Success Stories with Marshall Atkinson

Success Story Ep 64 - "Should You Work With Big Brands?"

March 08, 2023 Season 3 Episode 64
Success Stories with Marshall Atkinson
Success Story Ep 64 - "Should You Work With Big Brands?"
Show Notes Transcript

What happens when a few college buddies get together and start hosting local events?  Sooner or later, they will need t-shirts.  That’s what happened back in 1984 when Steve Taylor with Native Sons Apparel Printing begin printing and selling their own merch.

A lot has evolved for Native Sons since then, and we’ll get into that and more on this next episode of the Success Stories podcast.  So, grab some coffee and sit back and hear how Steve has worked to evolve his company into a South Carolina staple.



Marshall Atkinson  
Welcome to Success Stories brought to you by S&S activewear. I'm your host, Marshall Atkinson. And this is the podcast that focuses on what's working so you can have success to what happens when a few college buddies get together and start hosting local events. Sooner or later, they will need t shirts. That's what happened back in 1984, when Steve Taylor with native sons apparel printed began printing and selling their own merch. A lot has evolved for native sons since then. And we'll get into that and more on this next episode of the Success Stories podcast. So grab some coffee and sit back and hear how Steve has worked to evolve his company into a South Carolina staple. So Steve, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Steve Taylor  
Hi, man. Thanks for having me. flattered that you hooked up with me.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, and you've been around for a long time, and I've grown your business and I can't really wait till we get into all that because I think that's going to be inspiring for lots of people to hear.

Steve Taylor  
Yeah, hard to believe that. I've been in this business for 40 years, but I have not survived. It's been up and down and fun. And you know, gets in your, under your fingernails. It's hard to get out. You know, like all screen printers. Right? And

Marshall Atkinson  
now you have your sons helping out?

Steve Taylor  
I do. I'm fortunate that both my boys work with me. They're men now. And we get along I kid people. It's like, we're not like American Chopper where we're fighting every day and throwing things. And we got a good little gig going on. I'm proud of

Marshall Atkinson  
them. That's great. All right. So you're ready for the first question? I am. So take us back to 1984 when you and some buddies started native sons by hosting parties and events. I think this is such a great story. So what was it like back then compared to how things are now?

Steve Taylor  
Well, we did have electricity back then Marshall. So it wasn't that long ago. But you know, I grew up in Myrtle Beach. And that was kind of in the glory days, I guess. And Myrtle Beach is a really cool place to grow up. It still is. And my friends and I we were all from here, and we were in college. We pretty much all worked in restaurants or bars at night and went to the beach all day in the summer and kind of hung out surfed and sailed and kind of lived a really neat lifestyle. And for some reason, we decided to band together and create this little kind of bachelor's club group. And we called it native sons because we were all from Myrtle Beach, and that's native sons with an o s o ns. Back then you couldn't drink on Sunday nights. They had blue laws in South Carolina. And so we rented out one of the local bars called Studebakers. It was like a nightclub. And we had a big party and everybody came and we sold tickets and we sold T shirts. And that was my first introduction to T shirts. I was the t shirt guy. But we did that for a couple years. Everybody liked the name thought it was cool. And we thought maybe we could be the next guy to Maui and sons or you know, Quiksilver at the time and but we all were in college. We did that a couple of years, we really weren't sure what we were going to do with it. I was a biology major, and had really no plan other than I thought about going to dental school, which I ended up doing I quickly learned that I didn't want to be a dentist and I came back and I didn't really have any prospects other than, hey, I'm gonna give this native sons thing a shot. I went out talk my buddies into networks. 18 of us we raised a little bit of money. And when I say a little bit of money, it was a little bit of money, a couple $1,000 Did some suntan oil, did some T shirts. And that was really where I got introduced into the screen printing business. Because I met a guy that had a little one shop manual and he needed somebody to run it and I was kind of dumb enough to say hey, I'll give it a shot. And I ran native sons out of that small amount of business we had but I really started getting into the screen printing business printing for other people. nutshell story. That was how we started I ended up realizing that it's tough to run a business with 17 year college buddies and us kind of bought all of them out and really was working with another gentleman that had the equipment. He was from North Carolina he wouldn't spend any money we were you know burning screens on a light table and putting them in a box coat and screens and I but I was learning the screen printing business. I knew really nothing about it. And I ended up just starting on my own really that was in the mid probably 8687. And so I went out, said I can do this on my own and gotten a few accounts. I knew a lot of people Here in Myrtle Beach, and I got into the screen printing business and kept doing native sons along the way and trying to make that brand work. But eventually you kind of become, what's paying the bills, and what was paying the bills as we were becoming more of a screen printer than a brand. So that's how I got into screen printing business. You know, I've tried to stay true to my buddies, and we're still all good friends and native sons has been a brand here in Myrtle Beach, we've been involved involved in a tremendous amount of events and projects and charitable endeavors. And so I think we've, you know, done a good job of being in the public community here in Myrtle Beach, and are well known for our T shirt work.

