Success Stories Ep 80 - "Sailing to Success: Matt Reese's Print-cise Journey in Printing"

On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll talk to Matt Reese with  Blk Ankr Originals about his career in Maryland: the self-proclaimed sailing capital of the world, and now he has established a foothold in the Annapolis area. 

Matt does things his way and has a unique spin on keeping local businesses loyal to him. And we're going to learn all about that and more. 

So stay tuned!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll talk to Matt Reese with Black Anchor Originals about his career in Maryland in the self proclaimed sailing capital of the world. And now he has established a foothold in the Annapolis area. Matt does things his way, and as a unique spin, and how keeping local businesses loyal to you. And we're gonna learn all about that and more. So stay tuned. So Matt, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Matt Reese 
Thank you for having me, Marshall. Look forward to this.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, it's gonna be great. And as I told you, when I first contacted you about being on the show, I've been kind of like secretly following you for a couple years, because you started doing some pillows with like, brass knuckles or something on him or whatever. And I just thought that was so amazing, and really fun and different. And I was like, whenever you were posting Oh, yeah, he's that he's the, he's the guy with the brass knuckle pillows. Right? And because all it's just kind of followed you around whatever you were doing, and just kind of like your logo and your art sensibility and kind of what you're doing. And so it was really fun to have you on the show today.

Matt Reese 
I appreciate that. I guess I've got to be known for something.

Marshall Atkinson 
So why don't we get started here and just tell the story about who you are and how you got started and kind of your background a little bit, and then we can get get into some really good stuff.

Matt Reese 
Okay, my exposure to screenprint actually started in high school, was my first time getting exposed to screenprint. And we did a real basic Ruby Lyth stencil, and cut, printed a real basic one color image on a piece of poster board. And I thought that was really cool. Honestly, I don't know where it went from there. But I think screen printing has always been something from that point on that I really thought was really interesting. And then I started seeing where it was popping up. Certainly clothing, T shirts, you know, the most prevalent area you see it. But then I also was interested in art. And certainly screen printing as an art form, I thought was really interesting. So you know, it kind of came and went. But I did study graphic design in college. And so I really lean more towards the art side of things, I think. But screen printing has always been in the background as something that's really been interesting as an art form. And as an industry

Marshall Atkinson 
in are you still doing your own art now?

Matt Reese 
Not as much as I would consider an art. But I definitely think that our shop and my approach to screen printing is heavily influenced from the design aspect of it, and not as much the technical and mechanical, industrial manufacturing side of things. I definitely lean more. On the art side, I kind of have a theory that, you know, if you have a good design, even if it's printed poorly, or let's not use poorly, let's say it's not printed excellently, but it's a good design, it's still gonna look pretty decent, but even a bad design printed flawlessly is still going to be a bad design. So I kind of feel like even though there's a lot in play in screen printing, I think design really weighs heavily in the success, whether it's a poster or a t shirt, or whatever that communicate, you know that you're printing as a form of communication.

Marshall Atkinson 
So yeah, so the work that I've seen of yours is kind of like popularity, tattoo inspired kind of a style would you would you label it that way?

Matt Reese 
I would and I tend to lean more towards the simplistic design I do like bold graphics. Some of that is driven a little bit by my limitations in my shop I only have a six color press with a dedicated flash so I'm really only working with five colors to print with not a 18 color press. So I do add a necessity stay away from some of the higher color, you know, artwork out there and I do tend to work a lot with spa colors. I love a good bold halftone not you know they're real blended halftone So that's some of that is my aesthetic

Marshall Atkinson 
Sure. Lika a big chunky 25

Matt Reese 
Yeah. Yeah, love a big chunky halftone. You know, I mean, specifically designed into the design, that is always a little bit of my aesthetic. I mean, certainly, I think there's probably a Warhol influence in there to some extent,

Marshall Atkinson 
probably Rauschenberg. Right. He's the pop art guy with a halftones.

Matt Reese 
Lichtenstein all those guys. Yeah, so I mean, there's, I do definitely gravitate towards that, I mean, even the clothes and the T shirts that I whether I print for myself or I buy and I do, do actually buy T shirts crazy as it is, they are tend to be one color to color three color, but something bold graphic, you know. And some of that is influenced I, I do like poster design. And I love some of the more simple two color three color, flat stock stuff that I see out there, that's always been an influence of mine. And I really like like that I've done some of it. I don't do a lot of it. But I have done some. So it's definitely been an influence.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, I think it's a you know, from my perspective, you know, I'm an ex art director, I think in terms of visual aesthetic all the time. That's one of the reasons why I'm so crazy about mid journey right now. We'll get into that later. But so like i i like a strong design and a strong graphic. And I don't think you need a million colors, I just think you need to make your voice needs to be there. Right? So if you look at like guys like Aaron draplin, or whatever, where it's real thick, it's real bold, it's chunky, you know, that's that guy style, you have a similar kind of look, right? I don't think you need a million colors, if you can design things that work with fewer. And there's something to be said about a minimalist approach that I think really works, especially in screen printing. And because you know, do we really need everything that we need every crayon in the box to go on the shirt? Right? I don't think so.

