Success Stories Ep 107 - "Printing a Stack with Zach!"

If you were in the deco network ecosphere, you're probably well aware of Zach Dewhurst; he's everywhere with that software. But did you know that he also runs his own decorated apparel company and has roots that go back years?

In this episode of Success Stories, we'll focus on that. We'll explore his background as a decorator and entrepreneur and chat about how he sees things as his presence is global. So get ready!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
If you were in the deco network ecosphere, you're probably well aware of Zach Dewhurst. He's everywhere with that software. But did you know that he also runs his own decorated apparel company and has roots that go back years. In this episode of Success Stories, we'll focus on that. We'll explore his background as a decorator and entrepreneur and chat about how he sees things as his presence is global. So get ready. Here we go. So Zach, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Zach Dewhurst 
Thanks, Marshall for having me.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I'm pretty excited about having you on the show, because I don't think a lot of people know actually what you do all day.

Zach Dewhurst 
So I do a lot of things. I start my day with a two and a four year old and just Yeah, burn that midnight candle. You know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. There is no such thing as a Saturday, you know. So you just when you're young and stupid, but, you know, I'm 35 on Monday, so I can't claim to be young anymore. That's I think you're young when you're in your 20s, and then once you have that child and you're in your 30s, it's, it's all downhill.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, happy birthday. Zach So, and I love the getting started being a dad, right? And as I'm a dad, and I love being a dad, so that's really great. So best thing in my life is being a dad.

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah, you learn a lot through being a parent that applies to your business and vice versa. You know, my business was my baby for years, but now my babies are my babies, so you have to find the time way more for them instead of Yeah, I almost would say, in a weird way, I lost a little bit of ambition at the same time. I became a parent, but I came a parent a month before the pandemic, so it was a very crazy time. And I feel like my whole Yeah, world's been warped. I think a lot of us. You know, everything's been different since 2020.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, you know my my son is 20 and in college. And something you'll find out when your kids get older is just how little about the world you understand according to your kids. So it's amazing I can put pants on, I guess, for this point of view. Alright, so let's get ready with some questions. You ready?

Zach Dewhurst 
Fire away.

Marshall Atkinson 
So Zach, how did you get started in this crazy circus that we call the decorate apparel industry? What made you want to do this instead of anything else you've could have done in your life?

Zach Dewhurst 
Well, few different things. You know, growing up, I was a big sports fan, and one thing I saw was everybody's all these professional athletes, have you know, their name, their number. And I always thought that was really cool, that customization aspect. And I always wondered, how did they do that? And in college, before I went to the Ohio State University, you have to drop that "the" in there, Marshall IO but when I was getting my marketing degree from Ohio State my freshman year, I had a job lined up at a t shirt shop, and we didn't do any printing. We just it was a fan store. We sold T shirts. And really we we just killed it on eight game days a year, and then during the summer, it was dead as door nails, because nobody's on campus. But being in that retail atmosphere, they let us buy things at cost. And once I started to see, oh, wait, we're selling a t shirt for this, and it's costing us this much to print. I've always wanted to start my own business, and I think everybody's going to always need shirts. So I was looking, you know, I really wanted to start a business, and I wanted something that was, you know, obviously kind of safe, and apparel is again, till people stop wearing shirts, it's not going anywhere. So. So my freshman year, I worked at that retail store, and my freshman going into sophomore year, I really was determined to pull the trigger, so I quit working at the t shirt store, bought a heat press, bought a vinyl cutter, and my best friend through childhood, his dad owned a restaurant, and I knew that that restaurant sold a decent amount of shirts. I mean, they were selling around 30 shirts a week. It's not bad for a restaurant, but they were missing, you know, opportunities, and they had been recently featured on the Travel Channel and the Food Network, and I think the Travel Channel had it like the 34th tastiest place to eat in the country at the time, and it's a kind of a little bit of a dive bar. Not a lot of seating, easily on a daily night. For weeks after one of those episodes would run Marshall, they'd have a two and a half hour wait. I don't know about you, but I'm not waiting two and a half hours for a meal. It just doesn't make sense. But if you're going to wait two and a half hours, you're probably going to buy a t shirt, potentially you're you're going to be forced to be around that display case for hours. And if it's worth the wait, you're probably going to get that souvenir. So before you know it, we're selling 100 120 shirts a week, and it's just great income as a part time student. So I did that with a few different local businesses. Really liked showing them, Hey, your customer is paying to market your business like that restaurant, most restaurants make their money off of the drinks the food is you're often barely making anything. The margins are very slim. So this restaurant was famous for selling a burger. Well, that burger, you know, was being sold for 1012, bucks. And between their costs, they were making more money off of a T shirt. And it's a walking billboard. I printed the shirt, so I was constantly wearing them throughout the city. And, you know, you get stopped all the time. Oh, I need to go there and buy, you know, eat there. So, you know, that was the angle I really approached when I first started again. I majored in marketing. I just really liked the idea of a company promoting themselves through apparel, especially if, again, the customer is willing to pay for it. So that's how I started. Essentially, my sophomore year, I had that ideal client to at least help me get my feet wet, learn the industry, play around with a few things, and then I started go down this path of let's buy equipment. And before I got into the industry, one of my best friends growing up, his dad owned a company called Rapid Promotional Printing, or Marketing, Rapid Promotional Marketing RPM, because he was a racing guy, and he told me, Don't touch a product. Just outsource everything, and don't get distracted with buying all this equipment. And you know, being 20, 21, at the time, I completely ignored him.

Marshall Atkinson 
He didn't listen. How, how could it be to print that shirt?

