Success Stories Ep 81 - "Printing Profits: Unveiling the DTG Maestro"

On today's Success Stories podcast, I'm delighted to have the one and only Scott Fresener on the show!

Scott was instrumental in bringing DTG technology to the industry. He wrote the book "How to Print T-shirts for Fun and Profit!" And is an expert in separating art for printing. 

So buckle up campers, we'll have a fun episode today!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
On today's Success Stories podcast, I'm delighted to have the one and only Scott Reznor on the show, Scott was instrumental in bringing DTG technology to the industry. He literally wrote the book on what we do with how to print shirts for fun and profit. And as an expert in separating art for printing. So buckle up campers. We'll have a fun episode today. And I can't wait to get into it with Scott. So, Scott, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Scott Fresener 
Hey, Marshall, thank you for having me, guys. Good to talk to you. And because I've been I've been I've been I'm so old I now to tell all my stories, and all the dirt. I don't hold back anymore. As far as how I got in the business and some of the things I did the good, the bad and the ugly. That'll be

Marshall Atkinson 
I think that's what we need. We need the unvarnished, ugly truth sometimes because I think people who were just coming in, it's all sparkly and new and all unicorns and you know, and they just don't understand how we got here sometimes. And it's fun to kind of like just go hey, way back when we it was it was a chisel and a hammer and some stone and that's what we were using and all that stuff. Right. So that's all that's all

Scott Fresener 
almost compared to today's works. You know, today how we do it. In the old days. We used to give our students a wooden frame staple gun, a screen, stretcher, fabric, stretcher and staples to put the fabric on because that's how we did it.

Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, exactly.

Scott Fresener
Now if you so it's anybody that they would think that you were you are from the stone age's. Anyway,

Marshall Atkinson 
we are from the Stone Age Scott. All right. So let's get going. And I think that I think real interesting thing is really about how you got into the industry, right? So I don't think a lot of people know that. And so can you discuss like the early days and like how you got into this? This crazy circus, right? What attracted you? What got you in it, you know, your first T shirts and all that stuff? Right? So walk us through what it was like back when you were just starting out?

Scott Fresener 
Well, I got in the industry, kind of in a roundabout way. I used to have a I used to play in a band. And as you know, I play in a band now and I always, always try and pump my band. I'd have a Pink Floyd tribute band. And but I played and I had a recording studio. So there was not much money playing, you know, bar bands make today what they may 40 years ago, had a recording studio, and that wasn't very good. didn't make much money. Although I did record a band that became the tubes and I hung out with guys that later became Alice Cooper, because I'm all we're all the same age. But in the back of the studio, I had a tape duplicator someone approached me that says, hey, you could make some tapes, so I was bootlegging eight track tapes. I was one of the biggest bootleggers in the southwest. You know, Charlie taglib was a t shirt bootlegger. I was an eight track tape bootlegger, we all have our sordid past. So when I decided to quit bootlegging tapes, I was selling tapes to a guy that worked fair selling shirts. Guy's name was junkie Jim. And he worked all the big fairs. He worked the big car shows. And I trade a gym for a heat press and a bunch of heat transfers that were made by companies called Hollaback and Roche and back in the day. And so I got in this business by by trading eight track tapes for heat press. I started working the flea market and I was always good at booths as I always was at trade shows. And I got the flea market had a screenprint shop. And he said he'd come by and see my shop one day, that was the biggest mistake he ever could have made. I walk into a shop, he's got a homemade dryer with heat lamps. He's got vacuum tables he's making transfers with and I'm thinking I could do that. I could build that. And as I'm walking out the door on his counter was a screen printing magazine. And it happened to end up in my briefcase that was before impressions or any of the trade magazines. I mean, screenprint magazine was kind of it. They were the guys. And in Screenprinting Magazine was an ad for a company called Advanced Process. If if you remember Advance Process, they were the 1000 pound gorilla. They had an inch thick catalog. And you can learn so much from the catalog is to read the description and see what's out there. And so that was how I went home and I built a homemade dryer out of heat lamps. I built some vacuum tables, started making transfers burn screens in sunlight. And that was how I got into business. And then of course it grew my garage.

Marshall Atkinson 
So what year What year was this?

Scott Fresener 
This would have been 1969 or 70 Probably late 69 And so the business grew, I was working on my garage and I was actually bumped into a company called Copeland, which is now called macarius cheese. And if you live in Phoenix, you know Macquarie's is the 1000 pound gorilla in the Southwest for blanks. But they were owned by a company called Copeland. And Copeland was doing sucks believer in not printed socks. And they want to know if I can make transfers for them. And so next thing you know, I'm bootlegging, Mickey Mouse. Back in the day, the Fonz, all the beer labels, making heat transfers out of my garage, working three shifts, 24 hours a day, till the city came around and says, you know, we hear you, you have employees, and you've got trucks coming and you're not doing it legally, you got to shut down. And so I had to rent a building. And so that grew, and I became the biggest screen printer in Arizona, because at that time, we're talking now mid 70s. There was probably a dozen screeners, you know, it isn't like now where you've got, I don't know how many there are in the valley now. So the business grew, I got tired of it. And in 1978, I sold the business to Macquarie's because they wanted to get into printing. And people started calling me saying how do you do it? Would you come and show me. And that sparked the idea of how to write to write a book, you know, I thought, well, there's a market there, write a book, become an expert. And so my wife and I wrote how to print t shirts for fun and profit. And the timing was just perfect. Bill Windsor had just started the impression show in 1978. And the first ISS show was in Dallas, and I didn't go to attend that. But the second show was in Dallas, and I had my book printed, I had sent them copies as a news release for the magazine impressions. And right away, I'm there on the phone, hey, you we come and speak at our show. Sure, you know, I used to be in a rock and roll band, I had a magic act that was that kind of kid, you know, hey, watch me do this.