Matt Reese 
Yeah, just because you have 18 heads doesn't actually mean you need to use 18 heads. And yeah, I'll say backtracking a little bit. I mean, I was always interested in the tattoo culture. And interestingly enough, the business that I bought, and how I kind of got into screen printing is a much longer story than we have time for. But I ended up buying a business that had only been in existence for about a year, the owner, also owned tattoo business, and the screen printing shop was in the back. So for the first year of my business, I actually operate in the back of a tattoo shop. So I was able to really create a lot of relationships with local tattoo artists and also see how they work. And honestly, one of the big things that kind of I pulled out of that was not only their design aesthetic, but also the way they worked in having really bold colors, and that you know, you put in a tattoo, it's something that has to stay for a long period of time, you want to look good for a long period of time, so that that contrast broke colors and financial, but also, how a tattoo fits on the body was something that I also looked at, and how design fits on a shirt. Something that I think a lot of people miss the mark, when you deal with artwork coming from outside, and you might have a great designer creates a great design and doesn't necessarily make a great t shirt design. Because the primary elements are, you know, low on the shirt and ends up you know, all the key elements are on the belly instead of on the chest or things like that. They just don't think about how it works, you know, on the body. And I think that is something that I kind of borrowed a little bit from the tattoo culture in police my understanding of how things fit on a shirt and trying to apply that the best I can.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and plus, you know, with a T shirt, you got to half a second or a second to look at it to understand what it what is that person wearing. And if it doesn't work, and that looks like a billboard and a small sliver of time, it's not going to work and nobody's really going to get four inches above the print to see that little detail and without getting hit in the head.

Matt Reese 
Yeah, a lot of people come up to me and Oh, really, you know, you know, I don't think I had to learn is that I look at my designs and my prints much closer than anybody else will. But, but I agree with you 100%. And, and I've heard a lot of people use the term that a T shirt is like the billboard that you choose to wear for the day. And I think that's extremely important. And I think that is something that always keep in the back of my head in terms of, you know, I have customers who come to me and they might bring me a design and if I know it might not work the way they bring it to me where it might work better a different way I certainly impart my two cents and say hey, maybe this would be a little bit better or maybe if we move this here and move that or maybe cut down some of the colors and some of it sometimes cutting down colors. It's just a budget thing to you know, when customers come even, you know, they've got three little tiny dots and three You're different three completely different colors. I'm like, you realize how much that's gonna cost you just to have those three little tiny dots and advice and to see. eliminate that and save you some money. So I

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. Alright, so you've been in business for about a decade, right?

Matt Reese 
Yeah, it'll be 11 years this month.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, there you go. And so you got in. And so you've started your small shop, you know, let's take us back to, you know, 10, 11 years ago when you started off, right? And what kind of drove you to get into this? I know you were a designer somewhere else, right? And you just decided to kind of get in you started working with that T shirt. In the back of the tattoo parlor, the press of the tattoo parlor. What made you say, You know what, Gosh, I really just need to do this?

Matt Reese 
Well, I think it's a two part thing. I mean, I think one is the design aspect and a draw to try to find a way to express myself creatively. I don't necessarily always, I don't love the word art, because I don't necessarily I have some amazing artists, friends. And I don't necessarily consider myself on the same level. But I think from a creative standpoint, I always want to express myself creatively. And then also, I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. And so before I had this business, I worked for a number of different companies. But the last one, before I started this business, I worked for them for 15 years, and I will consider them to be a small business. You know, I had an intimate relationship with the President and the multiple vice presidents and the inner workings of the business. And I saw it all from, you know, the bottom all the way to the top. And for over 15 years, I learned a lot about business. So I thought, and I always had an interest in wanting to go out on my own and do something of my own. And the business was not going in the direction I liked. I had been with them for a while they were doing some things that I didn't really see as being I don't say not good business practices, but just not the direction I wanted to go with the business. And so I was always kind of out there looking for something. And I was potentially going to do some freelance work for somebody who owns a screen printing business, doing design work, and we started talking about it. And he said, Well, I just need to sell the business. He had multiple businesses, and he gets I just need to sell the screen printing business. There's a lot of story behind that. But I need to sell the scraping business if you know anybody that wants to buy it, you know, let me know. And I was like, oh, oh, me, I you know, I like to buy not really knowing even what I was getting into. And so we started the conversation. And that took several months for me to kind of get into it. He invited me in to see how the shop ran or the equipment ran and really wasn't a whole lot of a shot that was him and one other person and that other person left the business. So he was kind of doing everything himself. It was shoehorned into this little tiny space. I mean, a m&r diamond back six eight shoehorned into basically was like a one car garage almost, and a, a big dryer and everything. And so he's like, Hey, kind of learn, you know, if you're really interested, come see how everything operates. And so basically, I worked for him for free is what it boiled down to, while I learned how to do things and try to figure out something I could do, I went back to my employer and told him I had this opportunity. And I was interested in pursuing it. They agreed to kind of let me phase out of working for them. And so just kind of walking away altogether. And that allowed me financially to start to try to build a business. And I'm also fortunate that my wife has a good job with good benefits. And, and it was kind of one of the things where I felt like I was at a crossroads in my life. It was interesting, because actually, probably a few months prior to that I had gone to my boss and I said look, I don't like necessarily the way things are going with this business. I'm not getting any younger, you know, every year, it's gonna be harder for me to go apply for a job and get a job. You know, if things don't change here, I'm probably going to start looking because I don't want to be 50 years old looking for a new job and I was at the time I was you know, 40 So, opportunity came up and I just said maybe this is the universe telling me I need to, you know, jump in and so I kind of, you know, jumped in with two feet. I know a lot of people starting to garage part time working with a manual press, I jumped in with a diamond back six, eight, which isn't huge, but it's a you know, it's a big piece of equipment. It's a sizable financial investment, you know, 48 inch dryer, you know, big compressor, you know, so it was a decent, it was a decent investment to get into it. So I really feel like I just kind of jumped in with both feet and kind of been riding that roller coaster ever since.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's great. And so now you, you've got you've got some employees. And you're you know, you're more of the owner role than just the only guy in the shop. Right?

Matt Reese 
Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I would say I would say, I do have some employees. One is my son. I do have another part time employee. I've had a couple of employees come and go over the years, and working various roles. I still would say, though, I'm very hands on I still do a lot of design work I do. I still do all the printing, that's I'm a bit of a control freak. And it's probably not the best business model. But I still do all of the printing, they do a lot of setup, breakdown, prepping doing everything else. But I still print every shirt that goes to our shop.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, that's good. I like that. And so what do you think? Over the years, right, and so I think you've you, even we talked earlier, you're telling me how, you know, you have a lot of really loyal customers, they keep coming back either, like you're really known for what you do in the area, right? So kind of like talk about that a little bit. Because I think everybody's always wanting to figure out that sales into things, and how we can keep loyal customers and how we can do that. So kind of give your recipe?

