciting to me to just go out there and, like, meet new people in new markets and, like, try to build new relationships that way. Like, that's exciting. Instead of just, like, planning and making boxes and sending stuff out. Like, that's cool, too. But, like, it's nice to be, like, face to face in a different city and just, like, meeting people and all these other things. But yeah. Yeah. I don't know, dude. It's. It's weird. It's a weird time. And it's funny you were talking about, like, the clothing line thing, because I literally dealt with that from the other side yesterday. Like, I got an email from a clothing brand that I like that does, like, I don't know, like, movie shirts or whatever. And I was like, oh, I think I'll go on there and I'll just get, like, my daughter some shirts for Christmas. Like, I was like, I'll start Christmas shopping. And once I got on there and these were just T shirts. This isn't like, oh, specialty items like a crew neck or a backpack or whatever. It was just T shirts. And I was like, I put three shirts in my cart, and it was already, like, $175 or whatever. And I'm just like, who has the money for this right now? Like, if you were just like, oh, I want to get three T shirts and a couple stickers, it's like a 200 bill.

Yeah.

It's like, who. Who's gonna spend $200 on some, like, three Jaws T shirts or something when you can spend $200 on groceries for the house for the week? Like, what do you. What are we doing? So I. I fully feel that world where you're like, hey, what's important? Paying the bills and getting groceries or getting a couple fun T shirts.

Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, we always want quality, right? Like we don't want to go print on garbage shirts. We want to make sure we do things the right way. But all that adds up and then it's like well you got to have a good healthy profit margin and then you're selling shirts for like way more expensive than you probably should, you know, like because we're picky at the end of day we got the whole curse of like we walk into a retail store and we start touching all the screen printed T shirts and start analyzing them. Be like well that was a really bad print.

What are you doing nowadays with all of this kind of pivoting a little bit when it comes to like employees? Are you looking more into automations especially for the 3PL stuff or are you trying to just be like this is my core. As long as we got this I'm good.

Yeah, I mean I'm a big fan of anything that we can automate within reason. The one thing that I will not do, hopefully knock on wood, right? Like I guess you can't never say never but like I never want to get to a place where we're taking the people out of it. Right. Like yes, you can go on our website and get a quote and see some pricing but you have to talk to a person to place an order. Right. Like I want the human touch always. And so you know that might be a disadvantage to us long term or that's what separates us.

I think that'll be what separates you.

Yeah, yeah but you know, but if we don't want to, you know, compromise on that, well what do we need to. Right? How can we get better with other things to automate it? You know one of the things that we've crushed it on is we did this over 10 years ago but like we built our own backend software to manage the company and today it's, you know, it's kind of outdated. There's things that definitely need to be updated. But then when I go and I start looking at some of these other softwares out there, oh maybe I'll just go use something that's already pre built. I'm like oh man, this is horrible. This would actually add so much more work onto us as a company and I haven't found the perfect software out there by any means but we're always looking about what can we do to streamline things, what can we do to get creative and use AI to work a little bit faster without taking the, the human edge out of things?

That's exactly, that's Exactly. What I was going to say is, like, I'm in the same boat as you is I want there to always be a human. Because that's the whole thing is, like, I want the customer service here to be like, when you call and you worked with Liana or something a year ago, and you call, you can be like, is Leanna there? And you talk to her, and it's like, they build a relationship with that. With that client and whatever. I want that to always be there. But the thing is, is the truth of is, like, me or Leanna or Chris or whoever is busy sometimes, like, we have going on, and sometimes our inbox fills up and it's like, all right, well, I saw Susan's email, but in reality, in order for me to pay enough attention to it to, like, get her the answer she needs, it's going to have to wait till tomorrow. And, yeah, you can always send that email of like, hey, I got your email. I'll get back to you later. But, like, I would like the idea of using AI or something to, like, maybe get new clients and whatever, and maybe even Susan to the point where it's like, okay, I actually kind of know roughly what I want to do now. Then they can deal with Leanna of like, hey, let's like, take this home or let's get this input or whatever. So I kind of want that, like, speed to lead with AI to be like, all right, it's quick, it's instant. Especially now, like, people can get. A lot of times we get emails from people that are new, like, never worked with us before, where you can tell they cc'd like, 10 other print shops. And it's like, I want on those to be like, the first response and be like, hey, how can I help you? Here's, you know, the info you kind of requested that could all be some kind of AI agent responding so that they feel heard and seen. And then Leanna, when she gets here in the morning, can, like, go through and, like, get it all set up for them. So I think that's more where I'm trying to input that kind of thing. And then for the shop, with the whole AI stuff, it would be cool just to track all the data better and know our times better and know production and all these other things better instead of just like, well, I think we can do these jobs today, or whatever. So. Yeah, but I always want the people. I don't. I don't ever want to get rid of that.