Marshall Atkinson  
Those guys that you started, are they amazed that you've been doing it this long and you've grown your business? Is that kind of like who knew kind of the deal?

Steve Taylor  
Well, those were some of my best friends. And they still are. And I think, you know, they weren't interested at the time and trying to make a living doing, we were all kind of getting out of college. Some of them are my banker and accountants and some of them are actually our dentist. And I was just the guy that didn't have anything to do and saw kind of a light at the end of the tunnel of my non career at the time, I dropped out of dental school and pissed off my dad and mom. And they were like, well, what are you going to do now? And I had no real answer to that. But I did see an opportunity to be in the business, or a business. And I kind of had a creative side to me, and I wanted to be in business for myself. And this was kind of my opportunity. You know, those first couple years, I still bartend at night work during the day. I mean, I wasn't making any money, but I had an app, you know, now and that path was that someday I could make a living screen printing or printing in the t shirt business. And it's a fun business. You know, I mean, I've always sold people is it and life and death. We're not in a doctor's office, it's just people come they pick up their shirts, and they're happy most of the time, and you get to see your work, and you're dealing with all kinds of different businesses. And anyway, but that was kind of my deal with them. And my friends, I think, respect and appreciate. It didn't like I got rich overnight. You know, I mean, it's been 40 years slog. So, but I know I've worked hard, and I've always tried to represent the name and what we did back then in a positive way. So

Marshall Atkinson  
right, and so are you creative? Or rd at all? How do you do the art part of it?

Steve Taylor  
Back then we were cutting Ruby lift. If you're old school? Yeah, probably half your none of your listeners know what that is probably, you know, I was just creative enough to be able to do back then basic artwork, we went from cutting Ruby lit to doing film positives, and we, but I hired an artist. You know, after a first couple of years, at first, I would take the art just kind of they had to have something I could do a black outline of it and cut Ruby lit. And as we progressed, I hired someone that was getting draw, actually. But I'm a creative, you know, every t shirt starts with a good idea first. And then it has to have good art that matches the idea. And that's what makes a good t shirt to me. And it's obviously got to be printed properly. But to me, it always starts with a good idea. And that's kind of where my strength is. So Mike comes in and says, you know, I've got this restaurant, I could see the restaurant and I can visualize in my brain. What would make a good t shirt for that business or that company or that brand? Do I go and draw it and execute that? No, but I go in there and kind of tell the guys hey, I think it would look good. I've always been good at that. So that was my creative stream.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, well, great. So, of course being located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, you guys handle a lot of local bars and restaurants, plus any local events. How have you evolved that business for your company over the years?