Marshall Atkinson 
And everything.

Scott Fresener 
And so I get to we get to Dallas after taking a red eye because we didn't travel much then there was this is the days when people didn't go a lot of places. And I opened the seminar door. And there's 500 people in the room, just chomping at the bit. And so I did my three hour seminar, and afterwards, I was a celebrity. Because I had a book, I was the guy they could call and my wife and I going wow, this could be a new business training. Three months later, we started our school, because we had so many people calling us hey, how do you know? How can we can you kind of come out? Will you teach me? And so we started our school and got I think for the next 30 years, believe it or not every month we did a class with at least 30 people. So

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, know my Shirt Lab business partner, Tom rauen, took your class.

Scott Fresener 
Tom took the class people Sony took the class. I mean, if you look at people, I when I go to shows, now people will come up and say I came to your class and 1982 or 81, or whatever. And these are big companies, I have a guy I can't think of his last name. His name is John who owns liquid blue. And you know, liquid blue is the 1000 pound gorilla. They're big and big guys, every time I see him at a show, hey, thank you, you know, thank you for selling me my first press. Thank you for getting me in the business. And so to me, part of where I'm at now, as I'm getting older, it's rewarding to know that I've probably touched people. And the people that have gone out of business, I have no idea.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, they didn't listen very well.

Scott Fresener 
And the people that that did well, I probably got them started. And then they probably took their entrepreneurial skills and made a go of it and stuff. So

Marshall Atkinson 
the thing in this industry, I think is, you know, it's all sales related, right? So you can be the best screen printer in the world. But if you don't have any sales, you're dead before you get started. You know, I've watched a lot of people kind of miss that aspect.

Scott Fresener 
They do they do. I used to watch all the classes when I started doing my introduction and tell them I said you're going to leave here in my class, knowing how to print a shirt. No doubt about it. It's very mechanical. But where you're going to fail, if you do fail would be in the business side, the marketing, the selling, because you came to class because your kids are buying shirts or getting shirts at their school. And you're thinking, Oh, I could do that. And that's easy. That's the mechanical but you're gonna you're gonna miss the business part. So the business part is the most important part of this course, frankly, and I spent half a day talking about the business marketing, selling pricing because I always felt that that you're right, that's that's where they're going to fail. And you know, because some people don't aren't entrepreneurial, either to be entrepreneurial, you know, it'd be means hang, hang it out there and just go for it. I always kind of laughed when I saw it. The colleges, they have entrepreneurial courses, and I don't know if you can teach being an entrepreneur, maybe you can, but I'm not sure about that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Some people just saw the drive. But what I'll tell you mostly is that people who start businesses, we need to focus on how we can get orders that aren't from our family and friends. To get a complete stranger to trust me, that should be like less than one. Right? And

Scott Fresener 
you know, the selling is the big deal is and people don't understand it's relationships and, and building confidence and looking the part. So I always talk to the students about making sure that you didn't look like you were some home based business working on your garage or your I mean, not there was anything wrong with that. That's how I started. But you want to make sure your customer feels comfortable that you can do the order, you can do it in a timely fashion. And you build relationships so that that's the tough one.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. And so, so back then it was doing doing the seminars promoting your book and everything. Did you start back screen printing? After that? Did you start a new shop?

Scott Fresener 
No, I, I found my niche. Impressions had, I think they had four shows a year, then maybe three. And so I spoke at all the shows, and believe it or not back then the seminars were two or three seminars. That was it. I mean it for the two or three first shows that that wizard did that. Why didn't attend the first one. It was all the seminars. And it was a guy that it was me and a guy named Jim Jester. I taught screenprinting and Jin Jessore taught how to make transfers. That was it. That was a seminar program. So we had now you know, you speak at the shows now you've got doesn't have seminars, but they're all hour and a half topics. And so I spoke with the shows for a long time. And and then as SGA kind of got wind to me, I spoke at SGA. And so I made a I made a not a living speaking because you know how much money you make speaking on a good day, but selling the book was good. And we started then students would always say, Where do I buy equipment? So I became a distributor for Hopkins, I met Riley Riley was very, you know, he didn't know me. He was just a young guy. I was a young guy. And I approached Riley when we started the class. You know, I'm this guy that's got this book, How to print t shirts. And I need a press and Riley goes, where do I ship it? You know, he was he was that way. And so I had a great relationship with Riley for years. I still do. I saw Riley a couple years ago at the ISS show that Ryan that brought him in and Riley and I have a great history. And so we started selling equipment. So the school became a vehicle to make a sale. So people, people come to school, they're putting on a Hopkins press are using union ink. They're using Hanes shirts, because everybody you know, everybody's sent me stuff for free. And and then they go, Where do I buy this stuff, and we go, Well, maybe we can talk after class, we would sometimes write 30 or $40,000 worth of shops setups for just one for just one class. Right. And I was always very honest, you can go back and you can buy from your local dealer, you know, I don't care. But but you know, you know me and trust me, you can call me blah, blah, the soft sell.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's good. That's good. And so have you always done it here in the Phoenix area.