Yep.

Is there anything else that you can think of that you want to kind of go over or talk about when it comes to Threadbird, I feel like we've kind of been all over the place, but I. I think central message, what you guys offer and what you guys do. Maybe.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I love what I do, you know, And I think, you know, obviously screen printing is always going to be the core, because that's what we got started on. But, like, you know, doing embroidery, we do a lot of cut and sew stuff now, and that's something I've come to really enjoy. And understanding that process of how working with the factories, all that type of.

Stuff, not a lot of people dive into that. And are you doing it just because of the demand with a lot of these brands?

Because we're very clothing company heavy? There's just certain things that make sense, you know, Like, I had somebody come to me and was like, hey, I got this hoodie. I want. I want to print it on the, you know, as color relax hoodie. It's six print locations, including on both sides of the hood, all this stuff, and I want 100 of them. What is it going to cost? And I'm like, so I'm ballparking this on top of my head. But, like, first off, we're going to need to probably use discharge printing because, like, if not, like, there's no way we're going to be able to do the head print and all the sleeves and make everything match, right? So, like, we're going to have to discharge everything. I was like, you're dude. I was like, I'll be honest with you. I'm going to probably have to charge you about $50 a hoodie. And then if I'm going to charge you 50 a hoodie, what are you going to sell it for? He's like, yeah, I'm probably going to sell for, like, 85. And I'm like, that's a horrible profit margin. Right? Like, I'm gonna tell you, like, you should not do this. Like, you probably need to rethink your design. But it's like, yeah, we've done it before. And it's like. It's funny because I got another quote for another company for $48, and I thought that was crazy. And now you're telling me off top of your head, it's 50. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. But I was like, but in all reality, if you really want this design, I could probably send it overseas and get you something, like, pretty close at a cheaper cost. And, you know, as Long as you have the time, you know, like, it's not going to be done in two weeks, but we could do that. And I was able to, you know, get a quote for everything. And, yeah, it was like $35.

And you didn't have to touch it.

And I didn't have to touch it. Right.

Right.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of work. You have to understand it, know how to do tech packs, all that type of stuff. But, like, you know, I like having that flexibility because at the end of day, I want what's best for the customer, and I want to look at and be like, all right, this makes sense to do here. This makes sense to do overseas.

That's an interesting topic to kind of get into real quick is like, when it comes to sending stuff overseas like that and doing that, like, how much do you add into the price of just, like, doing all that, that setup and that initial research and, like, making a tech pack and, like, getting everything dialed to. When you send it overseas, it's going to make sense to them because here we wouldn't necessarily charge extra to be like, oh, well, this took me longer to quote, or this took me a little bit longer to do the mockups or something. It's kind of just like built into the regular price of the cost of doing business. But if you're sending stuff overseas and it takes a lot longer just to get everything dialed and doing the logistics, like, do you charge extra for that?

That.

Or should you charge extra for that?

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's your time, and so you need to charge for your time and make it worth it. But, like, I kind of put cut and sew into two different categories. Right? Like, you have the. I've already done this before with my factory, and I basically have a tech pack ready to go.

Right? You have a tech pack.

All we need to do now is modify it for the customer with, like, their assets and everything, and that. That's easy. But when you're doing something that's completely 100%, you know, custom, there's going to be a lot more R and D that goes into it. And at that point, we're going to need to be charging for, like, hey, we're going to be building out your tech pack. We're going to be doing samplings, right? We kind of charge for that whole process to, you know, get us started. It's kind of. It's the setup at the end of.

