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Zac Ziegler: I'm Zac Ziegler, and you're listening to Oregon Rainmakers from KLCC. On this edition, I talk with Max Vanderwyst of Hot Tees, a custom screen printer in Eugene.
If you spend much time in large groups of people, chances are you'll see a custom printed T-shirt. Maybe it's for a race, a youth sports team, a local band or a company. The most recent U.S. Census data shows screen printing's total sales nationwide at almost $12 billion a year, with more than $3 billion in payroll. But the industry has shrunk as it deals with offshoring and computer printing. So what advantages can a screen printer find? How about quick delivery and convenience? That's an advantage Eugene's Hot Tees has found. The company will do standard custom prints from its warehouse. However, it will also head to events like races or high school sports tournaments, where it can customize shirts with last names, jersey numbers and plenty more. I headed to Hot Tees' facility in West Eugene to talk with operations director Max Vanderwyst about how the company does its printing, both from its shop and on the road.
Max Vanderwyst: Primarily, we're an event-based business. We go on site to tournaments and sporting events all over Oregon and Washington, and we make custom shirts there. We'll bring a bunch of blank apparel. What you can see in front of you is our warehouse, where there's all of our featured items. These are things that we bring to customize on sales. We have fully stocked trailers that will bring some pops of color, basically from this selection to specific events. When we're on site at events customizing apparel, we bring an event logo for the day, along with maybe positions for the sleeve, names we can do on the back, numbers. Really, we're all about the full customization experience in the moment, creating it right there in front of the customer.
Ziegler: Cool.
Vanderwyst: So, yeah, walk through here. We've got five bays here that represent five sales that could go out at any time. Every weekend of the year, we're going to one to five events, sometimes maybe six if we're pushing it and trying to pull in every resource we have. You can see here we've got our logo sets. For every category or sport that we do, we make a set of logos. This would be the position. Say for baseball you might have infielder, outfielder, and it also might be some funny sayings or other things that we think might be popular. We keep these all stored year round, then fill the sets and take them out when we need to.
Ziegler: Kind of have those components that you might need ready to go. I'm looking here and I see lacrosse. You're going to have that standard lacrosse logo, two sticks crossed or something like that, in those tubs?
Vanderwyst: Absolutely. That's exactly it. We really focus on the organization. I think that's one of the unique things about us, because we've been so event-focused. As a printing company, we've had to come up with solutions to keep things organized for all the different types of events that we go to.
Ziegler: So I'm curious about how you go about getting those pre-established things. I was a basketball player through high school, so I can tell you that stuff for basketball. My daughter plays hockey. I can tell you that stuff for hockey. But I could not tell you that stuff for, say, robotics or BMX. Do you go to the people beforehand?
Vanderwyst: Yeah, that's the fun challenge of it. My background is in graphic design, so for the last 20 years I've been tackling that problem. You come into a business, or somebody comes to you from a sports team, and you've got to learn about it. It involves asking questions of the hosts of these events. It also involves a lot of research. There are also some general things we'll do: Pacific Northwest-themed designs that work for most of our sales, as well as all the positions.
Ziegler: Lots of trees and Sasquatches.
Vanderwyst: Oh, definitely. That's a huge part of our branding. That's the Pacific Northwest. The other unique thing we do is names on site. We have a unique process that, as far as we know, no one else is doing: making names immediately on site, no coming back and picking it up later.
Vanderwyst: This is Jake Crabb. Jake is one of the owners. He handles the event side of the business. He's the event director.
Jake Crabb: Yeah, so I'm in charge of getting all of this side of it going: getting it out on site, the on-site execution, how we present ourselves, and then the logistical back-end and financial breakdown of everything.
Ziegler: You're the guy worrying about, I see over there, generators and fuel tanks. That's probably not normal for most companies printing T-shirts.
Crabb: Equipment, vehicles, everything from that side of it, as well as the blank inventory, the logo sets themselves, all of our on-site displays, staffing, scheduling.
Vanderwyst: Jake has worked really hard to set up software on the back end for us to keep track of all the logistics. We're an apparel company, but there are a lot of unique things about what we do that are not apparel-related, and we've had to build from the ground up.
Ziegler: All of those little things that you might not necessarily think about when you have to actually go out and do your business on site.
Crabb: Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. Even I've been doing this now, Max and I and Merv, the other partner, for going on 14 years. When I started with Merv, it was just counting T-shirts and burning screens. Then you get into the level that we're at now, the size of the business, and there's a ton of small, minute details all the way up to enormous problems that need to be solved at a moment's notice.
Vanderwyst: Yeah, all of a sudden you have that moment where you go: Oh, we forgot this, or we're out of this, or this just broke. And Jake's got the 24/7 phone.
Vanderwyst: And you can see around here, we've got a few people counting. After big sales, and occasionally a few times a year, we have to do our inventory counts. That's what's happening right now because we've got a little bit of a lull. We're waiting for the weather to more routinely get like it is today: beautiful and sunny.