Matt Reese 
Sure. I will say I mean, like I said, one of the things I learned from the business I was in before I did work in sales briefly. I don't necessarily consider myself to be a real salesperson. But the gentleman that I worked for who's still a good friend of mine, I still consider him a mentor. He always told me, Oh, man, you should come into sales just come and sales, we need somebody that had that. And I was like, I'm not a salesman, I'm not a salesman. And he'd always say, people buy from people that they like. And that was his thing. And I've heard it said other ways you will buy from people they like know and respect are different phrases on them. But he always said people buy from people they like so when I was in sales, I was not the Hey, check out this product, you got to buy it, because I'm trying to push it I was always let me build a relationship with my customer. Let me find out what they need. What's their problem? What can I solve? And that's always kind of how I've approached it. It, you know, I think it works well, for me in a local setting. In a smaller setting, I think it still would work on a bigger scale as well, I think relationships are a big part of it at the end of the day. customers coming to you because they need something, if you can supply it, then you can gain their business. But more than that, if you can supply it and also make a connection to them, you can gain their repeat business. You know, one thing I've always I use the hash tag from, from early on, I still use it from time to time, there's another screen printer that started using something very, very similar but, and it's more than just a t shirt. And that's always kind of been something that I the way I approach every job when I actually took the time to sit back and think about it, you know, somebody might come to me and say I need shirts for my staff, we run a coffee shop, and we need shirts for our staff, and maybe we're gonna sell shirts, our customers or whatever. It's more than just a t shirt. for them. It's a uniform, it's a way for them to identify their staff, if they're selling their T shirts to the customers a way for them to brand their business. So it's more than just a t shirt. You know, if I'm selling shirts, that are raising money for a charity, that's again, another situation where it's more than just a t shirt, you know, this is an opportunity for a business, to raise money or an organization's to raise money to do something good. So I've always had that kind of feeling. And I've approached every job the same way. And I think that gives me a little more skin in the game with every job that I print. When I look at it that way. It's not just, it's not just an invoice, it's not just a check. It's not just a t shirt. And we always joke is, hey, there's no real t shirt emergencies, you know, but, you know, if you just look at what this t shirt means to this customer that's buying it, you know, is it part of their business? Is it part of their organization? Is it something that's building, you know, a network or a team that you look at as more than just a t shirt, and I think you kind of start to make that connection with your customer. And I think they recognize that they see it. I mean, it's not always something that they verbally put out there. But, you know, I've had customers that I've said, hey, you know, I'm taking a long time I apologize. You know, I want to get this right. And I had one recently and he's like, Matt, it's, it's okay, he goes, I want to work with you. I don't care how long it takes. Now, I don't necessarily want to hear that from my customer necessarily. But I appreciate the sentiment is basically he wants to work with me because he understands and I think that I think that attitude towards what I print shows through in the way that I do things. You know if I make a mistake or there's something that's not Perfect. And this is funny kind of going back to like, when I first started printing and it would drive me crazy, I would have so much stress printing a job and waiting for the customer to come pick it up and have them look at the t-shirt Center gone. I'm picking out everything that I would see that I would do differently, you know, or things that I would see like, oh, this registration is not perfect, or this is not, you know, oh man, I wish this looked a little bit better. Oh, I should have changed this print order. And it probably would have made the shirt look a little better. Maybe the print would have been a lot softer, whatever. And in the beginning, I would point it out to all of my customers and they will look at me go. What are you talking about? I love this shirt. It looks great, you know. But I think that just kind of shows show my customers. So this is the level of which I approach every every project whether it's you know, dozen shirts for local soccer team or 1000 shirts for local business.

Marshall Atkinson 
It's the Zin craftsmanship element, right? You want a certain way, right, and just like a, like a fine woodworker, or a fine painter or a sculptor, right, we want it exactly the way that we want to do it. And that way we can put our stamp on it. Yeah,

Matt Reese 
and I have lost customers because maybe I've taken too much time or maybe they don't appreciate even the level of which I want to approach a job. And it's a it's a constant struggle internally for myself, I have a sign in my shop that says Done is better than perfect. Because I have to remind myself, oftentimes the projects that we do have deadlines for a reason, there's events coming up. And I have a stack of deadlines this week that I have to get done because there are events and if I don't get it done, it doesn't matter how good this t-shirt is, because the events come and gone. That opportunity has come and gone. So it doesn't necessarily mean that I lower my standards, or I tried to lower my standards, but instead of trying to reach for perfection is like something that I've adopted in the last year or two, I kind of came up with more of kind of like a mission statement. I'm not shooting for perfection. I'm shooting for greatness. And I think that we can achieve greatness. Perfection is kind of something that's kind of out there that will only keep us from moving forward. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
seal Vince Lombardi quote. Yeah, okay. So. So when you're talking with your customers, right? How are you outlining the expectations? I'm an outcome guy, like, so I'm all about process. I'm all about us. What I teach as a consultant is process and operations and all that stuff. Right? So I'm very interested in how you do things, right. So when you're talking with a customer, and you're talking about that there's an order that's gonna be delivered, let's just say next Friday, right? How are you talking about the expectations of what you're doing and aligning with what's in their brain? With what you're going to do? Because we want those two things to exactly match. Okay, yeah. How are you? How are you getting that done? Walk us through those steps? Because I think that's crucially important.