The day, and we never really dove into A lot of, like, promo products, unless they're, like, the basics or, you know, somebody wants a Tumblr or they want a mouse pad or something like that. But more often than not, we get asked for all these, like, random items. And the thing is, is I end up found finding this guy who kind of does this for a living and whatever. And he approached me. I was like, cool, we could do this. And I was like, oh, thank God we finally found somebody who can. Who knows this world and can. I can just be like, hey, I got a customer who wants ornaments or something? And he's like, oh, cool, here's the things. Here's the whatever. But the thing is, nine times out of 10 with that, it's somebody who's kicking tires saying, I want ornaments. And I feel bad every time I ask somebody to, like, look this up for me, because I feel like it's so much work to, like, go through and find all of these options and send it to you and get a quote and find the price just for this customer to be like, me. Like, I went to Sticker Mule and got him instead or something. And it's like, yeah, like, what? That there's so much involved in the research and development of, like, the product that they might not even go for at all, which is, I feel like, is a lot of the time, you know, it's a new thing. It's a new idea. And it's like, there's so much wasted time and energy in that that I kind of just keep pushing it off now, being like, I don't even want to offer this. Like, I don't even want to do this. Because, yeah, I know it's money on the table that a lot of people say we promote, but I feel like there's so much involved. But it's not like the basic. Like, if someone's coming and ordering a pen, like you said, you have a place, you have a template, you load up their artwork off. It's not a big deal. But anything that's off the beaten path of those, like, five, 10 items, it's kind of like, is it even worth pursuing?

Yeah. And honestly, I'm right there where I'm like, it's not worth it. Like, nine out of 10 times, it's not worth it. And so what we've kind of done is we kind of did the homework up front, right? Like, we go out there, say, all right, here are the popular things that people want, right? Here are a few tumblers. Here's a few pens. Here's a Few. Whatever. And when people ask, we're like, here's our options. Well, I don't like any of your options. Well, we're probably not the company, Right. Like, unless you want to order a minimum of this amount, we're not going to go. You know, somebody says, oh, I need 50 tumblers. Done. These are the options. If. If one of these work, great. If not, sorry. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's other places that are going to do it. And, like, I don't want to pretend like, we're not doing those in house. Right. We're outsourcing them. Like, but at the end of the day, like, it's not worth our time. It just bogs us down for what's important. And so I just. I'm like, man, I don't even want to deal with it unless it's part of the few things we already did the homework for. I just don't really want to deal with it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's always the exceptions, right? Like, you have the good customer that, like, prints a lot of shirts.

Happy. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're like, oh, I'll do it for you, because, you know, it's a favor. Right. You're a great customer. But the random person calling you up who's never printed with you before, that just needs something. I'm like, hey, we're probably not the right company for you.

Yeah, I feel like more. More often than not, we're running into that. And I think that also comes with the age and comes with the experience of just knowing when to say no and be like, this isn't for us. Us. Because a lot of those clients, in the beginning, in the first five years, I would have said yes to everything no matter what, and I would have just, like, figured it out. But now I'm like, oh, I know what's gonna happen here. Like, I know with experience this is not gonna pay off or work out for us.

I still make this mistake after 17 years, but I need to do a better job at saying no. I always like to try to make people happy, but every time we step out of our comfort zone, we do something like, we try to bend over backwards, we try to. Something that's not like that we're controlling bites us in the butt every single time. Right? And it's like, oh, why did we do that?

I agree. Nick, do you happen to have any shop hacks or anything you would like to share?

Yeah, Shop hack. Okay. So have a time machine. Those are very useful. And the joke is I actually have a time machine at my office. So I have a replica of the DeLorean time machine that we keep in the shop. So I've used it in a few social media posts. So people are like, how do you have that? It's like, it was my. My project a few years ago. So I literally bought a DeLorean and transfer them into the time machine. Then I need a place to store it, so it's at the warehouse. But I always joke, I was like, man, it'd be so much easier if, you know, just go back in time and fix this or catch this issue or whatever.

Which one did you go with, by the way? Did you go with the original movie one? Did you go with the one with the.

The.

What is it called?

With Mr. Fusion.

Mr. Fusion.