Vanderwyst: Now we're entering our production side. We've got heat presses and screen printing. When we go on site to sporting events, we bring screen-printed transfers. They're screen printed right here in our shop, and then we bring heat presses to the actual event and apply the logos with the heat presses. Here in the shop we've got some fancier versions of those heat presses, but it's basically the same process.
Ziegler: How does the equipment vary from when you're here, probably getting to use more of what you want, to when you're out in the field? I'm guessing you're thinking: We need stuff that's light, packable, maybe doesn't mind a little bit of dirt if you're at an outdoor event, like we were just talking about with all those sporting events.
Vanderwyst: In the shop here, we focus on orders for businesses and some pre-orders for tournaments and things, and we can control all the variables. That's the great thing about doing stuff in our shop. But we're actually used to working in really adverse situations in some cases: rain, Mud Fest, even snow. Basically anything you can imagine. When we're going on site, we'll bring heat presses that are lighter than the ones here, things that can be moved. But it's still a big job moving that stuff around. The equipment is basically the same, just a more portable, rugged version of it.
Vanderwyst: We have a whole screen-printing line with two setups. The really unique thing about Hot Tees is that we always print onto paper first, rather than using a carousel press and printing directly onto a shirt. That's because of our business going to sporting events. We've chosen to lean into that process and really get great at it, in a way that I think few companies can.
Ziegler: For those who haven't ever seen the process of screen printing, can you give a quick breakdown of what I'm watching this gentleman doing?
Vanderwyst: On this side, you can see all of the inks lined up by color. We match to Pantones. The interesting thing about the ink for us is that because we're so specialized in this heat-transfer process, it's not a common process to take things on site like this. We've actually sourced our own ink that has been custom mixed for us. We don't believe anyone else is using it. It's sort of a base that we mix our color into, and that allows us to do some things that keep the quality extremely high while we're on site.
Vanderwyst: We print out a transparency for the art, one for each color in the design, and that gets burned onto a screen. Essentially, we take a mesh screen, coat it in emulsion, which is a light-sensitive coating, stick a transparency on that and put it in a light box. All the parts exposed to light harden, and all the parts covered by the transparency stay water-soluble and can be washed off. Then we have a big pressure washer and wash bay to wash things out with. That's just the prep. It gets it out here to our production floor, where Aaron is making one of our event logos. He'll stick the screen on the press, clamp it in, tape off the edges to make sure it's not messy. He'll go find his ink, which may have to be mixed from scratch, and use a spatula to apply it to the screen. Then he takes a squeegee, floods the screen, which is essentially putting ink over the whole screen, pulls that squeegee over it, then does a push stroke, which pushes it through the mesh onto the paper. At that point, you've got your design. It goes through a conveyor. These big conveyors are essentially giant heaters, and that does a curing process. When it comes out the other side, it's essentially like a plastic. You can touch it. It's very durable. That's what we take on site to sporting events. If there are multiple colors, you'd collect all those transfers together, bring them back to the beginning, line that whole thing up again with another screen, new color, and do each one of them over and send it through that conveyor again. Collect them all at the end.
Ziegler: I'm Zac Ziegler, and this is Oregon Rainmakers. My conversation with Hot Tees' Max Vanderwyst continues. By the way, we'll talk a bit about the previous tenant in Hot Tees' warehouse. It was occupied by Zadeh Kicks, a designer sneaker reseller that offered pre-sales on certain shoes. Its inability to come up with shoes that had already been pre-sold eventually turned into a federal fraud case, with the owner accepting a plea deal.
Vanderwyst: We've got a carousel press here, which is sort of the traditional screen-printing setup.
Ziegler: This is what I think of when I think of screen printing, what I've seen in TV and movies.
Vanderwyst: Yeah. Now we're in our cutting and pressing area. Danica is doing some pressing here today for Monroe Middle School's track and field. We're getting prepped for track and field season right now. That's a huge season for us. We're doing the team orders now, and very soon we'll be doing all the events in the next couple of weeks.
Ziegler: Getting the team orders ready, and then there'll be the usual invitationals that I'm guessing you'd set up at on site as well?
Vanderwyst: Oh yeah, a ton of track and field stuff coming up, between the orders and going on site to the events. That kind of fills out our year. The event part of the business, as you can imagine, is very seasonal, so we have a lot of ups and downs with that. Our focus lately has really been on trying to smooth out our year, and that means filling in with orders during the times when schools are not in session, or doing team orders to prep for upcoming sports. We could walk into the dark room, though I'm not sure if it's worth it.
Ziegler: That's something you wouldn't necessarily think about with a place like this. That's where I learned to develop film in college.