Matt Reese 
Well, first thing I'll say is, I don't necessarily think they should match I think what they, what I produce actually should be better than what they

Marshall Atkinson 
envisioned. You know, so the point, but you get what you get back

Matt Reese 
to get with it now. So I mean, I approach every customer kind of the same way. And I have adopted something, like I said, the last year or so kind of a mission statement. And it's real simple, look great, feel great, that you can do great things. And so I look at everything I approach the look rate is and it's not a vanity thing, it's not about looking great, hey, you know, handsome or whatever it's about? are we achieving a good looking design for our shirt? You know, are we picking a shirt that fits? Well, are we picking the right colors and things like that? I kind of approach every, every project I try to is like I want to produce the shirt that the person wants to wear all the time. So the way I do that, as I started talking to my freshmen, it could be it's a little different if you've got a customer that's had, you know, has purchased shirts before. Usually I'll say okay, they might say, Well, we had these printed somewhere else before and now we want you to do the printing. First thing I'm gonna ask them is, did you like the shirt you had printed before? Why aren't you going with the other company? What did you like? What didn't you like? I want to keep what they like and I want to fix the things that they didn't like, you know, if they say Hey, we love this shirt. We didn't like the print. Okay, what didn't you like about the print? Or we love the print? We didn't like the shirt. Okay, what didn't you like about the shirt? Let's keep what was good and fix what was bad. If it's a new customer, I literally asked them you know, what are your expectations? Are you driven by? You know, bid feel, look, are you driven by budget? You know, it's fine to be driven by budget. Some people say hey, I just need this shirt for But then I don't want to spend a lot of money, I'll take whatever the cheapest thing is, as long as it says XYZ on it, that satisfies my needs. So I mean, really, I think it's important to, you know, a lot of people want to do the, you know, put out a web format, and you know, fill in a bunch of information, I'll get back to you, I probably spent too much time talking to my customers and asking them questions. But I like to make a connection and kind of really get an get a sense of what the reason is for the shirt. And then we can kind of go from there.

Marshall Atkinson 
So one of my favorite authors is this guy named Mark Schaefer. And he wrote this book called The Marketing rebellion. And in that book, he talks about the most human company wins. And if everything is moving, the online, everything is moving to, we don't want to talk to you and whatever, right? But if we make that connection with customers, if they see us as people, if they see us, as we have empathy, and we understand you and what you want, and you're in a goal, right, and we take the time to learn all that, I'm coming back, right? Because nobody else is giving me that. Right. And, and if you look at the reasons why we shop where we shop, sometimes you know, a lot of times, it's because they have that certain waitress or a certain bartender, or that the clerk and the checkout, or you always go to checkout number three, because that old lady with the blue hair, man, she's always got the great smile, and you want to see that, and you'll wait an extra person just to make sure you're in her line in the grocery store. I've done that, right. And just because of the people, right, that makes it work. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about here. And

Matt Reese 
I think, honestly, for me, I think it's part of the rewarding part of the business, I really, truly enjoy seeing what my customers are doing with their businesses. So, you know, I see a lot of stuff in the Facebook groups, you know, oh, my gosh, my customer gave me this, you know, 200 by 200 pixel, you know, jpg and wants me to print it on a shirt. And you know, I can't do that. And then you have people comment and say, hey, that's what they gave you print it and run it, build them and move on. You know, I that's an extreme case. But I've always looked at it and said, you know, can I do better for my customer? Can I, you know, obviously, they don't know any better, maybe it's a time to educate them, maybe it's a time to say, Hey, this is what we can do. But I think there's always that opportunity to make that connection a little bit beyond. Again, it's more than just a t shirt. So I think by approaching it that way, I think that's been one of the things that's differentiated me, I like to look at details, I've had a lot of customers that I do some contract work for a couple brands, and nothing against other companies that have printed for them. But, you know, this one company in particular, more recently, have brought me some designs. And every time they do, they're, you know, it's a new brand, the it's a husband and wife and the wife is learning illustrator, and she doesn't really know a whole lot of stuff. And so bring it his eyes and say, hey, you know, we look better if we outline this stroke. Or if we did this, or maybe make this a little bigger, and this a little smaller, it's changed the scale and stuff like that. And they really appreciate that a lot of times, it takes me a couple minutes to explain it, or maybe even a couple of minutes to do it. And you know, charge a little bit of money for the design work or whatever, but they appreciate it because they're like, hey, you know, so and so that printed before, all they do is they just take our file, they print what we gave them, and they were happy with that. But knowing that I took it and said hey, let's make a simple tweak, and make this design. You know, maybe this designs a six, let's make it an EIGHT. Let's make it a nine, you know, real assembly. Or let's, you know, let's take out three colors, you pick up sukkos and make it like this and it makes it better or, you know, hey, this color, you've got to specify this PMs on this color shirt is going to disappear because there's zero contrast just simple things like that. I kind of have like, I feel like I have a responsibility to my customers and not write crap. And sometimes they don't know that what they gave us is going to look like crap. And I think that's a tricky thing. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
you can't play print black on Navy. I guess you can't have

Matt Reese 
right yeah. Right. I mean, people don't you know, and I think some of that just kind of get back to my design aesthetic and the things that I love logo, you know, good logo, design, simplicity, high contrast. You know, and maybe some of it is me giving people too much of my opinion. I don't know, but you're right. I mean, I've had people asking me to print, you know, black on Navy and I go you You realize it's going to be invisible. Actually, I have a customer, it's it's funny, you know, several years ago, I mean, you always, you know, always kind of if the customer says or customer asks, and even if you can explain to them and I did a job for a customer and I kept telling her I said, this is not going to appear this is it's going to disappear when I print this color on this navy. And so I printed some things and, and she insisted this is what I want, this is what I want. And I printed it and she looked at me, she goes, I can't see that disappeared. And I'm like, you know, we had that conversation, but okay, let's, you know, how do we deal with that? And I was like, I can make it lighter. I can make it a different color. I can. Okay, let's do that. And I was like, you know, you have to charge me for the reprint. I told you it was gonna disappear. Yeah, no, I know. You know, sometimes you just kind of have to do it and let them see for themselves.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. Right. So this is a good point. And I think it's a good segue into my next question, which is really about this industry is all about relationships, right? It's all about relationships. And that's with your customers that's with your employees, that's with your suppliers. That's with you know, your your banker, your attorney, your plumber, your electrician, you know, there's three all you really need in this industry is a plumber, an electrician and an attorney. Yes. Like what you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zack shortly with the SMS spotlight.