Steve Taylor  
Well, again, when we first started, I think a lot of people get into t shirt business just like me and think we're going to create this brand. You know, I wanted native sons to be a surfing or beach brand. But you don't realize that it takes a tremendous amount of money and you have a network and go to trade shows and market it and so along the way, I didn't have any of those things. I didn't have any experience in that. So we started printing for local businesses and Myrtle Beach has always been, you know, a pretty popular tourist destination. So it's mostly bars and restaurants. And back in the 80s really through the 90s even and it was always a seasonal it was like six months on and then it was pretty much dead around here. So we had some lean winters you know where I would be like man, I hope you're making it through the winter because we'd be busy as hell from May until September or June until April Easter until Labor Day and then it would kind of dry up. So I started trying trying to find ways to cover those periods. And I think I mentioned to you in our prior discussions, and I tell people is like, hey, the t shirt business is a hustle business, you can go out and hustle. And I don't mean the whether you're doing on the back of your car, I don't mean it that way. But there are so many opportunities when you have the ability to create product. And for me, what we started doing is we started doing events, our own events, we did a surfing and volleyball tournament that we did for about 15 years. And we would sell T shirts at the event, you make a lot more money, when you're selling a shirt for $20, then you do when you're selling that same shirt to your customer for $5. There's work involved in it and you take a risk, but the reward is greater. When there would be a local event, there was a big possible basketball tournament they used to have here, that at the time, Kobe Bryant, all the NBA guys would come play in that and Christmas, I said, Hey, I want to be involved in that. So we would go set up a store and sell product at that event. And my take on that or how I would look at it is one we were making an immediate opportunity to make some money. But more importantly, in bigger and broader is we were helping that person create a better event. Because we had a store and we had a presence. And we did a good job. And we were we made their event better. And it made us look good. And it was native sons was out there. And we met people and we saw people and they were like, Oh, your native sons, I always see you guys. Well, that translates into what are they going to do when they want to buy T shirts, hey, I'm going to call that native sons company. So there were many positives in that, aside from just the direct, immediate way, we sold $10,000 worth of product, you know, that was part of it too. And I know every screenprint has gone to an event. And they see the people putting on the event they're selling the shirts, they're digging through boxes back there, they have a you know, it's not very efficient operation. And so I would go to him and go, Look, I'll sell the T shirts, I'll give you a percentage of it, you have no risk, I'll take on a better risk. And I'll make this process easier and better. And we'll sell more product. Because I do this all the time. And we're not digging through boxes, trying to find a small or a different color. And everybody looks better, the events better. And everybody makes more money and they don't have to hassle with it. And again, native signs is that the event promoting its company promoting the event. And it's kind of a win win. So we did that a lot. And then kind of back to your question. You know, seasonal, I started doing some contract work had some connections. And in the winter hay, a lot of times we would take jobs that we weren't making a whole lot of money on but it kept the presses turning and tried to fill in those dead spots with some contract work.

Marshall Atkinson  
And we'll get into the contract part here in a minute. But I really love the idea that you created events, you created your own need for shirts or you augmented if there was already an event, you augmented that. And I think so many other shops sit around, like a spider in a web waiting for the fly to land and the phone hasn't rung in a couple of days. What do we do, and I love the idea that you're going out there and in your words, hustling and getting orders created getting events stuff generating the business. And I think that is such an awesome thing.

Steve Taylor  
Yeah, I mean, every screen printer has that, that tool so to speak. And I would just say that, if you do that, go and do a really good job of it. Go and present yourself out in your community. As someone who cares about the event and who tries to do a really good job, and even if it's just selling one design at one event, display it properly, you know, have some signage about what you're doing and have your company out there. Because the next time someone says hey, I need some T shirts, you're gonna go, Hey, I saw a guy, you know, or whoever your company is down at the event and present yourself in the public in a positive way. And to your point, just, you know, when COVID came along that year, we were busy. It was like March, you know, and all of a sudden, they're starting to shut down everything. And I really didn't know what we were going to do. I mean, I was just like every other business owner, I was like what's going to happen? And I bumped into a guy in the parking lot at Lowe's one day a couple weeks before and he used in the beach where store business down here which is a big business and I talked to him and he goes I just got a container a masking and I was thinking at the time I was going to need masks. coming in I went and really, you know what, and didn't foresee what was coming? Well, all of a sudden, we had to, like, we didn't have to shut down. But we laid people off because my business was bars and restaurants, which were all closed. Not all of it, but everything was good. My story is that all of a sudden, I said, we're going to sell mask. And my accounts, I gotta sell mask, what are you crazy, and I was like, Hey, I gotta do something, I'm not going to just sit here and not try to make something out of this. So I bought 10,000 masks. And I was really hesitant at first, but we bought them we set up a drive thru, we have a facility that allow for people to drive in and not get out of their car. We, you know, we had marketing and website presence. And so we blasted that out, sold 10,000 maces. And the next day, I ordered 20,000, then I ordered 50,000. And we weren't screen printing anything. But for the next month and a half, we sold masks hand sanitizer, I was putting billboards up in town because no one else was doing any business. And we made a lot of money selling that product. And my point is, is that I didn't just sit there, we took advantage of an opportunity. And every screen printer has that same opportunity almost every weekend in their hometown, when there's an event or there's things going on, that you can go out there and try to make a hustle. You know, I could give you many examples of that over my career. But we've done you know, Coastal Carolina that won the national championship in baseball, and it fell on a weird Fourth of July weekend and nobody had any product, we had a license and we sold hundreds of 1000s dollars worth the national championship T shirts because it was over Fourth of July weekend. And I went to North Carolina and bought shirts and we printed them that weekend. And we were the first people to have the shirts. And again, you gotta hustle and go out there and make your own. You know, sometimes, but that's the that's the tool that screen printers have that some other people don't.