Scott Fresener 
I tried doing it with I became very close with Union Inc, the owner was a older I like to joke, he was the older Jewish guy, I was a Gentile from Iowa. And he was my mentor, we were we were best friends. And so unique, had a grungy little factory in New Jersey, and I set up a class there. Which was odd for me, because I'm from either Iowa or Arizona, depending on what you're looking at. But New Jersey, they would take the train into the class, you know, a lot of not everybody has a car back there. And so it was one of these weird deals that these people were, they were bus drivers, they were from all different industries. And they would come to the class. So we did it at Union Inc for a long time. And we'd say we do two classes a month, and the class was the vehicle. And then then the computers came out, you know, we used to teach them how to cut Ruby lists. I mean, we would give them Ruby with an exacto knife, hope they didn't cut themselves and give them a simple piece of simple art and have them cut the overlays, you know, they learn about that. And then the computer came out. And I decided, You know what, there's a lot of guys that know screen printing, and this can work it was guys teaching it at that point. Also other other people were doing classes. And I thought, You know what, I need to become a computer expert. That's where it's going to be as the computer and I'm glad I did I really focused on the computer and computer graphics because in the old days, even with the early computers, you really couldn't do steps, you could build the art but it was still kind of rough. And I find myself teaching separations, you know how to how to separate in the computer, over and over. Same thing, same mouse moves, you know, Do this, do this, okay, blah, blah, blah. There's your Underbase bullet color, polar color, tweak it curve it and I found we did a lot of computers we have we offer computer graphics classes, and we're doing the same thing. And so, a guy named Charlie Cassini came out with a program called Spot Process. And this is about 1998 Um, and his it was $15,000. Now, I know my customer, my customer was a startup small guy, I Charlie prices, his software kind of like the embroidery guys, you know, back in the day the Embroidery Software was way expensive. And so I'm thinking, You know what, he's his program kind of sparked me, I'll give him the credit for that. That's all I'll give him. But it sparked me to that I can automate what I was teaching because I was finding, I was teaching the same muscles. So I I automated what I was teaching, just

Marshall Atkinson 
action commands.

Scott Fresener 
It was action, it was actions. Yeah. And I came out with fast films. And this is 1999 and sold it for $1,500. I sold 1000 copies my first year. If I, if I look back in hindsight, I should have just kept doing that. But being the entrepreneur that I am, I was wanting to do something else move on, make it bigger. And, you know, that's the disease of being an entrepreneur, as you probably know, you're always thinking of the next thing you can do. Let's do this, you know, we can make a lot of money here.

Marshall Atkinson 
What is the next thing? That's yeah, I'm always thinking about I know, you know, let's let's just before we move on to all the cool new stuff, right, let's, let's just touch on the book for a minute. And so I think that you know, your book, How to print shirts for fun and profit. I think a lot of people have read that, or at least heard about it. Right. And, and can these Can we still get that book? Scott? Is it still available?

Scott Fresener 
It's available as a download now, in the day, when the book first came out, st publications, which is screenprint e magazine, they they had, they have a book, they had a book division. And they approached me. And they started buying tickets out 1000 copies at a time. I mean, it was really a cash cow. Because we would print the book for three or $4 wholesale it for eight or $9. And so st was just buying books right left, because they were selling to all the screenprint suppliers, suppliers, guys are sellings. And so these guys were throwing the book in if you want to buy a shop set up, they throw my book in. So the book started off, we would do maybe 10,000 copies a year. And that was pretty steady for a long time. But then you know, this thing called YouTube came out, whatever I'm trying to think was 10 or 15 years ago, maybe it wasn't 15 years ago. But all of a sudden, in the last 15 years, book sales just started slipping. People just were not buying books as much.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, people stop reading.

Scott Fresener
They did, they did

Marshall Atkinson
People like me continue to read.

Scott Fresener 
Look at your bookshelf behind you. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
But a lot of people will also audio thing you guys can't see my bookshelf, but I have lots of books behind me. And trust me, I read them all right. And so the I read, you know, our book a week, something like that, you know, I read out constantly and but I think the curious thing here is that with YouTube, you know, not a lot of people are reading right. And I think kind of the challenge with that though, is when you're watching a video, sometimes you're like, if you read a book, maybe you retain the information better, right? And not everything can be had from a video and and also, not all the videos on YouTube will just put it this way, or as accurate as they should be

Scott Fresener 
I cringe sometimes, but you really it's hard to go back and reference it you know, with a book you go back and reference it you find the chapter you want find the page you want read that again, that paragraph that says do this do that. And, and so but but if so the problem was to do a print run of like 10,000 books, that'd be 30 or $40,000 out of Scott and pass pocket to warehouse those books for and sell them over the next year. Couldn't do now

Marshall Atkinson 
they have a you know, you can their print on demand just like with T shirts, they print and books, right. So

Scott Fresener 
I thought about that. And then I thought you know, because we used to sell to Amazon and Amazon was selling 1500 books a year, nice little deal. But then a dropped with 1000 a year then dropped to 500 a year. And we're looking at going you know what, the screenprint suppliers have changed. They were not buying books anymore st was going through its own turmoil. And you know, they were having issues. And we decided we just we just couldn't afford it. Frankly, there's 12 hermetically sealed copies of the latest how to print t shirt book tucked away. So I made an ebook, and it's a download and I left I hadn't for free because I really wanted the book to not die because back to the marketing. If people got my book, they might buy my tea sets or my separation service. And so I gave the book away for two years for free on my website, and I had 40 embedded videos a stream off of my Amazon s3 account, you know, I mean, it was a clean deal. And so for two years I gave it away and then I thought about six months ago Screw that. I'm gonna start charging again for it. So now I'm charging 2995 And I Don't sell books. I mean, I saw one a month. But you know, it is what it is. Okay?

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, hey, if you want to if you're listening and want that book, just go, where are they going to go?