Marshall Atkinson 
So talk about the relationships that you've built over the years. And I think also I kind of want to get into, you know why you started a Facebook group to that because I think that's about relationships, as well. Absolutely.

Matt Reese 
And I think some of that is definitely stuff that I learned in my previous career. Like I said, I worked for 15 years for it was a distribution company, we sold safety equipment, and we were a distributor. So we had that. We were that middleman, we had our customers, we had our manufacturers that we dealt with. And we were the middle guy. And so relationships were a really big part of that business. And I got to see that, you know, firsthand, and I in some of my roles, I work with a lot of vendors. Right now, I don't actually work with my vendors as much as I would like to. But it definitely is something that is always in the back of my mind.

Marshall Atkinson 
In Do you see that? Because you're not to the mega shop with 100 autos. That's the main problem that the industry has is because and I see this a lot, you know, I have a lot of my coaching clients that are just like one or a couple of people in their shop, right. And the only way they get the information is go to the trade show because they don't get the rep to come by to show them all the stuff.

Matt Reese 
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's definitely some of it. And every company is a little different. I'm not going to call out anybody but my number one still my number one supplier I bought from for my blanks I bought from for years before I even knew a reps name. Now, I know in the grand scheme of things, I was not spending what some of these mega shops are spending, but at the same time, I was consistently spending money with them every month and every month and every month for me it was a lot of money. And I finally reached out and said hey, who's my rep. I at least feel like I deserve enough respect at least you know, reach out and talk to me. And I do have some some other companies that come through and it's more of like, you know, somehow I got on their radar you know, I placed an order here placed an order there and they happen to be in the area. So they pop in and see me and I and that's you know, I think that's good salesmanship. But having been in a sales role once before, you know strictly sales for a distribution business. You go where the dollars are. I hate to say it. Well of course the people that spend the money are going to get the attention

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, but But here's what I'll tell you is you never know. Right? You never know when somebody's shop explodes or their business that you let get that big contract or whatever. You know, when I started in the industry, I worked for a tiny little place that was in a strip mall. There was two autos, it was all guys, everybody was in a band all of had hair down on their waist and tattoos and just it was, it was just crazy Ville, right. And, you know, fast forward a couple of years, we're in a, we're in a 80,000 square foot space, we've got two shifts, we're printing a million T shirts a day. I mean, a million T shirts a month. Right. And that, but if that happened because of growth and sales and whatever, right, and and I think the people that were there in the beginning, were there also, when we built all that, right, and well, I saw the same people. Right. And, and I think that's just a lot of it is because I had, we had some assistance, and we had some good advice. And we had people that would work with us. And you know, we're like, you know, just, I got lots of stories, but we'll save for another day. But it was just like, it was really great to have that type of opportunity with people who really cared about what you were doing and and sincerely wanted to help you grow, right. And so, oh, it's kind of love that. And I like hearing stories about that. And I think, you know, if you're listening right now, and if you're, wherever you are on your journey, you should just do exactly what Matt did, and reach out and say, Hey, who's my rep, I want to have a conversation, tell me what's going on. And, you know, a 10 minute phone call could really steer you straight, you know?

Matt Reese 
Yeah, absolutely. And my rep did contact me, unfortunately, it was like right around, kind of the height of COVID. And so we didn't communicate directly. At first it was we did a, we did a zoom call. And then, you know, once COVID was kind of over, you know, she did come come by the shop and brought her boss and, you know, has since you know, been a little bit more of a connection, but still not great. But I think it's important. Also, there was a timeframe there, you know, during COVID, and a little bit after that, where, you know, supply was a disaster, and you just, you know, you had to have relationships with multiple suppliers, you couldn't have all your eggs in one basket. And, you know, now if I want to buy a black Bella Canvas, you know, 3001, I can buy it from, you know, six different vendors that I deal with regularly, you know, at one point, you might only be able to find, you know, larges over here and smalls over here, and you just had to buy them where you could find them. So, but the interesting thing was, those relationships were important to be in place before the shit hits the fan, you know, so I do try to move some of my business around, I know I have a choice. Sometimes it's sometimes it is, you know, who's got the closest who's got the best price who's can do this. But I have a couple of vendors that that come and call on my small shop. And when I have opportunities, I try to try to give them business, because it does, it does mean something that they take their time, even if it's a pop in for five minutes and drop off a new catalog and see how I'm doing things like that. I think it goes a long way. And I know that's you know, I know, that's just one way that I can also be part of that food chain, so to speak. And then you know, I've never been a type of person that really looks at other companies as competition or whether it's a vendor or whatever. And I think it kind of leads into the Facebook group. When I started, I got into some of these Facebook groups, and some of them are pretty rough and rugged. And some of them you know, you can ask a question, get your head bit off, but

Marshall Atkinson 
don't get me started.