Zach Dewhurst 
Well, you know, I think most of us, back then, we, everybody starts with a heat press that that I think should be the the if you're going to buy equipment, the first thing you buy is a heat press. It's the easiest piece of equipment to use. And today, with DTF, it's just a no brainer, right? But it's been that way for decades. So I had your hate press. I bought the, you know, roll in GS 24 cutter, and I was cutting vinyl. You know, you're doing one name number at a time. That's a, you know, the but, but the big thing I was doing for the restaurant was, I did buy plastics all transfers, you know, I went to Transfer Express, like a lot of startup shops, and, you know, would just get those transfers printed. All I have to do is heat, press some keep it simple. Well, my, you know, one of my roommates at the time was like, You should buy your own screen printing equipment. And again, I'm, I'm in, you know, a college campus house that 100 literally 100 years old. So I buy a manual press, and I've got the exposure unit in the basement, the wash up rooms in the basement, our whole dining room is now a manual screenprint shop set up, and I've got cords running throughout the entire house because, again, it's 100 years old. So I'm learning how to screen print, essentially, in the campus house, and we start printing, you know, those shirts primarily ourselves, not easy to. Do When You're a full time student, you know, you're just you're trying to get that piece of paper. I'm glad I did, but I'm a firm believer that, you know, a degree doesn't mean a whole lot, especially if you're an entrepreneur. I can't tell you how many shop owners I've worked with that dropped out, and they're like a Steve Jobs, where they've got a 50 person operation, and they're my age at 35 and it's but again, not not putting down a degree, but where I really got my education from Marshall was being a part of a entrepreneurship group in college called the Business Builders Club, and it was just a bunch of aspiring entrepreneurs at Ohio State, and it really we all kind of pushed each other, you know, we all had our own story, and some of them were very successful even, you know, at 2021, so that that's where I really learned a lot, was being in that entrepreneurship club. And you know, was was buying equipment. 2011 Marshall is when I probably took the biggest risk, and I bought a Brother, 782 DTG printer. And this was the big tank before they you primarily started seeing the single platense come out.

Marshall Atkinson 
Is this while you were still in college?

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that was, what, 35 grand?

Zach Dewhurst 
Oh, I wish it was 35 grand. This was 50, 55, at the time.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. So that's a lot of money for a college kid. Yeah, I a lot of money for an established business, but yeah, guy in college, right? That's like, Oh my god.

Zach Dewhurst 
Big mistake. Big mistake.

Marshall Atkinson 
You could've had a really nice car Zach.

Zach Dewhurst 
I could have. And I just, well, this is also the days before you know, you had your printfuls, printifies. This is when your Zazzle, your Cafe press were killing it, and custom ink was, you know, coming about as well. But, yeah, yeah. And what I really the, the bigger mistake was Marshall, like, three months after I got the thing, brother comes out with, I think it was the GT3 as what they called it a graffiti print. They kept renaming it, but it was like, literally three months out. Here's a single plot and for half the price. Yeah, I, you know, the cliche is, everything happens in life for a reason. Marshall, I've made so many mistakes, but those mistakes have also led to opportunities that I wouldn't have had otherwise, you know, I would not be doing what I do with deco network without taking some of these risks and learning from them and being able to convey from an angle that relates to deco network users. But yeah, I buying that equipment was way, you know, like when somebody talks about DTF, and it's like, I can buy a forehead DTF printer with installation for under 15k that is nothing compared to what I, you know, dropped on this DTG printer, right? But you live and you learn. Can't, can't dwell on the mistakes. But we did. We did do a lot of DTG, I mean,

Marshall Atkinson 
it's not a mistake. It's tuition. You were in college, so it's double tuition.

Zach Dewhurst 
Well, how do you think I financed it, too, the student loans, but well, and at the time, Marshall, I, you know, I started the business by myself, and I had a good friend growing up that I'd known since I was six, and, you know, to to make it all worth it and to justify, you know, financing the printer and so forth. I brought on a business partner, and he had a great skill set, but it was just we were not on the same page when it came to work ethic, and it just didn't work. I you know, I think a lot of us, just one, we talked about all the time, don't, don't hire friends family. It typically, it rarely works. It rarely works. You try to start in that warm market. Ideally, I would have found somebody at Ohio State who, again, wanted to be a business owner. There are many times that I have said, You know what, I'd rather own 50% of something that's worth X amount of dollars, than 100% of something that's not worth as much. You know I I tore a lot of shops these days, Marshall, a lot of them are single owner. You know, no partnerships. But I'll tell you there, I've been in a lot of shops where, when there is more than one person to share that load, it helps. It can really help a lot. Again, that's not to say the. The way to be successful is, Hey, you can't do it by yourself. But, man, I often wish I had that partner back then, for many reasons. One, to talk me out of buying something that I probably shouldn't, would have been nice. You know, I, you know, we'll talk about it here in a little bit, but joining getting the Shirt Lab Tribe group. Man, if I, if you had that back then, Marshall, I would have really not done some of these things that I that these mistakes. That's why I think being a part of, you know, a private group that is there full of, you know, 200 years of experience on a single call can really go a long way and help one avoid some mistakes. You know, I was determined, because once I just now kind of dumb, I want to do everything in house to a degree. And I was, let's get an eco solvent printer a couple months ago on the Shirt Lab, you had somebody on there. It's like, I have one. I don't even use it because it's cheaper to outsource. And that that's something that, you know several times i i went the route of, let's master this decoration process. Instead of, let's go focus on selling and obtaining clients. I think it's, I think it's a mistake to think that equipment is what somebody wants to buy. If you sell your business that that's not a business. Equipment is not a business.