Vanderwyst: That's exactly what this looks like: a photographic darkroom, and that's essentially what it is. It's got red lights to keep everything safe for the emulsion, which is light sensitive. We built this separate room for our washout bay. It's got a filter underneath and a dip tank to the side. This is where we wash out the stencil on the screen. It's also where we reclaim a screen. When we're done with a screen, we bring it back in here, put it in the dip tank, put it in the wash bay, wash off all that emulsion and do the whole process over again.
Ziegler: I was not expecting to walk in and see something akin to what you'd normally see for developing film photography, but it makes sense given the light-sensitive emulsion.
Vanderwyst: I think this is the reason a lot of people are moving to digital prints: it's a pretty labor-intensive process. People are often really surprised how much goes into screen printing. There's a lot of setup, a lot of equipment, and specialty rooms you have to maintain, keeping everything either moisture-controlled, light-controlled or temperature-controlled.
Ziegler: I'm guessing digital equipment isn't the most portable, though.
Vanderwyst: Some people could do it, but it tends to be a little slow in the moment, and the quality for us just isn't as good. While everyone is switching to digital prints, we're really trying to hold on to screen-printed quality and stick with the tried-and-true method of printing that we know will last for ages, rather than just jumping on board with the new thing.
Vanderwyst: Now we're walking into our offices. We've got Alexa here, who does graphic design. John does sales and customer service, and then Jake and I have offices here as well.
Ziegler: This space has a rather unique history to it. How did you come to be in a space that was the scene of a federal crime?
Vanderwyst: It was a surprise to us, actually. I should start by saying we were previously in Harrisburg for the first 15 years of this business, in a combine shed. It was a little red combine shed that belonged to one of our partners, Mervyn's family. His dad ran his farming business out of it, and Merv eventually moved his business in. We outgrew that space and wanted to be more connected with the community we all lived in, so we moved here. We found this great place with a great location, and pretty quickly after moving in, we heard that Zadeh Kicks had previously been in this location. So there's a bit of a sordid history here. It was a surprise, but it's a fun story at this point. It's really funny to think just how different our businesses must be. As you saw, there's a lot happening here, a lot of production, a lot of people moving in and out. I've heard stories from our landlord. He says the Zadeh Kicks owner would show up in his Maserati occasionally, and the landlord just didn't know exactly what was going on. Then at some point the feds came in, and the landlord ended up renting this building to the FBI while they sold off all of the inventory.
Ziegler: So some folks might have gotten their hands on designer sneakers via Uncle Sam.
Vanderwyst: Yeah, we're still checking the walls for leftovers.
Ziegler: When you got here and learned that history, was there anything you looked back on and thought, oh, that explains that? I remember once looking at a house that had been raided: holes in the walls, windows obviously broken in rather than out.
Vanderwyst: We've been looking around for relics. Recently we noticed something that I believe is from those days. The steps going out to Roosevelt Street at our entrance say, 'Step into your truth,' which feels a little ironic at this point.
Ziegler: Really. I guess it's your truth, not the truth. How did you learn about what had been here?
Vanderwyst: Our landlord just shared it with us. For him it must have been a big deal, but he mentioned it pretty casually. Then as more stories came out about the owner getting charged, we became more aware of just how big a story this really was, one that basically everyone has heard about at this point.
Ziegler: Do you use it as a landmark locator for people? Like, oh yeah, it's the old Zadeh Kicks building?
Vanderwyst: We don't want to tie ourselves too much to his legacy. This was one of his warehouses. I don't think people came here very often. My guess is he was trying to keep people out so they didn't know the truth of what was going on.
Ziegler: The last thing I always like to ask: what is it that people don't necessarily think about with this business? What's the unexpected side of printing T-shirts, whether in the shop or on the go?
Vanderwyst: I think it's how much goes into it ahead of time. It's easy to think you just have an idea for your team shirt and it gets made, just like that. You see us on site pressing a shirt in seven seconds and it's done. But all the work that happened before that: design, printing transparencies, darkroom, on press, reclaiming screens. There's an incredible amount happening behind the scenes. And then there's the logistics. As I mentioned, Jake has been great about managing event logistics. We've had to build our own custom software utilizing Monday.com, and we've invested heavily into all kinds of software. It's kind of shocking how much software is required for something that's such a manual process.
Ziegler: All that hand labor happening out there, people actually making shirts and moving things around, and yet there's still all that data running in the background.
Vanderwyst: Exactly. Tons of data, tons of work happening behind the scenes. At this point, it takes about 15 employees to run this business. We've got booking agents and salespeople who are the face of the company, and so many people behind the scenes keeping the whole thing running.
Ziegler: Well, great. Thanks for having me out here.
Vanderwyst: Yeah, thanks for coming.
Ziegler: That was Max Vanderwyst, operations director at Hot Tees in Eugene. This has been Oregon Rainmakers from KLCC. I'm Zac Ziegler. Thanks for listening.