Matt Reese 
But I was fortunate enough, I think we had a luck or just whatever. I think part of it is one I don't I don't get in these groups and start you know, acting like an asshole. So I think people will understand that. But I was fortunate to ask some questions and get some, some pretty heavy hitters, I think in the industry to respond and to give me some valuable advice. I certainly don't consider myself an expert in any level, but I also feel like I've got advice from somebody when I was starting out so I don't have a problem giving advice. And I kind of feel a little bit of an obligation to give to other people that are where I was 10 years ago. You know, just got this press. You know, I can't fit a screen to save my life or why is it you know, why is this happening? Why is my screen sticking? Why can't, you know I? What's going on with my registration? All these problems that we have on a daily basis? If somebody posts a question, and I have an answer or a potential solution, and I have a few minutes to write an answer, I'm going to do it, you know, because I do think that one, there's more than enough screen printing to go around, you know, I even have relationships with a customer right next to me, that is what I would consider to be a, you know, classified as a competitor, we have a great relationship. I have, you know, other friends locally that also have, for example, m&r presses, and they've borrowed parts from me, and I've borrowed parts from them in a bind, you know, and, and I know that I've probably picked a business that they lost, and they probably picked a business that I've lost over the years, but we don't look at it that way, we certainly don't attempt to go after each other's business. And I know there's plenty of printing to go around, I would much rather have a good relationship with another screen printer that might be a mile away two miles away, 20 miles away, and compete with the bigger guys to custom inks and things like that, that, you know, are not kind of what I consider to be, you know, in the same category as the US even though I know, they'd contract up a smaller companies and things like that, but I think it's a little bit different. And I would much rather, you know, be friendly with another local screen printer, and, and compete with the customers or the bigger guys that are kind of out there just playing on that online space.

Marshall Atkinson 
So why did you start the Facebook group? And what is?

Matt Reese 
Yeah, so I started the Printavo users group, which disclaimer is not not officially affiliated with Printavo, or Inc Tavo, or whatever the company is now called. And I started that allergies, maybe two, three years ago. And honestly, the reason I started it was I, I signed on with Printavo, 2000s. The end, I think, 2007. Teen, I think maybe 2018, I think it was a great. It was a great move in my business. I mean, before that I was doing spreadsheets and just doing a lot of things manually. So I think he was really good way for me as a small shop, a guy who's doing a little bit everything myself, I'm doing the designing and doing the invoicing, I'm doing the quoting, I'm doing the printing, you know, so Printavo really worked for me to be able to wrangle a lot of things, organize my business. Also give myself a professional appearance, you know, outwardly to the customer, etc, etc. I'm not the most organized person that helped me to organize my business. So I think it was a great, it was a great decision. But I would go back to some of these other screen printing groups with a question like, hey, has anybody experienced this? Has anybody done this? And unfortunately, you know, in some of these groups that have 1000s of users, you might only have a small segment of that that are actually Printavo users. So every time I've posted Printavo question, I one usually rarely ever got an answer from another Printavo user. And then usually the responses I got were, hey, how do you like it? Well, hey, you should be using this instead of Printavo. Or I was on it. I couldn't use it, or, Hey, you know, is this something that we do for our business, and I was never getting the connection with other users that I was looking for. And that was something that I got from other business, I was part of a users group for a software that we use, and I thought, hey, why don't we start, you know, why don't I find a way to shrink down this group, and consolidate and focus on just users? So that way, if I have a Printavo, specific question, I can post it to this group. Knowing that 100% or close to 100% our users, we do have some people in there that are not users, people like yourself. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
I probably went on TV, though, right. And

Matt Reese 
I do try to I, I'm the sole administrator, and I do get a lot of requests for people to join. And I'm, I'm selective. I know, there's a lot of consultants like yourself out there. And I think there's great value to having somebody like yourself in the group.

Marshall Atkinson 
But other than that, to be fair, Matt, a lot of my clients use Printavo. And so I A lot of times, I know the answer, I don't ever use Printavo. I've never used it. I think, a really good program. Like everything is Sky's court because of things that need to be fixed or whatever. You know, you're not going to unless you're building your own software, you're not going to get it exactly how you want it. And I can tell you from years of doing things, you know, I've been a consultant since 2010. So I've been talking with people for a long time. And I can tell you that most of the time, the shops have only one subject matter experts on that software, and they may have completely not trained, right. So they don't know everything. And so things come up a lot of times is because they're not using the software, right, they're not doing the things they need to do. They're not keeping up with the updates, they didn't watch the video, they like, when there's an upgrade, they didn't upgrade, and then another upgrade comes out. And now they're two or three upgrades back. And they wonder why they're, you know, it's not working. And, you know, there's a million reasons why things don't work, right. And, and the same problems that you guys have with Printavo people have a shop locks people have with shop works people have with price that people have with yo print people have it with all these. And usually, it's because the people using it aren't doing it the way they shouldn't be doing it. That's the main problem. Most of the time, it isn't the software, okay, even though we really want things to, you know, I wish this feature worked better, you know, or they have some code or something happens. And some things are beyond the software's control because the way the internet and stuff works, right, and, and they're doing their best they can and but I tell you what's really fun is being in groups like that, and just seeing what people are talking about. And, and I, what I love about it, especially the Printavo users group, is that everybody's freely sharing, how to make this, you know, macro, or this button or this thing, or how do I sell this one thing, or I can't get QuickBooks to update or whatever? There's a there's some I go yeah, what are you gonna do? Is this that the other thing? Here's the answer, right? Yeah. And