Yeah. So, like, growing up, like, as a kid, that was always my, like, I mean, there's nothing better than a flying DeLorean. So when I was going to build it, I'm like, well, I'm gonna build it the way that made me happy as a kid. So I have. And plus, everybody knows Mr. Fusion. And so that's the route I went, I think, on a more serious, I think, shop hack, I think. And we want to be able to put our faith into our employees at the end of the day. And yes, you have employees that want to hurt you or disgruntled, but I think for the most part, most people are, like, trying to do their best and make. Make good decisions for the company they're working for. But they're also human. They make mistakes, and sometimes they're not the best qualified to make some of these decisions. But we still, we want to be able to put our trust in the people. And so one of the things that I've really worked on is that, you know, you need to be able to set your staff up with things to keep them accountable and keep the company healthy. And so, like, things like scorecards and all that type of stuff, like, for every single department, like, being able to truly track everything. And it can be like, each department, it can even be outside vendors, right, that you work with, like a marketing agency. Like, what is a metric that you can track to see if they're doing their job correctly.

Is this employee facing or is this internal where, like, they don't know their scorecard? You do?

No, it's employee facing because it's an accountability thing for everybody. And so we want the whole company to see it. Right? And so we have, like, a scorecard and that, like every department. And we're still building things out. But, like, every department has, like, kind of like a goal or like some type of metric that we're tracking, and we use that to make decisions. So one of the things that we've, you know, I guess made mistakes over the years, right. Is like, hiring more people than we really needed because we felt like we needed more staff. And the data and the metrics didn't, you know, match it. There's marketing companies that we worked with where we were just trusting that they were doing their jobs and we weren't ever, like, looking at the data and where if we were on a weekly basis, we could have start seeing, like, the trends of certain things. And so I think, to me that that's so important is that you need to be able to track your company and how it's doing in every single department and every single part of it. Right. Like, a lot of times people are so focused on just the revenue side. And yes, that's obviously very important. But you also need to know everything else. Right? Just. Just because we hit a number or revenue goal doesn't mean we're actually profitable because we had too many employees or we spent too much money on XY or this marketing thing was a bad return on investment. So I really think that scorecards are like, I'm a big fan of eos, so the book Traction, that's something I definitely recommend people reading and then actually making that happen. But that would be, I guess, the true, real kind of shop hack that I would suggest.

Do you feel like the employees are buying into the scorecard or is it like creating some resentment in some ways? Like, oh, I'm not hitting these numbers. I must not be good, or you're their person. Other on press is getting better numbers than them in a certain way. That might not be right. Like, I've always felt that if there was a, like a measure on the amount of jobs or the amount of pieces being done or something, it would be like, well, I gotta hit my number, so I'm gonna go faster than I feel comfortable doing. Doing. And then your misprint rates go up because they're trying to just haul ass to hit their numbers kind of thing. Like, are you.

Yeah.

Finding any of those? Or is there a delicate balance of.

Yeah, with anything, there's a delicate balance. And when we started rolling out some of the scorecards, it definitely wasn't for everyone because there was a lot of people who, you know, now they can't hide behind things. Right. They have a metric they need to be doing. So again, it was accountability. And not just accountability to me as the owner and my business partner, Scott, it's a accountability to the whole company. Right. Because like everybody has to be working together, all the pieces have to come together. And if a department or a person is not doing their job and bringing down everybody else with them, it's very visible. It affects the whole company. And so yes, I had people who are very anti that and honestly the truth is that they probably didn't want somebody keeping too close of an eye on them. Yeah, it's not for everybody, but I just found that that's what's going to be best. And as a business owner, you need to be able to sit down once a week, look at a scorecard and be like, hey, are we healthy?

Right?