Marshall Atkinson  
There is no waiting, right? You can't wait till it's convenient. You got to do it. It's Fourth of July, there's an opportunity let's

Steve Taylor  
app. If you're in a T shirt business and thinking you're gonna have a nine to five job for your career. I think you're sadly mistaken because it's not going to be that way.

Marshall Atkinson  
No, I don't think I've ever worked nine to five. I don't even know what that was. Like what you hear so far. Be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zach shortly with the SMS spotlight

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Marshall Atkinson  
When I first met you, you handled a lot of work for Abercrombie and Fitch, you still do a considerable amount of work for major brands as a contract decorator, how have you balanced those big accounts? Because sometimes those orders are massive with handling local volume sales too, because sometimes that doesn't juggler the right way.

Steve Taylor  
Yeah, we were, you know, an Abercrombie shop for about 15 years. And, you know, it's like you got a ball in one hand and 20 ping pong balls, and the other hand is really difficult. And you drop some of those ping pong balls, there's just no way around that. And for us, we've printed for Nike and Adidas, but just about every brand at some time or another and brands are great when they're great. But, you know, there's pros and cons, our relationship with contract with Abercrombie was good. A lot of people had trouble with it with all big brands, because they're basically telling you what they want. And there's not a lot of negotiation, you know, and you're really just working for them. I mean, that's what you're doing. And there's not a lot of loyalty. They have a lot of turnover. I'm not talking about Abercrombie, I'm talking about brands in general. No, you're dealing with someone that it's in their organization that sometimes doesn't even really understand screen printing. And they're asking you to do things. Hey, we're sending you that art over the day. Can you get the samples back to us and you're like, Hey, man, we we can't get five samples out at three o'clock in the afternoon and have them to you tomorrow. You know, I mean, we can But that's not part of our agreement, before you know it, you're doing all these other things for them to try to keep the account. And you're not getting paid for it. These are the cons, many of them are way less organized than you would think. The one hand doesn't know the what the other ones doing, you're dealing with a merchant, oh, you're gonna get the goods tomorrow, goods show up, and they're the wrong goods, or there's different color goods in there. And then their problem becomes your problem. And you're not getting paid to solve their problem, but you ended up having to solve it anyway, Hey, your goods came in wrong. And we just have 50,000 shirts sitting out there taking up all my space, what do you want us to do? Well, can you go through and, you know, pull out the ones that are wrong color. And you're like, somebody's got to do that. And I don't have the wrong color guy that's out there working every day, that's my shipping and receiving department. But anyway, we've benefited from working with Abercrombie and Hartley, some of the bigger brands especially and again, but you do a lot of work. The bonuses, we were paid decently, we did millions of shirts for those guy, I mean, we would have runs that were two and 300,000 pieces, you know, and it was a lot of work. At one time, we were running three shifts. And, you know, we really weren't making some money. But we were working really hard. It allowed us to move into the facility that you visited, one time we grew. But it's a lot of work is what I'm getting at is just non stop every day, you're dealing with a problem and you're getting new work and and so you kind of become a slave to that company. And back to your question is, that's the bowling ball. In the meantime, you have your other customers that are starting to feel like they're not big enough for you or you're not paying any attention to them. And sometimes it isn't, because you're over here dealing with this bowling ball. And there's no contract. You know, it's not like you had any real assurance that we didn't, that we were going to continue to do business all the time. And that's ended up really what happened and Abercrombie made a change, they decided to start moving stuff back offshore, and all of a sudden, our work dried up. And we were kind of sitting here not you know, with them. And we had to regroup and really focus more on those ping pong balls again, and we were equipped to do that. Along the way, when you do work for big brands, you become a better printer. Because they demand quality, they challenge you to come up with different techniques and wants you to do what you know, whether it be high density printing, or flocking or whatever the hot thing is, you become a better printer, you get more efficient, because that's the only way that you can handle that amount of volume. And some of your local businesses aren't really asking you to do that. So those orders are not quite as challenging anymore. But I had kind of a great run with the big contract printing, we still do some big jobs every now and then. But I learned that if you're not making any money doing it, or if it's really just overwhelming your shop, then you got to take a step back and question if that's where you want to go. Fortunately for us, and for my company at this time, I don't want to say we can pick and choose what we orders. But I can at least look at an order and we get calls and it's for some big order, but you're not making any money doing it. And so you got to be careful with the brands because there's not a lot in negotiation with the prices. They're telling you what they want, what they'll pay, and you got to decide best for your shop or not. But

