Screen Printing - December 2019/January 2020 - 22

pitching a new process or project to a
customer and then seeing it in a store or
someone wearing it!

KEVIN OAKLEY AND SHANE SNODGRASS
President, CEO | Stoked on Printing | stokedonprinting.com |
Las Vegas | Ages: 29 and 30
HOW DID YOU BOTH ENTER THE SCREEN
PRINTING INDUSTRY?
In the beginning, there was a van. Not
your everyday passenger van, but a
special, outdated, and beat up van,
fueled by metal and punk rock music,
that provided a shelter to us for months
on end. Touring in bands is where the
original concept to build a decorated
apparel company was formed. Unsatisfied by the suppliers on the market at
the time, we turned to learning the craft
to fulfill our needs and the needs of our
colleagues. We formed our first shop,
in a spare bedroom of Shane's parents'
house. Shane, locking himself away for
hours, began learning the ancient art of
screen printing. We self-built everything
at the time, from our exposure system
to our wash-out system - everything
was DIY. Through many failures and
some successes, Shane began to make
sense of printing. Around this time,
Kevin, returning his from voyages, and
Shane, emerging from the bedroom, we
upgraded our facilities to a 1400-squarefoot shop. We added an automatic press
and began producing more orders while
also hiring our first employees (and they
still work with us today). In time, we
began working with promotional product distributors, which helped us focus
on perfecting our craft. Quickly, we out22

SCREENPRINTING

grew the space and moved into a larger
facility at around 8000 square feet. We
added two more automatic machines
and increased our capacity significantly
to continue with our growth. Around
this time, we began to see the importance of technology and its impact on
providing a better product and service
to our customers and team. After a few
years, we moved again into our current
15,000-square-foot facility and outfitted
it with up-to-date machinery. Our team
of now more than 50 strong utilizes this
to help us in providing the many decoration styles and services we offer to our
customers.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART OF YOUR
JOB, FAVORITE PART OF BEING IN THIS
INDUSTRY?
When it comes to working in the apparel
decoration business, I love figuring out
new techniques and marrying them with
a customer's vision to make it a reality.
With the constant evolution within our
industry, there is always something new
out there that is pushing the boundaries
of what you can put on apparel. With
Stoked, we have always looked at these
advancements to see how we can integrate them into our process to increase
value to our customers. Not to mention, there is something so cool about

WHAT LED YOU TO BE A 100-PERCENT
PAPERLESS COMPANY?
The decision to go paperless came from
a need to become more efficient and
reduce our footprint. The glaring issue
with paper is that it is a static media and
once printed on cannot be changed. This
becomes a problem in our shop because
orders change constantly from inception
to completion. This leads to team members having to track down those pieces
of paper and replace them with an up-todate printout any time there is a change.
This causes huge inefficiencies as well as
unnecessary waste of resources, which
end up in a landfill just because the
customer changed PMS 430 to PMS 431!
The solution we came up with was to
use technology to kick paper to the curb.
We invested in computers and monitors
and put them at every station in the shop.
This has led to a huge jump in efficiency
as each team member is always getting
the most up-to-date information while
dramatically reducing our waste.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO STAY
UP TO DATE ON THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY?
Technology is a key factor in our business that allows us to better provide our
customers with untraditional service
and products. From a point of service,
developing around new web technology
has allowed us direct integrations with
some key accounts, allowing seamless
flows of data. This allows us to stay
competitive and provide faster responses to them. Through automation, we can
also offer lower quantities and services
not typically available. Staying up to
date in manufacturing technologies is
also critical. We are constantly looking
at new manufacturing technologies that
will ultimately offer our customers a
higher quality product, a new product
or service, or provide a safer working
environment for our team.
http://www.stokedonprinting.com
Screen Printing - December 2019/January 2020

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