Are we hitting things right? And yes, like anything, there's ups and downs. And so we use a point system for our presses that we've been using for a very long time. We're always tweaking it. But like every job is assigned a point value. We want a certain amount of points printed every day. We're more likely to pay bonuses if you exceed your, your goal for the day. But we set the goal for something that is reasonable, right? Like, I don't want my press operators just going trying to print 700 shirts an hour when I know things are gonna get messed up. I'm like, no, I want you to print 300 shirts an hour. If you're printing this correctly, you're going to hit your goal, right? Like if you set up your job in a time period that makes sense, you're going to hit your goals. You know what, and it hurts you is when you actually mess something up and then the people that start rushing things, they start misprinting stuff. Well, that actually hurts them. And so that's a big thing with us is yes, you get sign up points every day, but you can also lose points if you start misprinting stuff. And so maybe you like crushed it for a day. Hey, I would get a bonus. Well, you just lost your entire bonus because you decided to like misprint a big job because you weren't paying attention or trying to go too fast, right? And then that's on the actual screen printing side, you know, for, you know, every department can, is going to be something a little bit different. And so like with marketing, like what is the traffic to our, our website look like? Are we tracking that every month? And yes, you're always going to have, you know, ups and downs and flows, but you can start seeing a Pattern. All right. Why is it that we're trending down for, you know, four weeks in a row? We got to start keeping an eye on things. Why are this person doing this? I mean, we had an employee who was honestly, like. Like, again, he ran his mouth, told somebody else, which, of course, it gets back to us. It's like, yeah, like, I know if I do my job too quickly, I'm gonna get done. And, you know, half the time and then the last few hours, they're gonna make me go do something I don't really want to do, so I'm just gonna go through milking.

Yeah.

And I'm like, well, that's not how this. This works. I'm sorry. Right. Like, if this is not how you want to do it, then maybe you're not the right person. But, like, we can't have you sit there and milk your job.

Job.

Like, there's a goal that you need to meet. Right. Like. And, yeah, sometimes there's not enough to, you know, max out your day, but you're gonna do it until you're done with the job, and then maybe you got two hours left in a day. And it's like, all right, well, we need help in this area, so you're gonna go over there and help fold shirts or clean some screens or wherever we need.

It's a big thing for accountability and just to keep everybody on track and see what they're actually doing. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. What's your greatest shop fail?

Oh, man.

Or career fail?

I think, honestly, it goes back to the hack where it says, like, I trusted too many people without having the scorecard in place, and there was a lot of bad decisions we made as a company where, especially when we were scaling that, we made poor decisions because we weren't looking at the true data at the end of the day and, you know, expanding too fast. People always think that, like, oh, man, life would be amazing if we just. All these orders are coming, right? Like, we're crushing it. We're growing. We're doubling in size. The years that we doubled in size were some of the hardest years. And I look back and say, man, there's nothing more that I would love to be. Like. Like, yeah, we grew 20% this year. That was amazing. Like, and we were able to handle it very well. Things get so much harder when you're expanding way too fast. And so I would say expand slower before you're truly ready.

Yeah, you don't have time to, like, grow into them. You kind of just have to all of a sudden be ready for it. Yeah, Quick takes. What shirt has your shop printed that you're the most proud of?

So I have two that come to mind. I'm going to share both of them because they're very kind of different philosophies. One is there was a. I guess the quick story is that this lady we knew came to us. Her sister died in a really bad car accident and her family every year volunteers at this organization that helps kids and do all this stuff and it's kind of like memorial for their sister. And so every year they get T shirts printed. And we never printed the shirts but we met the lady and I just told her it's like man, like this is a big part of like what you, you know, guys do every year. And it's like, you know, a honor to your honoring your sister. Let's do something a little bit nicer, right? Like let's not print on the Gildan 5000 with a one color print that just has your logo on it. Like let's do something that's a little bit nicer. And so I went out of the way and, and hired a designer to actually like design them a shirt that I feel like they could like very easily change out colors. You reuse it every year and kind of just elevated. And I was like, hey, let's spend a tad bit more money and get something a little bit nicer, right? Do something rings, fun. And we printed the shirts for them and the amount of thanks that we got from them, I mean they brought us flowers. Like, like, like it wasn't a big order. I mean it was like, I don't even think it was 50 shirts, right? It might have been like 35 shirts. But like the fact that we went out of our way to do all this and like think big picture and it's not like they're going to next year turn around and order 200 shirts. It's like, no, they'll come back next year and probably order 35 shirts. But the fact that we went above and beyond and how thankful they were and even I was at an event last week and this guy comes up to me and introduce himself, ends up being the husband of the lady and was like I just wanted to thank you, you for everything that you did for, you know, my, my wife and doing it and everyone was so happy and they loved the shirts and like nobody treated us like this well before and it just made me feel so good. And then I think the other one.