Marshall Atkinson 
Equipment is doesn't have, especially older equipment, really doesn't hold a lot of its value. But, and here's what I'll tell you, if you're you know, if you're buying equipment, one of the things that I always get my coaching clients to do is to write a little mini business plan just for that piece of equipment. How are you going to sell? How are you going to fill up a production schedule. Who is going to run it? What is the consumables and the parts? And, you know, what happens if it breaks down? Who are we going to call to come fix it? You Is it somebody local? You got to put them on a plane. I mean, like, what's the warranty situation? You know, whatever, whether this is new or used or what you know, you really need to know everything all around it. Because, you know, I I go to a fair number of businesses, and a lot of times there's that shiny object syndrome, and there's that thing over there in the corner that costs a lot of money, but it's never being used because the sales team doesn't sell to it, right? And this could be embroidery, this could be a heat press. This could be DTG, this could be a laser engraver. This could be whatever. Okay, you need to really have a plan. And how are you going to fill up a full day, every single day, with work? And if you can't figure that out, what I always suggest people to do is find a really good partner and then outsource all the production until you're so busy it's painful to keep doing it that way, right and and that way you you know how to sell it, and you can when you actually buy the thing, instantly, you've got work for somebody that either you're deploying over there, or you're going to hire that they can be doing that all day long, and you don't have to worry about it because you've built, you've built that sales hub for that piece of equipment. That's what I recommend all the time, is stuff like that.

Zach Dewhurst 
You know, I recommend it all the time, but then, you know, I don't actually practice what I preach. I'm a hypocrite when it comes to it, because I, I mean, I've said it for years, build up your demand until you can justify bringing something in house. And every year over the past, you know, 15 years since I joined the industry, it's gotten easier and easier to outsource. The websites have gotten better. I mean, everything, as far as the technology and efficiency, it's so easy to do. I'm asked every day, if you if you could start today, what would you I'd outsource everything. At minimum, I buy a heat press. I'd outsource DTF transfers. It's never been easier to compete with those giant shops because they're using the exact same product that you are, they're not having some special, fancy piece of equipment that you can't compete with. And, you know, I wouldn't even go beyond that most of the time, until you feel like bringing the transfers in house. And then, you know, embroidery, screen printing, there's a lot to learn. You know, I learned it was very difficult. And I really like your plan of making a business plan per deco process, also for that specific piece of equipment, if you buy a single head embroidery machine, you're not looking for that 200 piece job. You're trying to specialize in those lower runs. If you're if you got. A manual screen press. You know, it's a different than an auto not to say that, Hey, you can't outsource when you get that auto type of order, but yeah, letting your sales staff know, hey, this is this decoration process in the equipment we purchase specializes in this run or this type of product. And yeah, selling is more important than anything. Cash flow, bringing in orders, that is something that I didn't focus on as well as I should have, because I'm trying to master a decoration process myself. The shops I tour that are the most successful, that owner has no clue how to put ink on a product or embroidery onto a product. They just know that they bought the best for their employee. They're properly trained. And like you said, they have that plan in place if anything goes wrong, or, you know, just just working with with each other, but yeah, being a, being an owner, means, typically, you are focused on selling. In our industry, cash flow is key. Really doesn't matter what business it is. You've got to have that the funds coming in. Build a client you know, client book. You're if you go to sell the business. They're buying your client list, typically, more than anything, they're not buying the equipment necessarily in the shop. So I bought that DTG printer, and obviously needed to focus more on print on demand. That's what DTG really started pushing. You know, hey, we don't have to do these screen print type of orders where each color in the design brings up the price there. There's really no minimum. That's that's the big thing DTG brought to the market. So this, again, is around 2011 2012 and this is also the time where Facebook was making it a lot easier to sell T shirts without having to run a bunch of ads. I mean, you could post a image of a printed shirt and it's going to be seen by everybody in your friends and followers. So I got a couple good clients that were really killing it with print on demand and using Facebook when it comes to print on demand. Marshall, I learned that it really, there's three things that have to happen. One, there has to be good artwork. You have to have good artwork. And sometimes that's just a brand or something, but it's, it's a good original design. I don't really have to tell you this, that this, this is right up your alley, but you have to have good artwork. And what one of my good clients was they just did great parody artwork. You know, they took character from a famous show and made it into a cartoon, and then maybe put a twist on it. Typically, being a little risque, is the way I would really put it. And so you have to have good artwork. You have to have a market who wants to buy it. You can have the best artwork, but if there's not really a market for it, it's not really going to sell. The third thing is marketing. You gotta push it to an audience. You could have the best artwork. You have a market, but if you don't actually market it, it doesn't go anywhere. You could have great marketing. You could have a great market. Bad artwork doesn't work. All three have to happen. And with these print on demand clients, you know, I had a few that were just killing it. We were doing a lot of DTG, and I kind of started running into the issue of space. I was first, you know, three, four years when I was in college, I was just commuting back. I was doing some production in my campus house. I was then once I got the DTG printer that wasn't going to work, so I had to move the shop to my business partner's parents house, where they had a nice, big out building for us, and we were doing production in there. Well, when things kind of fell apart with the business partner, I had to find a new home, and that's when I met one of my good mentors through the years. They there's a shop out here, suburb of Columbus, where they are the second largest manufacturer of automotive creepers. Do you have any idea what a creeper is Marshall?

Marshall Atkinson 
Yes, the thing that mechanic lays on to work underneath your car?

Zach Dewhurst 
Yep, yep.

Zach Dewhurst 
Or it's somebody who really likes weird, weird things, and he's hanging around the back your house, peeking in windows. Which is it?