Matt Reese 
sometimes it's a real simple solution. But I mean, the long story short, is that I created it to kind of cut through a lot of the BS that's out there. And kind of focus. I mean, just like, I mean, I'm also part of the blue machine group, because I have an m&r Press, and it's just, you know, I could I could post it to a general, right, I could post into a general screen printing group and say, Hey, I'm having problem with my indexing on this, this and this, and I'm gonna get some guy with a brown press that says, Well, this is how it works on my press. And that doesn't really apply to me. So it's just, it's wasting time. So if I have a technical question or technical issue with my press, I go to the blue machine group, and I post it there. If I have a question about Printavo, I go to the Printavo group, and I post it there because it allowed, you know, we're all busy, I don't have time to sit here and sort through all this stuff. And I think it's it worked. And you're right, I think I don't see any of those people in that group as competition. I mean, like I said, the business that's next door to me, and some other people that I know locally, that are screen printers that also use Printavo, they're also in the group, I'm posting my information about my business, they can easily see it. I'm not trying to hide anything, I think, you know, it's one of the things that I I used to I played football in high school, I coached football after high school. And I remember one of the coaches that I coached with, made a statement one day, and we were going through a playbook. And they said, you know, and somebody said, Oh, we ended up play, that's gonna, you know, we did a five yard play, we need a 15 yard play, we need a whatever your play. And he said, Look, every play in this playbook is designed to score a touchdown. If you execute it properly, and you out execute your competition, he goes, yes, there are some that are more high probability five yard this is a more high probability 20 yard this is whatever. But every single one of these plays is designed to score a touchdown. If you execute it properly, and you outplay your opponent. And I think that goes for business too. I don't worry about my competition, I worry about what I'm doing. I've got I can go into my shop at any given day, and I can pick 100 things that I should be doing better. So why worry about what the next guy, you know, down the street even is doing. Right, you know, I can't control that I can control what's under my roof. And so I focus on what I do. And I know I don't do things perfectly. I know I screw things up daily. I know I lose business at the same time to you know, other businesses coming in, and that eats me up. But that's my kind of, that's my view of competition. I don't focus on competition, and I don't think competition is really something that I should waste my time with. So these groups are a great way to interact and share and help. It doesn't cost them anything to help somebody other than a little bit of time. And I think there's part of the reward of being part of a bigger, you know, bigger community and not just, you know, it's sometimes it's isolating them. Some days I'm in the shop by myself, being part of A community whether it's online or physical, you know, kind of gives you a little bit of, I guess, a energy boost by just knowing you're not alone. I guess, you know, I mean, that's Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Or the mental health side of it? Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
All right. Well, hey, let's wind it up. Last question. Let's talk about the future. Right. So what are you interested in? What really piqued your curiosity? What do you want to know more about? Maybe you haven't started down that road yet? You know, what, what's what's in the back of your mind there, Matt?

Matt Reese 
Well, I mean, that's something I think about from time to time, and when my wife talked to me yesterday, and she was, you know, realized I could retire in two years from my job. And I'm like, Okay, so, I'm not getting any younger, I was definitely looking at things a little bit differently this year than I did, you know, five years ago, and even, you know, 10 years ago, when I started. And honestly, you know, I mentioned I'm kind of a small business, I've had those times where I've looked at it and thought, you know, I need to move to a bigger space, I need to add another auto, I need to, you know, add embroidery, I want to, you know, I want to make build this big, mega, you know, thing, and then I look at it and go. But that's not really what I want, oh, I got into this, you know, I was thinking about the question on on as I was driving home. And honestly, I think one of the big rewarding parts of having this business is my connection to my customer. And I kind of feel like, I don't have to lose that if I grow. But I think that's part of what makes me unique, and it's part of what gets me up in the morning. It's, you know, beyond getting paid, I think that is a big rewarding part of the businesses, the relationships that I've built and the opportunities, I have one of them, you know, one of my favorite customers came in today. And it's funny, because he's like, Hey, I need to get shirts, here's a check. And I'm like, Well, what, what are we doing? Well, I sent you a text message, I look at my text, and she gets, and it's got quantities and whatever. And I said, Why don't you have to design it? Well, you figure it out, here's a check. Fill in the check when you know the amount and just text me and tell me how much it is, you know, now, that's

Marshall Atkinson 
a good customer, Matt, love

Matt Reese 
this customer. And, you know, and they're great people, and they're, and they're, they're my kind of question, or they're another one of these, you know, pillars of the community type customers. But that's the kind of trust but that kind of stuff, I mean, who doesn't love to get handed a blank check. And I mean, I have a responsibility to be, you know, not write it for whatever I want, but write it for what's realistic, but you know, I think that's, that's a great part of, of the business. And I feel like if I grow to a certain level, to where I have to hire a bunch of people, and I have to push things off, and I don't have that those touch points with my customers, I feel like I will be partly losing a lot of why I'm in this business to begin with. So as much as I would like to grow, I also have the kind of place where I want to be in terms of continuing to support the community and build those relationships, I think I can still do that and still grow a little bit, I don't want to grow to be a mega business. But then also I look at, you know, I'm not getting any younger, my entry level into this was through design, through branding, and it's something that's still passionate, I love to design logos, even though it's it's kind of a love hate relationship. And part of me would love to be able to, maybe at some point, sell the screen printing business because I don't think any of my kids want to take it over, but sell it and go sit on the beach and design logos on a laptop, you know, while sipping, you know, cold drink or whatever. And maybe from Costa Rica or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things you love or hated about screen printing is it's not exactly portable. So, I do look at you know, maybe at some point I well, you know,

Marshall Atkinson 
there's a big movement in this industry, for people just do the sales into that and then have other people can't get like contract, you know, that's what yeah, that's what Shopify is all about. Right? And so anybody can do a T shirt business from their kitchen table, right? Yeah. And they I think they sell 400 or $500 million little T shirts a year on that platform. So it must work. Right? So in setting up a store, takes no time you could do it in 15 or 20 minutes right. And all you need is a good idea.

Matt Reese 
And, and to bring things back full circle, I think you know, when I started out that was one of the things I wanted to do. I wanted to start a clothing line. I still haven't really started a clothing line. But those pillows that you that drew your attention with

Marshall Atkinson 
brass knuckles on us thinks you should still do this.