Is you can pull that off with our skills. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And it's not like we did anything crazy. Like, we. It was still a pretty simple design, but, like.

No, but we can use our expertise.

It. Yeah, yeah. Like, I told us, like, you want to have shirts that you're actually going to want to wear. Right? Like, and honor your sister. Right. Let's, like, we don't got to go crazy, but, like, let's spend a little bit more on the shirt to like, make it that everybody wants to wear that shirt. And so I think the other one I was going to say was actually a hoodie, but I love it when people come to us with, like, a true, like, challenge. And we had this design agency approach us maybe, like, a year or two ago, and we're like, hey, we've sent this design to a few different print shops. The. Our client hasn't been happy with it, but we heard that you guys might be able to pull it off, and it was definitely difficult. Full process print, a lot of fine detail. They wanted it printing over the pocket of the hoodie. Plus, they wanted text on the kangaroo pocket, but they wanted the text in the same spot. And so, like, first, the fact that we're trying to do a process print over the kangaroo pocket was going to be difficult, and then also the fact that we had to do this text, so we ended up printing the text actually separate so we can actually line it up. And, I mean, the customer loved it. They were super happy. But it was like, man, I love it when we get, like, that challenge. And the customer just says, hey, we just want this. We don't care about the price at the end of the day.

Day.

We just want it. Our customer wants it printed. Right? Can you do it? And, you know, between the testing and doing all things, probably didn't make any money off of it. Right. But, like, it was. It was just cool to see, like, the. The end result and the customer being happy.

You get to play around, though, too, and see what was doable and what your capabilities are, because you never know what the next run is going to come. Come along, and you're going to be like, oh, we can do that. I know. We've done that. Like. Like, it's doable.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, my favorite part. Top four favorite movies of all time. All right, you're gonna say back to the future.

Back to the future is definitely on there. It has to be. I don't own a DeLorean time machine for nothing.

All right, well, which movie is your favorite, though? Out of the Back to the Future ones.

I mean, the first one is my favorite.

The first one's like the classic that gets you. That gives you the shimmer, like, the excitement. But I said this a little while ago. Someone said Back to the Future, and I was like, the one that sticks with me that I get more excited to see when it's actually on is the western one.

Interesting. I mean, I love all three of them. The western one's definitely my least favorite. Probably, again, as a kid. You know, part two is my favorite because, again, flying DeLorean, but as a doll. Like, the first one's like, okay, that was the best movie, right? But, like, so, yeah, Back to the Future is definitely on there. Number one on my list is, and I'm gonna have to cheat again. I mean, I can give a better answer, but, like, the original Star wars trilogy. I'm a giant Star wars nerd. I don't know if this will actually be in the video part, but, yeah, I can see back there, I built him just like I built the DeLorean time machine. And I got a bunch of other, like, crazy Star wars stuff. Darth Vader's helmets up there, too. But I'm just a Star Wars. I got Star wars tattoos all over me and everything. Like, I'm just a giant Star wars nerd. So I love the original trilogy. If I had to pick a favorite movie of it, my favorite is Return of the Jedi. Again, growing up as a kid, like, where Empire Strikes Back is obviously a better movie. Like, but as a kid, like, you don't want the bad guys to win, and the bad guys win. Where in the Return of Jedi, it's like, all right, now we get our revenge, right? And so that's definitely up there.

How do you feel about Star wars now that. I feel like it's just getting mine. Like, there's a new Star wars show or movie, like, every six months. Like, there's a million different shows now. There's all these different cartoons. There's like, I. I can't keep up with it at this point. Like, I have so many saved on, like, Disney plus that I'm like, oh, now there's andor series. There's Mandalorian. There's, like, all these different things. I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to watch Andor. And then it's like, yeah, but now there's three other shows that came out out that I need to catch up on, and now I'm like, six shows behind, and it's like, the hell is Happening and now they're making another movie. And it's like I.