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah. I had no idea what a creeper was, but, but it was really interesting. They manufacture over 1000 creepers a day, and they screen print somebody's logo on it. Look at a creeper is a promo product, okay? Craftsman, snap on Mac tools, all of your big players in the automotive world were just having their logo screen printed on these products, and then they started getting into UV wraps and so forth as well. But so they own, they've been screen printing these things for decades, and they kind of were looking for a little bit of a side hustle. I think they just had money to play with. So they started buying equipment for the apparel world. They're like, Okay, we print, you know, 1000s of these a year for craftsmen. Let's try to sell craftsman T shirts. And they had no clue what they were doing. And it just kind of was just a spinning in the mud. I was just at a at one of our mutual suppliers here in Columbus, and they, hey, you ought to check out this company. They have a DTG printer, the same one as you have. They had a brother 782 and they're really nice. And you should, you know, go talk with them. And, long story short, just absolutely loved the owners there. They were really nice. I ended up bringing my DTG printer over there. So we had two brothers, 782 and I was essentially sharing space with their shop. I was focused on print on demand. They were focused on their local market, and they also had a six head bear in an embroidery machine. So this is where I'm starting to now get introduced to embroidery. So, you know, I started off with vinyl and outsourcing screen print transfers. Then I started screen printing, and then I bought the DTG. Now I'm starting to be teased with an Embroidery Machine across the room. So the next couple years, we were sharing space, and it was all going well. And this is when I started going kind of crazy with launching multiple brands. You know, you kind of mentioned that I have multiple businesses.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, that's what I wanted to get into, right? Because I don't think people understand, right? You're just not one business. You've got, like, a handful, right? And you've gotta juggle all that at the same time.

Zach Dewhurst 
Don't be impressed by that. That doesn't, yeah, yeah. So I think, I think one having multiple brain I'm a Marketing major, and I, I, I see an opportunity, and I kind of like to deviate. I I'm the way I like to look at it is, Marshall, you need to stay in your lane when you're driving on the highway. If you start just like trying to get to the next lane to go faster. Eventually that lane will slow down. If you ever watch the movie Office Space, you know, at the very beginning, the main character is trying to get to work, and he just keeps pulling over to the next lane, because that's the one that's moving he's in the one that's kind of slowing down full of traffic. And at the end, if he had stayed in that original lane, he would have gotten to work faster. So one thing I really love about this industry Marshall is how many different business models there are. You can go. You can make money decorating apparel, a lot of different ways. You can do contract. You can do print on demand. You could just focus on local. You can focus on building your own retail brand. Those opportunities, along with deco network software, just made me go in 10 directions at once or not. Didn't make me, gave me the opportunity, and that distracted me. I highly suggest don't do what I did so when I was doing most of the printing and the print on demand, I started creative customizing. That was my first essentially brand of business. It still has much, very much so focus on print on demand and local orders in the Columbus area and suburb that I'm in. But around this time of having that shared space, I started print phase. And print phase revolves around at the time it did plastisol screenprint transfers. So when I was in high school, I was a part of a business organization called deca, and with deca, it was all about teaching, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and we would go to events, and in order to pay for the event, we had to fundraise. Well, how we fundraise was we had a school store, and that school store sold apparel. So we. We were fundraising by running our own school shop. We had, you know, the license to sell anything with the school's name mascot on it. And all we really learned how to do, to a degree, was unbox, you know, some shirts, put them on a shelf and take someone's money and complete the transaction. I knew we could kind of take it a step further. So that's when I really started focusing on approach, going to trade shows, where the these conferences were for the end of the year. And started, you know, bringing a heat, press couple 100 shirts and let kids print their own stuff. So that's when I started really focusing what, what trade shows were that. So that was their actual, you know, that was their version of Impressions Printing United.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. But for like, what, like, Comic Con, or like what?,

Zach Dewhurst 
So with these entrepreneurship groups, there would be competitions at the end of the year. Yes, I see okay, so you'd have hundreds of schools show up, and the students are there to compete. So I competed in sports entertainment marketing, and I would be given a role play. Hey, you're the marketing manager of a local baseball team. You're slow on Tuesdays. What idea do you have to make, you know, get more fans in there, in attendance. So you'd compete district, state and international, and the International is where you get the best of the best, and that's where we would market. So over the last, you know, the next handful of years, sold over 100 heat presses to probably around 85 different schools. Some of them bought a couple presses and taught them how to screen print, or not screen print, how to print their own shirts using screen print transfers and but the problem was at the time, I didn't have the space again, it just kept running into this problem when It comes to space Marshall to have my own equipment for printing the transfers. So where I was really making my money was I'd sell them a hot Tronic fusion IQ heat press. So it's pretty much all I sold. I saw it as it's the number one manual heat press there is. It's the safest because it's not really working under the heating element. So that's what we primarily sold. And we'd make money off of the heat press, and then I would make nice money off of the blanks. Talk about not touching a product and making good money. So school isn't supposed to be able to go straight to a blank apparel supplier and buy shirts, so they would have to go essentially through me, but I was pretty much making, you know, very slim margins on blank transfer or transfers that I'd have to outsource to another printer. Now I'm in Columbus, Ohio, where transfers are, you know, a hotbed, because in the 70s we had Roach transfers, and then from there, it kind of became art brand, air waves, Ace and Transfer Express is even here in Ohio. So like, we were a hub for transfers, and I was just kind of surrounded by it. And so, yeah, I was teaching schools how to print their own shirts. They would essentially Start by printing their own retail shirts that they were already selling in the school store, and then we started selling, telling, showing them how to sell to other markets in the school district. You know, hey, there's an event you should be taking that order and printing the shirts. Hey, the football team wants spirit wear. You can, you can do that. They want to buy from you, rather than, at least online. So the problem I ran in with schools? What problem did I run with schools? Marshall? There's a lot of potential there. There's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of turnover, and there's a lot of things to get right. Like I said, with print on demand, you have to have, you know, a market, good artwork and do some marketing with schools. You could have a great teacher, but you could have a principal or administrator who just holds you back. You know, hey, we can't do this. Can't do that, and that's all it takes to pop the breaks. A lot of schools these teachers if you're really good, or, you know, you're getting headhunted, or, you know, if you're a big school and you coach a sport, sometimes they get again, head hunted to leave. So I've had some schools where we're on the fourth, fifth teacher for that DECA chapter. Now they kill it. You wonder, how can there be so much change of turnover? But is what it is. But schools can be great. They can also be a nightmare. All it takes again is one person to change everything in that relationship.