Marshall Atkinson  
Plus, there's always the danger of chargebacks if you don't box things up or ship it or put the label on straight or whatever, you could actually do everything great with the print. But you screwed up in the shipping and you lost money.

Steve Taylor  
I would say that sometimes the printing was the simplest part of the transaction. Again, you're absolutely right. And you would find out that again, most of the time. It wasn't our fault for whatever transpired. But we always got the blame, you know, the shirts that come in, and they're not the quantity that they said it was going to come in? Well, you know, when somebody send you 100,000 units, it can't sit there and count all the units in if they want them next week, you know, so then you go to print it and there's like shortages on the sides as well. Well, how come you guys didn't count those? Like, well, we counted the boxes, you know, I mean? And yeah, you get chargebacks for box label $250 charge back because you put the wrong label on there, or their tags came in. Well, so many of the little things that have nothing to do with the printing end up costing you money. And so sometimes like I said the printing was the simplest part of the job the packaging carton labels, we had to put the lot of times you have to put the, you know, the product came in from different countries, some of those made in Vietnam, some of those made in China, whatever, we had to keep those, they had to keep those products separated. And they had to go back in the same box with Chinese product had to go back in that same origin box. And the tag was different because it had a different SKU tag was different because it came, and you know, all those little things with just opportunities for there to be a mistake. And if you make the mistake, it's your fault, regardless of how asinine the whole process might have been.

Marshall Atkinson  
Well, that's how you sharpen your skills and do stuff. And because I've done all that, and once you go through that process, just getting on a normal order by Friday seems ridiculously easy.

Steve Taylor  
Then I want to make sure I'm not missing on any of the brands, they're the ones that are successful, and they deserve the opportunity, the respect to they've been, they have a great brand. But they're kind of large companies, and you're just a cog in the wheel, you know, I mean, and so they've been good to us, we've made some good runs and had some great relationships. And yeah, one of the cool thing you're working with a brand, we used to get to go to the Abercrombie campus like two or three times a year, which is really cool. As I'm sure if we were out in the west coast, you'd get to go to the Nike campus and you get to experience things that you never experienced and see how these big brands that have a lot of money operate and meet some cool people and a lot of the people that we connected with Abercrombie and even before that with Mike Beckman and Casey Ruby, and some of the well known names in the screen printing industry, that pushed the envelope of technology we dealt with just because about relationships that were they were working at the time, and I still see those guys, and you know, been around a while. And so it's all it's good. You just got to be careful when you're working with a brand, consume your operation and just gobble it up. Right.

Marshall Atkinson  
So you guys don't shy away from adding anything to help you execute your main mission, making your customers happy. discuss briefly how sales and production has evolved for you, and what equipment and offerings you're using now.