Scott Fresener 
They're gonna go to T hyphen biz bi Z network.com T biz network.com. That takes you to my store at all my, whatever a few products I have left. Okay,

Marshall Atkinson 
well, we'll do a plug thing at the end. But yeah, all right. All right. So let's shift gears. And I want to talk about one of the most amazing things. And this is kind of where I kind of intersected with you with my career and thinking is when the tea Jack came out, right? So and for those of you don't know, Scott was one of the originators of the whole DTG technology, with his platform, the TeeJet, right. And that's when I saw you at a trade show. And I was like, it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. We didn't actually buy one. But like we were, it was still amazing to me, right? And so like, where did that idea come from? Right. And then I specifically want you to talk about the whole thing with the white eight, because that's such a fantastic story. So kind of talk about getting that TeeJet, the whole, that whole idea launched, like just Where did all that come from?

Scott Fresener 
Why didn't the idea wasn't totally mine. I mean, people think I'm kind of the father of the DTG. And I am the one that took it to market. But a guy named Mark, Mark Mark head and Mark was was Bill kit, you know, and Mark is a good guy and engineer mark. Him and his brother had a patent on ink shedding directly on fingernails, it was called Imagine nail they made machines. And they made them. And Mark approached me in 2003. And I'm trying to think of probably an ISS show. And I didn't know Mark and Mark walked in my booth and says, you know, I have a patent on this thing for extending on nails. Have I been looking at this t shirt business? I think I can make a machine that'll inkjet directly on a shirt. Are you interested? And of course, again, Scott Fraser ultimately, the the king of entrepreneurs is going, where do I sign up? And so Mark and I talked and it became obvious that at that time, he didn't have a lot of money. So I bought an inkjet printer and sent it to mark in Florida. And he was going to build a printer. We had kind of a rudimentary contract, a very basic contract. But going in, I told Mark from day one, I'm going to find the ink and I'm going to I'm going to I need to control the ink. You can make the printer you can manufacture for me, I'll buy the printers from you, but I'm going to sell the ink. Okay, no problem. Six months later, there's no printer yet. And I'm kind of freaking out. I'm going you know, I got a show coming up and I don't really plan booth space. You know how it is. shows, you know, way out. And no printer. So I fly to Florida. He shows me a very basic and I'm not banging on Mark by the way, the guy the guy, the guy was the one that got me going on this. He showed me a very rude, rudimentary, you know, metal put together no case printer printing on a piece of wood is on his kitchen table. And I'm like, Ah, man, this is this taken a long time. And he says that my brother and I've been talking we want to sell the ink. I said with the handshake. Thank you very much. It's been nice. I flew back to Phoenix, with my tail between my legs. And I went online and I started searching for anyone that made an inkjet printer designed to not depend on on flat material, not on paper. And I found a company in Japan called mastermind mastermind made a variety of different printers designed for printing on paper and cardboard. And they didn't print on shirts. I mean, they they didn't offer it that way. I contacted them. They just

Marshall Atkinson 
don't think of that application. I don't know why he was really weird.

Scott Fresener 
I mean, I guess I have no idea. But I think they were busy. I ended up going to their factory a couple that I was their biggest customer when all the dust settled. I contacted them. They sent me to a guy in LA who was their agent. 10 days later, I had had one of their small machines, which was the t jet one. And when flown in I paid I think it was eight or $900 for the freight because I knew that this was going to be a big deal. And I booked the booth at the 2004 SGA show in Minneapolis specifically to show what I was going to do get the machine in. And of course it's got a regular inkjet ink in it. And so we're kind of scrambling to find ink. And I contacted DuPont because I was online again God God thank God for the internet and found that DuPont had an ink called artistry. And it was for large format, roller oil textiles. I sent him a note and I said I want to have a machine that's going to print using a small format desktop inkjet printer. Will your ink work in those heads? And next thing you know a guy named Grant French who used to be my dealer because we were selling filming shot film. He had his own little company in California, selling my rip and my film I knew grant he says, Hey, I'm working for DuPont now. What do you need? Yes. So, so grant checks with the text. They say yes, Ra should work in a small format desktop printer, printer head, sent me some ink. And we printed a shirt. And we're like, we made a holder to hold the shirt down on this little inkjet printer. And it printed yet like a jacket clamp got like a jacket clamp. Exactly. And it printed it printed beautifully. And we're like, holy crap. It wasn't very bright. So we realized that we needed to go into the Epson driver because we had no report at that point, going the Epson driver, do the increased saturation, maybe print the image twice. It was a thing of beauty. And the inks worked have to get to take a heat press to cure them. But we forgot that was no big deal. I do remember vividly, we got the shirt on a press because I realized the dryer is not long enough really, really wasn't right for the regular t shirt dryer. So I look at reconfigure. How are we going to cover the shirt and keep the the ink from smearing? Well, in the day when I was a screen printer, I made billions of transfers using a paper called parchment commonly known as a baking pan liner. And so we went to the baking Supply Company here in Phoenix bought some baking pan lanner. And there's a lot of things people don't know that they do today that came out of us out of us screen busters thinking how can we do this? How can we do that? So bottom line was the printer worked. I called it a fugit. We did a manual for it. The first year we sold 1000 units. We showed it at the show in Minneapolis in 2004. It was khornate and us coordinate was $180,000 for this big blue you saw you saw them the big blue huge tank. We were there for $12,000 Who do you think sold the most printers? Right? Yeah. And you know, I'm not banging on corny because they they had staying power and they had no money and I feel bad now because they're an Israeli company who knows what's going on down there. But we sold the hell out of it. And I was convinced at that time seriously that I was going to kill screen printing. I really had my head up my rear I was I was thinking this is going to be the screenprint killer. Because for a white shirt ink costs were maybe 1520 cents at that. But we knew we needed weinig. So we knew that that was going to be the the brass ring was waiting. I was buying from DuPont, I was back at DuPont every couple of months I became their biggest customer in their little tiny inkjet division. So I wasn't big in du Pont's overall scheme. But in their inkjet division, I was their guy. And because we were buying a lot of ink, and I kept banging on him about whitening. So I remember vividly one of my last meetings before the white developed was we need to talk about white and they're going Scott, we don't want to talk about white. We've told you we can't do it. We will have white in your lifetime. They told me we cannot make an inch of windy Yes, yeah. But you know you're the pot you know about titanium dioxide.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, in the problem is it clogs the like the old can of pain, a clog around the nozzle, and it just,

