Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 28

Dreaming of
How one sign shop owner transformed his
business with determination, a thorough
plan, and creative commerce.
Kiersten Wones

M

ichael Wright has never been afraid to dream up an
idea and act on it. He got hooked on the sign business right
out of high school working at a shop in northern Virginia. A
few years in, he followed his love for graphic design to the
School of Communication Arts in Raleigh, North Carolina.
And after graduating, he wanted independence, so he
founded MEWStar Designs in 2003, supporting himself with
design work from logos to websites for the next 10 years.
"But my dream was always to have my own shop," he says.
Never afraid to ask for help, he talked friends who owned
local sign businesses into letting him use their machines for
years. Finally, opportunity arose in 2013 when the owner
of a local sign shop decided to sell his business. "He had all
the equipment that I had ever dreamed of," Wright says. He
convinced his parents to join him and his wife, Janine, as
business partners, and they dove in.

Doing some Digging
Signworx (signworxnc.com) was a traditional sign shop, providing everything from vehicle magnets to apartment signage
for local clients. Just a few months after getting into business, Wright visited a tradeshow in Charlotte, looking for new
ideas. Digital technology was everywhere, he says, and when
he stumbled across the direct-to-garment hotspot, "I just fell
in love with the technology."
His business partners weren't so convinced ("basically,
everyone was against me," he remembers), but the resistance
he met from his family may have been the best thing that could
have happened for the shop's future in DTG. To move forward,
Wright had to come up with a thorough and convincing business plan that would prove the value of the technology.
A watertight business plan is everything when bringing in
a direct-to-garment printer (see Marshall Atkinson's discussion of the subject on pg. 14). The machines are notoriously
high maintenance - especially older ones from four or more
years ago - and if they aren't kept busy, they can do more
harm than good to a shop's bottom line. You've got to know
that the product will sell.

28

screenprinting

DTG
Wright decided his first step in researching the opportunity
would be talking to his current clients. Many of them were
small companies of two to five employees - not necessarily
large enough to need the dozens of shirts that would warrant
a screen printed order. Wright hopped on the phone: "'If we
started doing T-shirts, would you be willing? If you wanted
shirts, how many would you order? Would you be willing to do
it at this price point?' And everyone I spoke to said yes."
Wright then called local screen and direct-to-garment
printers, asking questions like a potential customer. He
sought to understand their markets and pricing models.
"Screen printers just don't want to touch [DTG]," he says, so
he looked for a market niche that the local garment decorators weren't meeting. "The main focus was these small businesses that couldn't afford these huge runs."
Then it was all about the math. He assumed a bare minimum: "If I only sell this many shirts in a month, I can make
the payment just for the machine, and that's all I'm concerned
about at the moment."
After five months of research, the family was on board,
and Signworx bought an AnaJet MP5i direct-to-garment
printer. The goal was to see a return on the investment in a
year. They did it in six months, and today, they earn enough
money for the monthly lease in just a week.

marKeting anD maintenance
No new venture is without its challenges. Wright says the biggest obstacle was simply solving the mystery of how to make
DTG understandable for local customers who were stuck on
the tradition of screen printing.
"When you tell them you just print directly onto the shirt, a
lot of people are kind of hesitant, going, 'Uh, it doesn't sound
like it's gonna be that good,'" he says. "Most of that was overcome by saying, 'Just come down to my shop and I'll print
one for you.' About 75 percent of the time, people would buy
shirts after that."
Convincing the rest just took some thorough salesmanship:
"We came across a few people who went to screen printers,


http://www.signworxnc.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - June/July 2017

Table Of Contents
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - Cover1
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - Cover2
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 1
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - Table Of Contents
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 3
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 4
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 5
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 6
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 7
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 8
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 9
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 10
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 11
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 12
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 13
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 14
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 15
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 16
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 17
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 18
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 19
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 20
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 21
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 22
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 23
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 24
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 25
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 26
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 27
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 28
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 29
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 30
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 31
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 32
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 33
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 34
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 35
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - 36
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - Cover3
Screen Printing - June/July 2017 - Cover4
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