I'm a fan of all of it. I mean, part of it because growing up as a kid, I read the books and all the books that now they have erased, but like the original Legacy books and everything, I read those. And so I love the whole expanded universe and this and that and you know, like, even the new movies, like, yes, there's things I don't like about it, but I try to step back and be like, all right, what is the good? And it's like you can either become a hater and just hate on everything, or you can sit back and be like, hey, I'm not gonna like everything, but I'm gonna like the things I like. You know, even with the TV shows, like, some are good, some are not. I'm still.

The cool thing is that you, you love the universe and it's more universal that you absorbed. That's part of that universe. So yeah, and it's part of the bigger story. I like it. Like, I'm all for it. It's just, it's hard to keep up at this point. I feel like it is.

And it can be a lot sitting.

Around waiting for Star wars shows. There's other things I'm watching, but it's like I'm getting peppered constantly with more and more Star wars shows. I'm like, this could be a full time watch of just keeping up with Star Wars.

I mean, I'll probably get kicked out of the Star wars universe, but like I haven't even finished and, or season two yet. And that's been out who knows how long, right?

I watched like the first couple episodes and I was like, I gotta get back to it.

Yeah. But like I'm going to eventually do it. But like I, I, I'm just a time, it's a weird time of life right now. I'm very busy and so I don't have time to sit down. And when I do sit down and watch TV shows, I'm sitting down watching it with my wife and I want to spend quality time with her. And so we're gonna watch something that we want to watch together. It's not that she'll never want to watch a Star wars thing with me, but like, that's not her type of shows.

Right.

It's like, hey, you can watch it on your own time. Just like she has some shows she wants to watch on her own time. But most time when I'm gonna watch a show, like we're gonna Sit together and watch them together. Like, last night, we're like, oh, the new season of Landman came out. We gotta go watch that. That's a killer show. Right? We're watching that together, so. Yeah, I mean.

Mean.

But you're right. I love the whole Star wars lore and the overall story because I think it's a great story. Overall, there's definitely bad parts of it, and it can definitely become very overwhelming. So I definitely get that.

It's a sci fi space western.

Yeah.

What's not? What's not to like? All right, so we got Back to the Future. Star Wars.

The Dark Knight is probably one of my favorite movies of all time. To me, that's the greatest superhero movie ever created. And then I'll change it up because obviously my first three were all, like, nerdy stuff because I'm just a giant nerd. And I'll go with the Shawshank Redemption for my fourth one. You know, like, it's just. Yeah, it was on. I mean, always on, but, like, it's on every night.

I feel like.

Yeah, right? It was like. I think it was like last Christmas or something like that. Like, a bunch of them are hanging out like family. And I was like. It was honest. Like, we're watching this, right? Like, it's such a. Just a good movie. But I think it, like, those will be my. Those are the four, I would say.

The thing about Shawshank, too, is I always forget about the horrible scenes. I just always think of, like, oh, you know, he's doing this, and, you know, he's getting through it, whatever. And then I'll be like, you know, this would be a good movie to, like, show my kids of, like, this great movie, but there's so much, like, prison rape in it. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot about those scenes.

Yeah, yeah. Because you know how it ends. You're like. You're like, oh, my God. But how it ends. And then, like, yeah, you want to, like, show other people it who haven't seen it. And then you're like, oh, I forgot about that part. Yeah, just ignore that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying is it's like. It's like, oh, yeah, they. There's this whole scene of him. Him. But anyway, thanks, Nick, for doing this with me. I appreciate it. Again, like, we. I don't know if we've ever met in person, but there's just been all this, like, history of, like, being in kind of similar circles. So it was kind of cool to have this conversation, but you were. You. You're mostly in Orlando, you said.

Yes, I live in Orlando. That's where the shop is and our fulfillment office and all that.

So if you're open to it, I'd love to come by sometime. I'm down there all the time. I'm flying to Florida tomorrow, so I'm down there. Christina's in Fort Pierce, so we go up to Orlando all the time to visit friends or visit shops or whatever. So it'd be cool to come by and see the place.

We're here. We're right next to the brand new Universal.

Oh, really?

So the epic universe, whatever it's called. I haven't even been over there yet, but yeah, I mean, we're all by the theme parks and all that, so, yeah, come by. We'd love to meet you in person and show you around and just connect and hang out.

Yeah, that'd be great, dude. All right, man, I'll let you get back to your work day. I appreciate you doing this. Thank you. Yeah.