Impressions - April 2017 - 29

3JG PrintinG At A GlAncE
C ompan y n ame: 3JG Printing LLC
address: 614 N. 1st Street, Garland, TX 75040
Foun ded: 2007
no. oF employees: 35
deCoratin g methods oFFered: Simulated process, discharge
water-based, foil, high-density and allover printing
C ompan y Website: 3jgprinting.com

3JG runs six automatic presses, five of which
are from M&R and one of which is from
Anatol.The company also operates a Hopkins
manual press,a roll-to-roll HIX heat press and
four Insta clam-shell heat presses.It also has a
KIWO I-Jet computer-to-screen unit with
an 8K Olec for exposure. Printing is done
with standard plastisol and water-based inks.
In addition, 3JG offers a relabeling program that uses a reel-to-reel application for
private-label custom jobs,and ever-growing
heat-printing capabilities.
A Company of the People
Hewitt still remembers the request: a oneday turnaround on a T-shirt order for a
1-year-old boy scheduled for heart surgery
the following morning. His family wanted
to show support by wearing shirts that
read,"Preston Has the Heart of a Warrior."
"Before the surgery, they sent me a
signed photo of everybody, including little
Preston, wearing the shirts," Hewitt says.
"Right now, the picture is the best. It is
close to my heart."
It's that kind of customer service that
continues to make 3JG one of the most
skilled and sought-after screen-printing
companies in the Dallas/Fort Worth,
Texas, area. For such small companies,
word-of-mouth advertising and customer

engagement are keys to winning in today's
ultra-competitive landscape.
"We ask our current clientele if they
know anyone who could benefit from
our services," Hewitt says. "We strive to
treat people well."
The business' tenets mandate providing quality products and service,
competitive pricing and on-time delivery. "It's taken several years, but the new
customers keep coming," Hewitt says.
"Occasionally, I'll make a cold call and
we always keep in touch with customers to
see what they're up to. It can be challenging
to win over a new customer, but if you can
[stick to] those four fundamental rules in
business, you'll have the opportunity to
be successful."
Another way to keep customers happy
is proving you can work with any request
that comes your way. On its website, 3JG
boldly says it can print "almost anything"
- a statement that occasionally gets pushed
to the limit.
"I remember we had a five-color, allover, front-and-back job using water-based
discharge printing on a 1995 M&R pneumatic Challenger I," Hewitt says."At the
time, we only had two presses, and this was
our first allover job.The machine was not
made to print that big, so we had converted five heads with longer stoke cylinders

and purchased enough allover pallets to
fill the press up.We researched inline belt
printers to see how it was done, and then
we started printing.The key to water-based
discharge is don't stop printing, so to do
that, we had to add three people to help
prep shirts for the loading process."
Last year, 3JG landed a 100,000-shirt,
front-and-back order. The twist: It had
to be delivered in one week, right in the
middle of the company's busy season.
"We were already running one and onehalf shifts, so we had to step up to three
shifts," Hewitt recalls. "Finding people
was the difficult thing, so between our
production manager, operations manager
and myself, we had to keep five to six
machines printing 24 hours a day. Each
of us had to work half-days to manage
the process."
They did it without skipping a beat
or interfering with orders from regular
local customers.
Hewitt says 3JG will keep working on
its bottom line - a process that calls for
continually upgrading its equipment and
people."This will make us more competitive in this ever-changing marketplace,"
he says."We're also keeping an eye on ways
to continually develop direct-to-garment
[printing]. Who knows, we may make a
leap into that market one of these days."
However, he says the mission never will
stray from its foundation."Our main plan
for the future is to stay true to the company
that was born in 2007," Hewitt says."That
goal was to excel at what we do and keep
our customers happy."
So far, so good. 
Michael J. Pallerino is an award-winning writer
who has written for a number of national consumer and trade publications. For more information
or to comment on this article, email Michael at
mpallerino@gmail.com.
APRIL 2017

P.29

http://www.3jgprinting.com

Impressions - April 2017

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