Marshall Atkinson 
Do you have processes and standards that you know that help with that type of customer that makes it easy for them and you?

Zach Dewhurst 
So this is where I started getting even more distracted in a good way, in a bad way. Well, I tell you, I always do things and then, like, six months later, something changes. So what I started doing at this point, Marshall was really focusing on making education guides. So one I was one of these students. I saw it as we teach the school, you know, we teach that deck of Chapter How to do this. And the best of the best will want to start their own t shirt printing businesses. They're in a marketing entrepreneurship group, you know, they're going to be surrounded by this. They're going to learn how much a blank shirt cost, how much a transfer cost, how much they're selling it for. And they'll aspire to do this. So I saw it as kind of three guides. I needed to create one. I needed a guide on how to learn the decoration industry, how to specifically, you know, what is what is screen printing, what is vinyl, what is embroidery, and what are the limitations of each so with, with like deca, it's Learn and Earn. And just making money isn't enough. You need that education component. You want that curriculum. So I created a guide on, hey, this is the industry. Then I created a second guide of, hey, here's the industry on how to start a business as a Learn and Earn program. And like, within a DECA chapter, they had different roles. And I would be like, Okay, this role, you do this, this role, you're going to be doing this. So it took a lot of time, a lot more time than I gave it credit for, to create these guides. If I had chat GPT, you know, 810, years ago, this would have been a heck of a lot easier. So I created those two and then what really took even more time was I wanted to, again, kind of teach entrepreneurship. Don't ask me why. I think I just wanted to take my $60,000 degree and turn it into something. So I made this long how to start a business guide as a young entrepreneur. So again, the idea was, get these schools going, give them the curriculum they need. Afterward, we'll get the best of the best students striving to make it as turnkey as possible. Hey, you could buy your own heat press, outsource us the transfers, and then we'll show you how to buy blank shirts, because you'll be established business at that point. So, but again, I needed space to bring transfers in house, so I I'm a big fan of paying it forward as well Marshall. So I had helped one of the students in my high school was a part of a very big church, and I had a spare heat press, and I, I just lent him the heat press. I didn't even sell it to him, and he would buy transfers and print shirts. Well, come to find out, he his dad was the property manager for a company called, well, essentially it was les Wexner. Les Wexner owned Abercrombie al brands, Victoria Secret, you know, Abercrombie Victoria, all these are like, 10 minutes away from me, and there's some big shops around here who did a lot of their printing.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, Columbus, if you don't know, folks, is a hotbed of retail. All of the, a lot of the major stores in like the mall. Well, I don't know if the malls even exist now, but all the major retail stores, a lot of them, their headquarters, are right there in Columbus, Ohio. Why? I have no idea, but they're in Columbus, Ohio

Zach Dewhurst 
Well, I Hey, I love Columbus. It's not a big city. It's growing like crazy. But here, you know, I he Marshall. I got the grade. I hate renting, but this was like the opportunity. It was three acres. It was a 2500 square foot farm house with the 2000 square foot separate building, 1500 a month, and I was splitting that with my two brothers, so I had $500 a month for 2000 square feet plus my living situation. How fast could you move into that place? It was fast. It was fast. Now here was the thing. What les Wexner was doing at the time was he was buying up all of this property out where I live, where it's it's very country, so a lot of farm land, and then you have a lot of these random houses sitting on, like, again, a three acre plot. Well, he was slowly buying it all up, and I wish I knew what he was going to do, because, you know, I got this great renting opportunity. I finally got the space I wanted, and I go all in to retro fit that space. You know, we bring in extra power and finish a lot of it. And, like, literally, 12 months after I started, I finally felt I was, you know, had the. A perfect setup. And we get the news, Facebook is buying the land across the street. They're going to put in a billion dollar data center. And it was like, yeah. And essentially, they were like, yeah, you've you're going to have six months, and that was, that's when things really got crazy out where I am, Marshall. Have you ever seen the movie or read the book? Ready? Player one, yeah. Okay, ready? Player one takes place in Columbus, and they talk about it being the, you know, the tech central Well, telling you we're the next Silicon Valley because it started, Facebook built a data center. Google then built a data center on my side of the street. This is on the like within, I can't even guess how many acres, 100 acres. So Facebook, then Google, then Amazon built their second data center on the road. Now, Microsoft built theirs recently, and where my shop was sitting is now an Amazon fulfillment center. So if I'm in desperate need for something last minute, oh, I need printer paper, I get it within an hour, but it literally is being shipped where my shop was so when I got that news, I didn't want, you know, being where my space was. Was it going to be held on, you know, a relationship with a business partner or sharing a space with somebody? So look for a property. Found one with a 2000 square foot pole barn in the back, and went that route. And when I did that, that was another, you know, when you go older style or you rent, you have to retrofit it, you have to clean it up, you know, I had to fully insulate, bring water, gas, H back, electricity. You know, it's a lot of work and, and I've talked about it in, you know, the Shirt Lab tribe group. We're already, you know, back to being limited on space. And do I go rent? It's like, gosh, I hate renting. Do you own your own building now? Yeah, yeah, I own my own building. And I'm, I pretty much made the decision after, you know, Shirt Lab conversation or two, that we're going to build a separate building on the property. I don't want to kind of come off my current because it's around 40 years old. It's very nice, but you don't really want to start doing additions off a 40 year old pull building. You just want to go new with it. So and again, trying to run the business and everything, it's difficult. So this is when, again, um, deco network, of course, approaches me after I, you know, dump all this money into my shop, and they're like, you've used the software for eight, six or eight years. At this point, I signed up in 2010 so this has been around 2018 2019 finally got the shop in place, and deck was like, hey, we want you to be a deco Pro, an implementation specialist. Now, I'd already done this for several years. I'd already helped several shops get started with the software, but that's when deco approached me in the like, hey, we want you to help our users. You understand the software, you understand the industry. You need to be able to talk both languages. And that's when I fell in love with helping chops. Marshall, you do a lot of consulting. You've done it for years. It sounds cliche, but it is very gratifying helping someone.

