Impressions - Digital Decorator - Summer 2015 - 43

By Jennifer Morrell, Contributing Writer

Family
Keeping It

With a solid skill set and a leap of faith, a
business idea kicked around at a local bar
became the perfect digital decorating storm.

he concept for Port St. Lucie,
Fla.-based Dragonfly Graphics
was born where many great
ideas have been conceived: the local watering hole. Owner Allan Coffey is an entrepreneur at heart, so it's no surprise that one
unofficial conversation with his father and
brothers would later generate a successful,
family-run business.
"I remember clearly the conversation
with my father and brothers over a beer,"
Coffey says. "If I could make T-shirts with
custom current events designed on them, we
could sell tons of them."
Coffey, along with his father and one of
his brothers, worked in sheet-fed offset printing. Coffey had been running large lithographic printing presses for more than 16
years. During that time, he'd been fortunate
enough to work on state-of-the-art equipment and had learned from whom he considered to be true craftsmen of the trade.
As the three men put their heads
together, they determined that their collective skill level had positioned them
to succeed in screen printing. Creating
T-shirts that would sell would be a piece of
cake, or so they thought.
"It didn't take long for us to realize that
the two types of printing were very, very different," Coffey says. "We started with some
used equipment in my garage. Being single
at the time, I used one bedroom as a darkroom, and the living room to check in shirts
and pack orders."
A SUPPLEMENT TO IMPRESSIONS

Ironically, Coffey and his team never
actually got around to printing their own
designs at that time. Family and friends had
enough requests to keep them busy, and
any free time was dedicated to fully learning the ropes. Coffey spent hours on end at
the ScreenPrinters.net forum, reading and
learning.
After a year of practice and education,
Dragonfly moved to the company's current
location - a 3,000-square-foot facility on
Florida's Treasure Coast - and has been
there for 15 years. The company truly has
been family run from the beginning, with
Coffey's entire family, at some point, playing
a role in its evolution.
Today, Dragonfly Graphics employs 11
full-time employees whom Coffey describes
as talented and dedicated. Kari Stuart is the
company's production manager, overseeing
production and scheduling, while Aimee
Morris and Faith McCann handle front office
business and customer service.
Martha Santos runs Dragonfly's six-head
Barudan embroidery machine. The lead
pressmen are Dan Drasser, Vic Maisonet,
Josh Chaney and Pam Lopez. This team performs all screen printing and heat pressing,
as well as sorting incoming garments and
packaging finished items.
Dragonfly's graphics department is
staffed by Norma Fontanals, art director,
and Robb Brown, artist. Fontanals handles
most of the creative design work and separations, while Brown helps with design

IN THE

DRAGONFLY
GRAPHICS
AT A GLANCE

COMPANY NAME:
Dragonﬂy Graphics
ADDRESS:
861 S.W. Lakehurst Dr.
Port St. Lucie, FL 34983
EMAIL:
al@dragonﬂycentral.com
FOUNDED:
1999
NO. OF EMPLOYEES:
11 full-time
DECORATING METHODS
OFFERED:
Digital decorating, embroidery
and screen printing
COMPANY WEBSITE:
dragonﬂycentral.com
work and outputs fi lm. He is taking over
responsibility for the company's growing
sign and banner department as well. Brian
Stuart is Dragonfly's sales manager.
"It is hard to emphasize how important it
is for a company this size to cross train people," Coffey says. "Everyone here is able and
willing to wear multiple hats when needed."
SUMMER 2015 § 43

http://www.ScreenPrinters.net http://www.dragonflycentral.com

Impressions - Digital Decorator - Summer 2015

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