Scott Fresener 
it's got a particle. It's a problem. Yeah, it's got a particle and it's called co2, the titanium dioxide and, and so they're saying we keep telling the sky, we were talking about colors. I said, DuPont, I can buy CMYK now from a variety of companies, Roman Haas and other guys now have textile ink that's do CMYK. So I can buy it elsewhere, too. I was no fly. DuPont can't make white. And they're going well, we can't do it. Well, in that meeting was a guy named Scott Ellis. And if you see the original DuPont patent for their white ink, Scott Ellis is the patent or the patent holders. And a week later, Scott calls me on the phone. You know, I think I can make it. He says they don't want to put a dime into any kind of r&d. They don't want to make it any kind of a priority. But it says I've been thinking about it, he says but they'll have to pretreat the shirt. And I'm like, crap. I know my customer is a screener. He's not going to be spraying any pretreat on a shirt. It's going to be a deal killer. He says, Well, if they don't pretreat the shirt, it won't work. But if the pretreat a shirt, I think I can do it. And he says I'll make some goop up off the books. And I'll send you some stuff to play with. And a week later I got this Canis stuff and I got this pretreat and we put the pretreat in like a like a perfume bottle. We didn't know you know what we're how we're going to spray a pretreat on a shirt and put the ink in a refillable ink cartridge, make a print, and it was gray. But it was gray. You know, it was it was not just the black shirt, it was gray on a shirt and we find out we can print it again twice. maybe open up the floodgates to you know with the Epson dry we're treating it as a color making more saturation. And we had almost white and then DuPont kind of got on board and they started and they started making it for us So in September of, I think 2006. Now, I SS Dallas, I wanted to show the YT that because we had been playing with it for a couple months, and DuPont says you can't show it, we haven't got our patent provisional patent done yet. You can't show it. But we're close. You can have it in your machine if you want, but you cannot show it. So the morning of the show, I this one is dates in infamy. 2006, September 16. I remember the date, they call me before the show opened, we got our patent provisional patent, and you can show it. And that's when we first show the white ink. And people were going nuts. I'm telling you, we thought we found nirvana. But you know, the truth is we found out we found a lot of hell. Because even though we knew that the ink would settle in the in the cartridge, because it's got the the particle that co2 particle and we knew what settle and we knew that it was abrasive. And we told people you need to maintain the machine, you need to run the machine, you need to do a sure today, even if you're not if it's not for an order, you need to shake the cartridge, shake the hands. Nobody did it. When we were in our prime and getting machines back for refurbish, or whatever people would swear I swear I maintained it. And their machine would come in with ink all over the capping station clog white ink ink everywhere. Oh, yeah, I maintained it. We learned real fast that you can tell somebody all day long, and they gotta have that humidity level, right? And maintain it and clean it, it ain't gonna happen in many cases. A

Marshall Atkinson 
lot of times God when we say we clean, right? What's the version of clean? Like? I'll tell you, my wife and I have different versions of what is clean. All right. So I'm sure that's the same thing here with these machinists. It is my says, Hey, I cleaned it. Okay. Well, you didn't clean it the way it needed to be clean. Yes, you you may have cleaned it right after that. I mean, it was the way it needed to be handled. Right. And this is where a preventive maintenance process. Really, I think we got wheat from the chaff for a lot of people with DTG technology and