Marshall Atkinson 
What's gratifying is helping someone, if they want to be helped. Yeah, there's a lot of people. Out there, I think that need to help, right? But don't quite ever do anything. So I and here's what I'll tell you, and you know this to be true, right? You can't want positive change more than the other person.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So they have to want to do it to make it work, because as a consultant or a coach, I'm not doing the work. I'm just an advisor role, right? And so I always put it in a sports metaphor, right? How many times in football or baseball or whatever, do you see the coach come out of the dugout and play in the game or play on the football field like never, right? I'm yelling at you from the sidelines. You're the one in the game playing right, and so it your results are up to you.

Zach Dewhurst 
They definitely are. And you know, we, we're in an industry where you've got a lot of mom and pops, you know, I've helped everybody from a single person operation to a 50 person operation. And what I love about the industry and Marshall, I'm sorry, I'm trying to naturally answer your questions here, but one thing I really love, as well with even with Decker network, is it's an international group of shops, so on a daily basis. I mean, I have talked four or five continents in a day. You know, I'll do North America, Australia. I've talked to somebody in Europe, in Asia and Africa, not probably four is the most in a day. It's amazing, Marshall, how it's not the industry is not different than any other continent. It is the same exact stuff. They're all doing one of these several different types of business offers, business models. You know, in the UK, they have a handful of big suppliers, and they have those smaller ones, just like in the US, it's all the same. And it really is interesting. And deco network has the software is developed in Australia. There's a UK team, there's a US team. And I think, you know, having that global presence also is what helps the software separate itself from the pack.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, plus, I think it's the only software that you can have multiple currencies and taxes and stuff in it, because I don't think any of the other ones do that.

Zach Dewhurst 
No. And so, you know, at the time when deco approached me, that's when my relationship started to build with them. And it did get me a little distracted from running my own shop. But I when I I can remember the day I found the software. I was 21 sitting in my campus house, and I'm watching Ohio State play football, and I'm like, Whoa, this is exactly what I was looking for. I want to use this. And at the time, I did not have the I did not have the orders coming in to justify the software. I paid for it for probably a year before I really was starting to get an ROI out of it. But I just, I loved it. From the get go, I was the right age at the right time to for the software. I mean, it was just, again, you find it when you're 21 and then I ran with it. And so I just, yeah, it's kind of weird. I ended up liking something more than I even thought. And I once, I really started doing a lot of implementation I got, I was what I primarily focused on. I had a couple of employees work on, doing production, some selling and so forth. But I've always been kind of dumb Marshall in the fact that I've got a lot of eggs in a basket, a few eggs in a basket, good, good eggs, until they're not but I, you know, I should have always been focusing more on selling. You know, I got distracted by learning these decoration processes. Then I got distracted by working with these different shops. But I it all, you know, led to other things.

Marshall Atkinson 
So do you have a sales team? Or is it just you?

Zach Dewhurst 
As far, no, I have, so we have, I have four employees working for me. The one of them focuses on creative, customizing print on demand, managing all of that. Another one focuses on print phase. So that's, you know, we've kind of phased out screen print transfers. They're not dead, but DTF is really changed things in several different ways. You know, just printing on paper. Customer can't see through it. You know, once you've been spoiled with DTF, and some of those, it's just kind of changed the demand. So somebody focuses on that, and then we have a couple that just do production for those two brands. So I still do a fair amount of consulting, but a year ago, deco approached me to be their business development manager. So and I was like, Okay, what? What do you want me to do? And they were essentially like, we want you to be kind of the face of the company. So I like, I call myself kind of the spokesperson. I'm really the bridge between the industry, the user and the developers, and I really like being in that role. I kind of told DECO, like four years ago, Hey, you are lacking in this, because some of these software companies, deco has never been. They weren't the best at selling. In my opinion, they they were not. They were like, shy. I always told them, think you're shy to promote your software, it's like you're waiting for it to get better before you market it. So when they brought me on, I it was like a perfect fit. They compensate me well, and I'm really I just, I love their team and the management style. There's a lot at deco network that you know now I'm on the side of seeing how something's developed. Gosh, Marshall, it's real easy to come up with an idea for software. It's terribly difficult to implement it, and until you've seen it from the other side of the fence, you don't realize how many conversations and viewpoints one little feature, how much time it takes to just figure it out and not break the rest of the software on top of it. You know, developing is difficult, but I can't tell you, you know, where the software is going, what it's what it's evolving to, what's coming down the road. It is extremely exciting. I would not go back on doing, you know, becoming an implementation specialist, that that's exposed me to a lot. I, being the business development manager has led to a lot of things. You know, I, I I may not have had the guts to join Shirt Lab tribe, if it weren't for it. And after I seen I was like, Oh, now I've got to let everybody else in the deck when a community, hey, you could do this and not not make the mistakes I've been making over the years, which is, let's let's decorate, let's decorate that. That's so, you know, I, I'm, I've got a lot of brands. That doesn't mean that, oh, that's more successful. I think, you know, a term like revenue, revenue is way overrated. Marshall income. What's your profit? I don't care much money you made.

