A Morning with Nothing Too Fancy
As with any company, eventually, you’re gonna need some swag. You know, the “Stuff We All Get” at conferences. However, here at Savage, we didn’t want just another piece of swag, e.g. cheap coozie, cheap pens, or…sigh… a cheap fidget spinner. Instead, we wanted to give our customers something valuable, something durable, and something useful. Thus, the idea of the “Welcome Kit” came about. Our Welcome Kit is set to include a shirt, a nice large ceramic mug for copious amounts of coffee, pens that are a pleasure to write with and don’t break after 3 uses, a nice notebook to keep your ideas, and a handy cheat sheet with some of the most valuable tips and tricks our customers can use to keep themselves safe.
Step one of that package is a shirt. We could have gone to one of the many online companies, slapped up a logo, and called it a day. That’s simple enough. However, if you recall some earlier posts in our blog, we really do care about our community involvement. Whether that’s working with local colleges and institutions, having free fix it days for those of us that aren’t tech savvy, or making sure to keep our dollars here at home, we strive to keep it local.
That’s why we chose to work with Nothing Too Fancy, a printing shop based right here in Knoxville, TN. The owners were extremely accommodating, and very easy to work with. Once we decided on a design, I asked if I could come down to the shop when the shirts were to be printed. I’ve always been interested in this process and I wanted to meet the folks we were doing business with as well. I was pretty pumped when Lisa said that it would be no problem, and gave me a date and time to come on down.
I arrived this morning and was welcomed by this awesome mural on their door. I knew I was in for a treat.
As I walked in I was greeted by the friendly and experienced staff, and their dog! This dog was awesome, and we pretty much played any moment that I wasn’t watching the process or asking questions.
They were ready to get to work and I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. Their operation was definitely impressive and these folks knew their stuff. I learned about how they make the screens using a process of design, printing to absolute black, using light to burn the image to a screen, and then a pressure washer to wash away the points at which the paint would go through. I’m sure I got some of that wrong, but that’s how I recall it anyway.
I also was blown away by some of the automation they had implemented. I remember when I was a kid, we took a field trip in 2nd grade to Berner Screen Printing and everything was done by hand. Things are a little different these days. Although there is still a lot of manual work to be done, check out the automation of this press:
After just a couple hours, the shirts were ready, and they came out great! I had a blast meeting everyone at Nothing Too Fancy, learning about the process, eating cookies for breakfast, and playing with their shop dog.
If you ever get the chance to meet the folks behind the shirts at the shop downtown, I recommend it. They are all great folks and really take pride in what they are doing. I’m looking forward to working with them on the next order soon!