Scott Fresener 
my checklist. And we. And the other problem, though, was, you know, my class was all startups, people that are you know, as you joke me said, you know, you got to get away from doing print shirts for your friends and your family and stuff. Well, I bet a third of my students over the years, were just like that, Hey, Mom, let's start a business. This guy's got a class in Arizona, it'd be really cool. Well, it was the same thing with DTG. Look at that machine, and we'll print shirts, let's start a business. But they had no business. And he did not have a business. So the machine was set for weeks or months. So they bought the machine and they were the wrong, we we cracked the screen our customers, at least, to see what your plan is. But people would buy him and they would sit in the corner in the garage, or they'd be in a hot Arizona garage, you know, during the summertime. And so that was even now if you go to the DTG forums, you you hear people say, Oh, it wasn't the right thing for me. I wasn't quite ready when I bought it, you know, people that are selling them. And that those people are still out there. And I get it, they go to a trade show. And they see somebody like me doing my wham bam, Thank you, ma'am. You know, this isn't this cool, and they're gonna walk. And it's pretty great that machines are hot, let's buy it with no idea how they're going to sell shirts, you know. And so I think that's still the problem. Probably the problem with DTF people that probably go to a show now and see a DTF machine and go wow, this is really cool. Let's let's add it to our business with no idea how they're going to do it. But that was the waiting story. We we sold in the day. 4000 machines, at least. And we did then move on and start to building our own machine we bought from Japan, and we had an exclusive with Japan. And it was through their through their agent. And next thing you know, a couple of years later, the Japanese were very nice guys, I went to to the factory a couple of times, we were the number one customer I mean, they can barely keep up with our orders. But they came to visit us and you know what the gift, you know how it is versus Here's your gift. But we're so sorry, you know, the agents making too much money, we're not making enough money, we're gonna start to sell to other people. And that was like that was it. And I was probably very rude. I shouldn't have been rude. But you know, one of the things that we have an exclusive where the guys and all of a sudden they come in and they personally came to tell me that they were they were going to start selling other people. So we started hunting around for another manufacturer and being in the US and being in Tempe and kind of an industrial area. We found a company right across the street who was making industrial motors and we approach them and so we started making the machine with some help from other people in house. And so we sold the t jet blazer then DuPont had a big machine called the artistry. That was a big role. Roll. We customize that to print furnitures. In our, I showed that at four shows that machine was torn to $50,000, just to sell. And we sold three. The problem was I screwed up being the ultimate entrepreneur, the white ink was too much money, any contract printer would never want to pay a buck or a buck and a half just for the white. You know, he's used to paying, you know, his quarter for the plastisol or less. And so we were before the company close working on what you see now, you know, combining screen printing and ink shedding. But we ran out of money digital hybrid. Yeah, we ran out of money. I talked to rich Hoffman way before he retired way before they had a machine that we needed to get together and we could partner. But Rich didn't have anything to do with it. He said. And then a couple years later, they came out with a digital squeegee. I wasn't pleased I was I was pleased, you know. And I'm pleased was pleased that people Sony was one of the first users compete with one of my my first my one of my youngest students was Pitbull, Sony. And so Pete I've been I have great history. And so I was glad that somebody was doing it. And now everybody's got, you know, some sort of digital squeegee.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? So let's just remove the whole print platform and the whole experience out of it. What did you learn from trying to launch a business? Right? Where you had to invent some things? And you might not know, you kind of know there's a problem. But you know that the answer is beyond your skill level or capability. And you got to find the answer. Right? So what did you learn from that experience? That's kind of a takeaway, that maybe a listener can, like, adapt that to maybe whatever problem they're trying to solve. They're either not inventing a printer, but they're trying to solve a problem. Like, you reaching out to other people. Right? And that's kind of where I'm going with this. Yeah. Did you? What did you learn? That was the probably the biggest takeaway from that whole thing.

Scott Fresener 
I think, be more humble, put your put your entrepreneurial hat away a little bit. And don't be afraid, because you're not an entrepreneur will typically, if you ask them, if they have a new idea for a product, if you come up with that objection, or that will have you thought about this, with an entrepreneur, it's always Oh, no, that, you know, that won't happen. I think an entrepreneur gets tunnel vision. And then you think you can you can kill. And your idea is just the best idea ever, you know, and so I think entrepreneurs need to look for professional advice, I should have brought in an HF expert. You know, we're screenprint guys, whatever, no, but he has. And so I shouldn't have brought in an inkjet guy. And somebody that knew about inkjet heads, large format, especially, and I didn't I think we thought we were we were pretty cocky. And I think that if you look at this industry, and you'll see people that come and go, and we came and went, you know, we were we were a stare for a long time. But we grew pretty, real fast. We Mistakes were made, and the market change. And then the economy crashed, and we weren't strong enough financially to withstand the crash of 2008, late 2008. If you recall, you know, you couldn't borrow money. The banks were going broke, guys are jumping out of windows. And so we were we were leveraged and our customers were were leasing machines, you couldn't get a lease to save your soul back in October, November, December. Well, my company back then was doing almost $2 million a month in sales. I mean, our last big year in business, we did $21 million. You can't afford to have sales, like get cut in half. Because you have infrastructure, you got employees, you got rent, you know. And so I think I wish I would have been a little a little smarter, I would have maybe step back and watch the growth. I've advised a couple guys in this industry, since my my downfall, to just be careful. And not they haven't listened.

Marshall Atkinson 
Just I think, especially this industry, because a lot of equipment is made by you know, made in your house, or your garage, or your outbuilding, or whatever. Yeah, there's a lot of DIY, kind of a mentality that we have where I can figure it out, right. And, and it's really hard to raise your hand and ask for help and say you don't know something, because somehow that taints you. Right. And oh, your ego gets in the way. Yeah, yeah. And and and I'll tell you, the people, I think that have really done really well in this industry, they get to a certain point. And then they start bringing in people because they know they're not an accountant, or they know they're they need better art or they know they need help with a workflow, which is what I did, right? Or they whatever they need, they, they need some certain amount of help. And they're going to raise your hand and get that and help them solve that. And if you don't solve it, that's where your head hits the ceiling. And you can never get past wherever that point is. Yeah, it's

Scott Fresener 
it's it's hard. Yeah. Entrepreneurs have Got big ego, I think. And so you're afraid to admit that maybe you don't know everything because you think you're pretty smart? And look, look at my company, we're doing 21 million in sales, you know, what is my training to run a $21 million company. And you know, my wife is handling the finances. You know, neither one of us had training other than on the job. And we should have brought in probably, although we did try hiring a couple of times, like managers and people that kind of be the the GM, and I was always quick to let the fire if it wasn't working out, I found out sometimes these guys may have a good resume. And they may have worked for big companies. But they but they don't bring that entrepreneurial side of things that maybe they were there. Maybe they were right, who knows, I look back and think about my writing my firings? Right, right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, so hey, let's round out today to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is art, right. As you know, I'm a former art director, and I love doing art and graphic designing and whatever, right. And I know that you've been helping folks with their artwork and their separations and kind of legal since way back, right? We talked about that a minute ago, right? So here's a question for you, right? I just get this feeling that fewer and fewer people in this industry really actually know the design and art part of it, it just seems like they're ill equipped. They don't know how to do separations. They don't understand what it really takes to get a really great looking image onto the substrate somehow, whether that's digital or even screen printing, right? Am I crazy? He's got?