Marshall Atkinson 
I talk about that all the time. You know what? Like people say, Well, I'm a million dollar company. I'm a $5 million company, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's great. What was your gross and what was your net profit? Yeah. And you'd be shocked at how many people can't answer that. I have to check with my accountant. I'm like, why don't you know that at the top, top of your head? Yeah, yeah, right. Well, you know that because otherwise, how are you going to improve it today if you don't know the answer to that question, right? And, and I just think that's kind of interesting, that there's so many people who've come into this industry, and that's not because they were good business people. They've usually come in because they see an opportunity, or they want to monetize their creativity, or they, you know, whatever, and they and then the foundational aspects of running the business just aren't there, you know, they don't have a business plan. They don't have an ideal customer in their head. They don't, you know, have KPIs and measure things and all the stuff that you know, you know me, I'm constantly talking about it, right? And and, and then one day they'll go, Gosh, I'm probably losing a lot of money, right? And then that's when that epiphany, then they start looking okay, who can help me right? And, and then a lot of times, that's when I enter the picture, or other other folks that do what I do right, and, and then I help unravel the knot.

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah, you know, for over a decade, it was all about following my heart instead of my brain. We talked about it again again. Can't recommend enough Shirt. Lab tried everybody out there, because I There's so many great experiences. But one thing that I've really, you know, numbers don't lie. Marshall, I mean, really you, I think a lot of us, we get distracted, or we just let our heart lead us, and instead of looking at the spreadsheets and the numbers, because you, you may think you're making money, but the numbers are, what are really going to tell you? And. Um, so that's something I could have done a lot better. Again, should have outsourced. These are my tips, Marshall, outsource until you really can justify bring Zach tips. Here it is. It's a checklist. Yeah, outsource until you you can't. It's it's easier than ever. I mean, it's crazy easy to outsource. I was determined recently to bring, you know, Banner eco solvent printing in house. Now I just outsource all banners and everything. It's just great money. Same with, you know, a screen printing and embroidery. They're, they're very easy to outsource. Most of you know, suppliers even have a decoration network. Everybody knows that. And, you know, join groups, find a mentor, or, you know, sometimes again, having that business partner. What, what you need is somebody to give you that reality check, because you're in your own world, if nobody's ever calling you out, and you can just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Shirt, lap, hey, we call each other out, you know. Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Why don't do that? Here's why. And we're in an industry where we don't look at each other like complete enemies. Marshall, we're all there to help each other. I even think you know, in your local city, you've I have a lot of deco network users and clients that I've worked with that each specialize in a different process, and they outsource to another shop in their area. Hey, this one does screen printing. This one does DTF, one embroidery and Fort Worth. I literally have three deco network shops there that each one do a different process, and then they fulfill for the others they don't want to, you know, go down that path. They're making their money. They're being smart. They're looking at numbers. They're not just le, you know, making decisions based on what they think. They're using logic. And again, something like DECO, network software. Hey, I don't care what software you use in our industry, you should be using software Marshall. It's going to help, you know, manage your shop.

Zach Dewhurst 
I'll tellyou the number one problem with software. You ready Zach?

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah go ahead.

Marshall Atkinson 
There isn't the standard way of using it. Billy does this, and Susan does this, and Tom does this, and hey, Zeus does this, you're going to have a crappy result regardless of the software using it. So here's, here's a test for everybody that's listening, right? I want you to devise a an order. And here's the order I want you to do. I want you to do a screen print job on yellow shirts. It's a three color design, and one of the design, one of the colors is light blue, and it's a rush order, and you're doing the artwork, and have all of your sales team quote that job, and here's what, and here's the thing, can every single person get to the same correct number for the price? And I'll tell you, a lot of shops, the answer is no, okay, and here's why. Is because they forget that that light blue is going to need an under base, otherwise it's going to look green. They don't charge for the art, and they don't charge for the rush fee, right? And so this is, this is a really easy test to do, just to see if we're all on the same page, and you can do other things right, embroidery or DTF or whatever, right? But you know, when you when you have a sales team, the answers to the test should be correct for everybody, and everybody should get the same answer. And if you don't have that, you don't have standards, and that standard is going to help your shop grow. And I can also tell you from coaching clients. The number one person in the shop that doesn't follow this is the owner. Yeah, and the owner is the one that gives away free screens and waives the art fee and whatever, and doesn't do the under base, and they just cram the order in or whatever, and and that causes lots of issues, because if the guy that or woman who owns the company can't get the order right, why should I do it? Yep, you got the example. So just, I just wanted to throw that out there, you know, little fresh meat on the table, right?