Matt Reese 
I will probably I would think still do something like that. We haven't done the pillows in a while. But that was something that was my wife and I kind of started and that's the fun thing about screenprint is like, if I have an idea to put on a shirt, I can just do it. I don't have to sell a million of them. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
I like to pill, right, is because everybody's doing the same things. In screen printing a pillow case is the same as screen printing and t-shirt. It's just a different but it's completely different. Medium now, right? Like stuff at full of like, you know, pillows, stuffing or whatever, it goes into a pillow, you know. And it's different. And that little one color print, right? That could be a really, boutique designer, super pillow, you know, and it's not Maga T shirts, a lot of times are just priced. Here's what it cost me, I'm marking up a percentage, we're not selling on the value that somebody will pay for that. Right, right, which is why I liked that pillow idea. Because, you know, you get some hoity toity people will blow money on the dumbest things I've ever seen. Not saying your pillows are dumb, but you know, it's just one of these things where I really liked that direction. And, and that's, that's what really caught my eye. When did you do that six years ago, or whatever it was, I don't

Matt Reese 
even know that was, you know, that was probably nine, nine years, nine or more. Nine years ago, maybe maybe maybe 10. And honestly, like the design aspect of it. I mean, we talked a little bit about you know, Annapolis is a is a waterfront city, it's the state capitol, it's on the water, there's a lot of sailing. So a lot of this stuff. If you go downtown, into the shops, you see a lot of sailboat stuff, you see a lot of crab stuff, Maryland's known for their blue crab, you know, you see a lot of oyster stuff. And you know, my wife was like, and she's a little bit of a rebel like I am, she's actually got a lot more tattoos than I do, believe it or not. And she's actually the assistant principal on top of that, so it's even even a little bit stranger to when you get to know her, but she was like, I'm tired of seeing the same old oyster print. I'm tired of saying the same old thing. And we definitely have some relationships with the tattoo industry. And we're like, just like I want to do something a little bit more in your face. And so honestly, we actually are working on a clothing line that we've been kind of dabbling with and selling and a few little pop up shops here and there. And that is something that might happen. Some more we might bring the pillows back.

Marshall Atkinson 
There's a thing called counterculture. You've heard it and this is the reason why liquid death water is selling a gazillion bottles of water and but their merch is insane. Right?

Matt Reese 
I've never I've never drank one because I can't bring myself this pay for it. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
well, it's just water and I can write and write. But it's like, it's just it's just amazing because it's the anti Dasani anti Aquafina, right. Absolutely. For you. You did your pills, because it was the anti sailboat. It was the anti oil, anti crab Maryland crab. Right? You've seen crabs everywhere, right? And so So I think that's, that's the appeal. And so those people are out there. Right? So it's really about connecting with the audience. You're not getting the the people who have the, you know, the lighthouse decor and the, you know, everything is white, the shabby chic crowd, there's not going to order, they're not going to order that right. But the guy that drives the Harley, the guy that plays in the rock band or the woman right, because that's just gonna buy the pillow. It is, you know, that's who you're appealing to in that situation. And they would love that stuff. Right? Yeah. And

Matt Reese 
I think I told you the the start of that was I was asked to print pillow covers for a local local music venue that was putting on a music festival. And they wanted pillow covers with their logo for the green room. And that's what that started. And so when we started making the pillows, and we were thinking about it, we're like, well, where, you know, how can we get these in? I did one that actually is like a, like an amplifier design. So the pillow looks like an amplifier. And I thought that was actually one of my more creative ones. And I thought that was really kind of cool. And actually,

Marshall Atkinson 
was there Marshall? Because it was it was,

Matt Reese 
yes, it was a market. I have to say I had to dig one up. And if I can find one, I'll send one to you because I might still have one somewhere. It was designed based on a Marshall amp Look, that's great. The brand that we were playing around with was called Charlie knuckles. And there's a story behind that I won't bore you with but so instead of saying Marshall across the front, it said knuckles but it had the had the mesh and had the knobs and had everything and we printed it just a one color. We printed it as a one color kind of a gold tone on a black pillow. And it looked really cool. And actually I wanted to do more of those, doing it with a two color bringing in that white, that Marshall typical white piping around it to kind of bring in that, to bring in some of that and have a little bit more of that recognition. But those, but that was kind of where I wanted to be, I wanted to be you know, pillow at the local 930 Club, which is in DC, which is, you know, a small but big venue. I mean, huge, huge acts of played there, you know, the Foo Fighters, you know, love 930 club and will come and play a show there and stuff like that. So that was kind of the idea. Just it's that's a tough business to be in. It's it's tough to build a brand and to go out there and to beat the streets and do the weekend events. And, and I kind of had to kind of balance it and say, you know, do I spend my whole weekend running around chasing events trying to put these things in front of people? Yeah, so they kind of lost out, but it might come back. It's an

Marshall Atkinson 
it's an Etsy store. Yeah. And, and just, you know, I think well,

Matt Reese 
and I've, and I've said that too, I think I mean, obviously, it wasn't play 10 years ago, but you know, I go back to almost 51 You know, I used to go around my mom and do craft fairs, you know, she would do these craft shows. And that was you know, that model of business was you made whatever your craft was you set up and your audience was whoever was walking through and now with the internet, your audience can be anybody, your tribe can be all over the world, it's, you can build something as obscure as you want. And then just go out and find people that like that obscure thing just as much as you do. And they're out there. It's just you just got to find ways to, to connect with them. And I think the, the Internet has changed the game in the way of people making businesses out of the most, you know, narrow of of ideas. So

Marshall Atkinson 
well that's true, like, Hey, we're gonna wrap it up. So thank you so much for sharing your story of success with us today. So Matt, what's the best way to contact you have somebody listening right now wants to learn more about what you do or maybe how you can help them.

Matt Reese 
We are on Instagram. And I'll first let me say that spelling is B L K A N K R so if you're looking for us on Instagram, it's B L K A N K R, So it's an odd spelling, you can go to Black Anchor.com, although our website is not the greatest, but it's there. You can email me at Print @blackanchor.com. If you're on Facebook, you can look up Matthew black anchor Reese, you can hit the Printavo users group and reach out that way. Yeah. It's probably more than enough ways they're reaching. All

Marshall Atkinson 
right, well, hey, well, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun talking to you today. And best best wishes for your success.

Matt Reese 
I greatly appreciate the time Marshall is fun!