Scott Fresener 
No, it's, I think you said they don't, I don't think they know if it's a good looking image. I had a guy this morning, I was on the phone with that kind of AI program. And he showed me a job he had he had done, and I'm looking at him thinking, wow, I would have tweaked that I would have, I would have made little minor adjustments so that it looked better. But I think at the end of the day, he probably is going to print the shirts and the customer will be pretty happy. And he'll never know that it could have been a lot better. And so I find that they you're kind of right, they want you to videos, but in in my case, many of my customers from my separations are owner operator, you know, they're bringing screens, they're printing shirts, you know, they're wearing all these hats, and to be a separator or even how to tweak bad art. Then they're not those guys, they shouldn't be doing it their day job before it might have been, you know, a construction where there's there's no art skill, you know, and then they, as we joked earlier, the kids come home with some shirts, and they go, Wow, that'd be a fun business. And they realize that all those hard hat experiences have nothing to do other than building your own press, clean screens, maybe, you know, so. So I wish that there was more steel back to nuts and bolts articles in the trade magazines on how to fix a bad piece of art. But those articles don't exist. We talked earlier that the editors of the magazines don't really know, the ins, okay. They're, they're, they're college trained, you know, and they're editors, and they, they went to journalism school, but they didn't know the industry used to kill me when I send an article, and they would try and change a few words, and they would have no clue about terms that we use, they would change things around. So it flowed better. And I'm like, that is you just said it incorrectly. You ended it. And now it's wrong, you know. So I think if people could take a little more arc, I don't know, there's, you know, there's a zillion YouTube videos, but as you said earlier, there's some of them are marginal. But I still get in that piece of a Ghasemi a thing that maybe a new customer, that's a two inch graphic that he took off of Google image, you know, that 72 dpi. And it's, it's was probably vector at one time, but now two inches, and it's 72 dpi, and you blow it up, you don't have any hard edges. And I still get that kind of stuff in it. It kind of I don't know.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, I think there's some amazing tools that have just come out, right, so you've got mid journey, or all the other AI image platforms that I think that allow people to create better art, so they don't have to steal it from, you know, some, you get that crappy 72k file from somewhere where you can create something really nice. And then you've got a software like gigapixel, which is what I write Yeah. And then I'll actually use this AI to fill in the gaps, where is it? And that can really help you blow up a file. And so these are the type of tools I think, more people if you haven't heard about them, they need to be using them just to kind of play around in that and learn. Learn how to to get a better image, of course, because ultimately, whether you're screen printing or digitally printing it or you know, whatever you're doing with it. It can really help you get to the end result faster if you've got, you know, a skill set on using these tools. There's

Scott Fresener 
some great tools that you're right. There's some great stuff out there, but I don't think get these guys, I don't think the industry does a good job of letting people know about it. Either you do a good job, you're probably the you're probably the number one flagbearer, you know, out there, you know, trying to get people into AI and stuff. But I think in general, the average guy is in his shop, he's in a small town, he's got a burn screens, and he's not even reading the any trades, and the trades now are digital, and it's even hard to read on your computer, I think sometimes, you know, you got to zoom in, zoom out. It's not the old days, when you could read a nice little tech article and go back and review it. I think the average guy is overloaded, you know, and he's got competition, he's got to buy shirts, and this guy's out of this. This guy's out of Smalls. And that's his biggest worry, I think oftentimes is the steps and the artwork is the last thing you think about, you know, so that's, this

Marshall Atkinson 
is why like, you know, as a, as a coach, one of the things I get into a lot, is, what is your time worth? Right? So as if you're a solopreneur, which a lot of people are, maybe they got two or three people in their shop, you know, what is everybody working on? What are you working on. And so there's so many platforms and tools out there, where, you know, like, you like yours, right? You could send the art file, you could send the the art curation to somebody else, they can be doing that for you. So you can be concentrating on sales, or accounting or printing or whatever you really need to be doing instead of the stuff that you might not be a really good graphic designer, a separator, right? And this is how you get more done in a day. Right. But I think people need to get past the fact that they have to wear 16 hats. So

Scott Fresener 
I agree. That's the entrepreneur that comes out and they want to do it all. I mean, I, I charge $75 For steps. And there's other you know, Dr. Dan probably gets 75 or 90 or 100. Yeah, there's all kinds of us guys out there. And I think $75 is nothing. Because I know some of these guys that don't have either my program or just our loot during if what they learned online, they might take two or three hours doing it because they want to and they're gonna save the 75 bucks, save,

Marshall Atkinson 
they save the money. But what is your time worth an hour? No

Scott Fresener 
pisser piss away 75 bucks, you know, and get steps in that are going to work from somebody, whether it be me or Dan or anybody out there. And you know, but it's an odd deal. I get people that come that come back, they use my service for a while, then they'll then they'll they'll disappear for a few months, then they come back around. And I know what happened. They went elsewhere. Maybe it wasn't as good or they went to some overseas late place. So didn't really understand how to separate for T shirts. Yeah, fiber. Yeah. I mean, there's somebody's guys out there they're offering, I get occasional jobs. And when people send me the steps to look at to fix, and I really won't fix somebody steps, but I like to look at him. Because I go, Why the hell did they do it like that? Why did they do this, I look at these steps and go, these steps aren't going to work. And I know they came from either a company that does vectorization you know, and they they do all this stuff, you know, but they haven't got a clue about where there's lots of gradations and photorealism. They understand spot colors. And so it always, always kind of kills me. But I still do steps every day. I mean, I the rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. I don't go to as many shows, but I'm doing sets every day. I'm talking to screeners every day, you know. And so I'm in the trenches, I just don't show myself as much because the shows, as you know, have changed a little bit. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
And I think one of the things that I know from speaking with other separators is the fact that a lot of folks just don't have a decent screen room, right? They don't have good tension. They don't understand mesh counts. They don't understand, you know, how to do a seven step test, right? They're just like dial in their exposure, right? So how, what's the smallest dot they can keep they that's a foreign idea to them, right? Oh, and so they're like, your steps don't work. It's like, well, you can't keep a 15% dot. Yeah, they do work, right.