Steve Taylor  
Well, obviously, you know, from wherever we started when there wasn't an Internet, and we had to hand deliver artwork and show it to somebody, then all the technology on the you know, the internet and just electronic emails and all that stuff has helped on the sales. But for us, you know, we do screen printing embroidery. About four years ago, we added kind of a digital department where we do vehicle wraps and stickers and banners and small signs. And in that same department we added direct to garment and transfers and sublimation. And that creates kind of this one stop shop mentality where someone that's you know, the new business can come in and get their product, their staff shirts, or T shirts, if they want to do some type of vehicle rat, which we do a lot of those, they can all get it done here. Rather than going here and then going to my competitor or someone else, it's just going to possibly be in the t shirt business. So that's been something that we've worked on. And, you know, equipment wise, we're at m&r shop. Those guys have always been good to me known them for a long time. Just in the last couple of years, we've added a couple of new presses, we have six automatics, most of them are 14 color, it's a couple fourteens at 1820 and 16. We just bought to split belt dryers, we just added a digital squeegee at the end of the year, we just bought two new Mavericks that we're getting that are here and are waiting to be installed. It's going to upgrade our digital department back there. But one of the things that is really nice is we bought up a Saudi laser exposure unit that is a really good machine that's I would highly recommend, you know, we try to stay up on the equipment side and I see was I would think that every person in the screen printing business sees is this transformation from traditional screen printing over to this hybrid digital, you know, no screens and easier to get into business. And you saw out at the show, I think direct transfers becoming popular and we're looking at that. And that all kind of ties into Where do I see growth is like online stores and I know that's not big news but where we go to a bar restaurant, and we're providing them with product but they can't sell it online because that's not what they do right there in the bar and restaurant business. And we create a store or forum, we can one off the shirts here. Now because we have better equipment, and kind of back to that whole thing of like, where's their opportunity? Well, I'll sell this shirt for you, we'll manage it will fulfill it, we'll print it and ship it and your customer, you work on selling it and we'll split the profits. And we'll make more money doing that and we're doing and we're selling that shirt for $30 Online, versus selling it for seven or $8 wholesale to them. And it keeps us connected with our customer. And we're offering them a service. So, you know, I see that as kind of the technology shift for us from just traditional screen printing into more digital and online stuff. Not big news or new news. But for us. It's kind of a change. Yeah, you

Marshall Atkinson  
can help your customer with like a little table top QR code for the merch store. And then there's somebody sitting there having a pizza or some wings can order their favorite bars t-shirt, then a couple days, two or three days later, it's out the door and they get it right and correct. For everybody.

Steve Taylor  
Yep. And I mean, I know, I got told you we do a couple of the bigger events we do are there's a big country music festival down here. And you know, four days, 35,000 people each day, we do all the merchandising and set up a huge tent and a lot of work. But we do really well at that event, they did another one in New Jersey, and we went up and did that one. And both of those, that same company, we do all of their online sales for them. So kind of again, tying in to Where's there an opportunity? And what can I do to help them sell product, because they don't want to have to do it. So that's where I kind of see our digital side going as opportunities to do more online products that away from traditional screen printing and having to print. You know, you're doing that online store without digital capabilities, you're printing 12 dozen shirts and hoping you sell, you know, and then you end up having to set a machine up to print one triple extra large or whatever. I mean, it's way easier to do it with the DTG. So

Marshall Atkinson  
are you stocking inventory? So you can turn things faster? Like select colors and skews?

Steve Taylor  
Yeah, we carry about well, colors of shirts that we stock back there. And you know anymore, even that, I mean, we're in South Carolina, and there's numerous distributors, it doesn't take but a day or so in normal times. And you know, it's been a little more difficult over the supply chain issues of last year. But we can order something and have it the next day. I mean, a wholesale blank. But we yeah, we keep product on the shelf for our DTG and digital apartment.

Marshall Atkinson  
Okay, well, cool. So, thank you so much for sharing your story of success with us today. What's the best way to contact you as someone who wants to learn more about what you do? Or how you can help them.

Steve Taylor  
They can just go to our website nativesons.com and they can email there's a info email that I usually get, or they can email me directly at steve@nativesons.com.

Marshall Atkinson  
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Steve, this has been a real pleasure.

Steve Taylor  
Thank you. I appreciate it. And I hope it helped a little bit fired a few people.