Scott Fresener 
And I say send me a picture. And it doesn't it takes me one blink of an eye to look at that picture and go Well, okay, they held nothing lower than 20. Yeah, right. And then you got to go back and be and that's okay. Because I know that I have a lot of customers now that are really good printers that weren't good printers until they until they met me and started having my steps and having to really dial it in because for spot color, you know what the heck, you could probably put everything on one hand. And you know, for a lot of designs, and it's going to be a spot color on a shirt. But when I say to somebody give me three Oh fives and you know that you can just tell on the phone. They go 305 Like that's a foreign language. Yeah. 292 30 you know, what's your what's your highest mesh count? Well, I get a lot of 160s you know, and and then when you tell them they need to buy some higher meshes. I saw a thing today though, somebody on one of the Facebook groups, somebody asked a question about his inks being his prints being heavy. And I was surprised all the answers had to do with ink viscosity that not a single answer had to do with me. should count.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's the problem with getting advice from a Facebook group. It's every Facebook group doesn't know what they're doing

Scott Fresener 
either, right? Yeah, hit home. Nobody asks about mesh. And to me, the first thing I'd be is, you know, get away from

Marshall Atkinson 
your screen tension, right either. Yes. But so why, like, why are you why are you indexing to print? Right? Like, what's up with that? Right? And they, you know, oh, I had to hit it four times. Right?

Scott Fresener 
Yeah, I know. It's an interesting, interesting business. And we shouldn't bang. I mean, you know, we shouldn't bang on people. I know

Marshall Atkinson 
when you're asleep. They don't know what they don't know. But the position this the reason why it's frustrating for, you know, me and you and other people is because they're not interested in learning. And they present themselves as a knowledgeable source. Yeah. As soon as you respond on that Facebook group that you here's the answer, but the answer isn't correct. That's just the crazy thing. Right? And everybody believes it, because it's posted right there.

Scott Fresener 
See, I want to say buy my book, because my book, all that in it about how critical mesh tension all that stuff is. But anyway, it is what it is, you know, it's a it's a new world.

Marshall Atkinson 
stuff isn't a secret, Scott,

Scott Fresener
it's not a secret. It's not a secret at all? No. So anyway, well,

Marshall Atkinson 
cool. Hey, thank you so much for sharing your story. As successful as today, Scott, what's the best way to contact you as someone wants to learn more about what you do? Or how you can help them?

Scott Fresener 
The best way is email. And I say that because, you know, it's a new world. And I get, you know, every every couple days a text message. And it's hard for me to categorize. I know I can, I could probably do it, but I'm an email junkie. And I think maybe that's old school, but as Scott SEO TT at TBIZ network.com, Scott thebest network.com. My separation, if you go to my website, Scott, t dash biz network.com. It links to my steps, program T steps, it links to my separation service, it links to my book, the links are all there. And if you really want to be my buddy, check out my band shine on floyd.com. If you're old like me, you probably like Pink Floyd. And that's my new release.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, hold on. Let me ask it because you know the answer. This is Dark Side of the Moon still, number one.

Scott Fresener 
Number one, but it's been on Billboard's Top 200 for like 900 weeks or whatever the day was, you know, Roger Waters brought out a redo version of Dark Side of the Moon and it sucks. Oh, is anybody? It's real moody. No, anyway. But you know, it's funny. How many guys in this business got into because they were in a band? Ran more half was a bass

Marshall Atkinson 
band. Yeah.

Scott Fresener 
Ryan Moore was a bass player Ryan Moore was selling my how to print book and a little startup kit. That's how Arranmore Ryan it got in this business. Riley Hopkins was a bass player. I think it's all bass player. I'm a bass player. But just every time you mentioned that I mentioned a band when I'm just talking to somebody in the industry. Oh, yeah. I'm in a band or I played in the band. And so it's funny how many guys got in this business? Because they were in a band. Right?

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, you know, it's a music focus thing. And we have a lot of guys that do that. It's it's kind of fun, right? Yeah. And they used to be at all industry bands, right, James or Lonnie? And

Scott Fresener 
was in that it was James Ortolani. And Michael Fraser was in it. Bob Alabaster, who passed was it was in it, it kind of rotated but we were the last incarnation James Ortolani is always commenting that we need to get the get the band back together. Because we played a lot of the conventions but now the conventions don't have that big mixer anymore. They have maybe, you know, something grand bigger than the than the oil industry band, but used to be at impressions. They would have a nice mixer and the oil industry band would play and anyway, it was it was a fun time. Maybe the band will get back together.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, maybe. Alright. Well, hey, thank you so much Scott really appreciate you.

Scott Fresener 
My pleasure. Listen, I we will last time I saw you in person. I think we were smoking cigars and drinking after drinking after hours.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Those are fun times, then we should do that more often.

Scott Fresener 
All right. I'll see you. I'll see. I'll see you at the ISS in January. All right, see? All right. Thanks, Marshall.

Marshall Atkinson
Well, that's our show today. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, so you can stay up to date on the latest Success Stories episodes. have any suggestions for future guests or topics? send them my way and Marshall and Marshall atkinson.com And we'll see you next time.