Zach Dewhurst 
Yeah, those standard operating procedures. Well, the one thing I'll say, and I completely agree with you, Marshall, but what does separate deco from the pack? One? It's older than pretty much every other software platform out there. You know, this is an S and S podcast. Well, guess what? Design Tool is being used on S and S's website? It's deco networks. So. It separates DECOs. Design Tool differently is when you upload that screen print job, it counts the colors. Even if it's a JPEG file, we can break down how many colors in the artwork. If it's on a dark color shirt, we know to assess a under base, but then you have that owner who's like, well, this is a black ink on a red shirt. We don't need the under base. Let's take that off, and they complicate everything. And it's like, you know what? Your customer didn't know that you didn't need the underpass, you know? So you didn't have to give them the break to begin with. But you know it, one thing I'll say about software is it's hard to make change. It's really hard. If you've used, you know, one of decoss competitors, like Printavo. For years, it's very difficult to make a change, but just Yeah, again, you should use software to make yourself as efficient as possible, reduce your mistakes, open up new opportunities. Last thing I'll say about deco network is it's the true all in one. You have your order, Mike years your chip please that specialize in stores. They don't specialize in production management. They don't specialize in custom orders and quoting. You have your Printavo, which you know is order management. Your yo print is an order management. Then you have your ink soft, which specializes in websites with the design tool. There's a reason why Printavo and ink soft came together to create ink Tavo. They wanted the best of both. Well, DECOs built it from the ground up, and it's older, so it's been further developed. And so if you want to do you have a store to be like a custom ink with a design tool that actually calculates a decoration price in real time for the customer. Boom, you got it. You want to provide stores to your clients. You can provide unlimited amount of sites. It all flows into one order management system where you're connected with suppliers to raise purchase orders, artwork, approvals, so forth. So visit deco network.com, do a demo. I, we, I it's an opportunity. I never one thing I like about Deco. It's just like me, I don't believe in high pressure. Selling you present an opportunity. You've got to push a little bit but, but you don't have hey, if it's not for you, it's not for you.

Marshall Atkinson 
And what I love about you, Zach, is I give you a little crack and you just take the ball and run for the touchdown.

Zach Dewhurst 
I was trying to wrap it up. I'm pretty bad at those the sign off messages.

Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, it's all good. So what do you think you know, just as a as an observer of the industry, you know, whatever, what do you think people really need to focus on? You know, within the next year or two, what's, what's if you had one thing you said, hey, you need to be really looking at this. What would you say?

Zach Dewhurst 
I would say, being that, you know, we you don't have to be a one stop shop in our industry. And the definition of a one stop shop is really changed. Marshall, it used to be a one stop apparel decoration shop. Now I think it's a one stop, one stop apparel decoration shop has become a one stop decoration shop. Take out the word apparel promo. What we have seen is, pre pandemic, most people did promo only, we're not touching a product. They were outsourcing everything. They were a true promo product distributor. Over the past five years, we've talked about a lot in the Shirt Lab group, promo has really exploded. For those who do decoration since the pandemic, it has become a lot more popular. It's become so popular that your competition is offering it. I mean, look at even sticker meal. Look they were stickers. Now they're doing signage. Vistaprint now does apparel like, if you're going to compete, you really have, you know, if you're really looking to be that one stop, you're doing apparel, you're doing signage, and you're doing a paper Well, I wouldn't get into paper printing as much, but you're doing apparel signage and promo, maybe some offset and so forth. But it you do not have to do it all in house. It is easier than ever to outsource, but the industry is pushing each other to give that customer that one stop shop experience, and if you're not doing it, somebody else can staples now does promo, and we have to remember promo includes apparel, so if you're not doing if you're just doing apparel, not promo, or not doing that yard sign and so forth, these are easy things to keep your customers happy, and don't open the door to the competition, because we're in an industry Marshall where the barriers of entry are so small, and they've gotten even smaller with DTF. I mean, it, it's so easy.

Marshall Atkinson 
It starts. It starts with the cricket mom.

Zach Dewhurst 
Oh, well, yeah, it does. And it, well, no, that's a great point. The the crafters, though, have become a big part of the end. Street. And it's, again, I've been in some shops with a million, millions of dollars with equipment, and they're using a lot of DTF at that same exact transfer quality print can be put on on that third bedroom of Yeah, and it just changed.

Marshall Atkinson 
I think the thing that I would say is what shops need to double down on, is the experience of working with you? Yeah, it's not. If the decoration method right is going to be the same, right? What are you offering? What are you What is your differentiation point that's going to set you apart from everybody else, and it's going to be how you treat customers. Is going to be how creative you are. So maybe hiring better talent in your art department is going to be your speed. It's going to be your knowledge base, and it's how you can set up your customers for success sometimes. And there's two things that will never go out of style, okay? One is saving your customer time. The other is making your customer money. And so if you can deliver on solutions for those, you win, right? And and to me, if you know somebody says, hey, Zach, I need some shirts. And your first question is, what do they do, and how many you're doing? It wrong, right? So it's really about, hey, great. You need some shirts. What are you doing? What's going on? Tell me about what's up. Because you know, if you're just an order taker, right, you're McDonald's. Okay? You got 500 shirts and they're black and there's a two color, right? You're missing on the opportunity to make more money by advising them on a better shirt, blank, or upselling them with some maybe some trucker hats or some stickers or window cleans, or a banner for the finish line, or whatever, right? And all of that is out there for you, and what we need to do more so is just get in and double down on figuring out our experience. What is it like to do business with your shop? And you know, and of course, you know that is something that I don't think is talked about enough. And this the in the shops that I think you were doing really well. Okay, they know their best customer. They know what that customer really likes. They deliver an experience that makes that customer happy, and it's less about the price, it's more about keeping them happy, right? Because there's always some idiot that'll do it cheaper, right? And so why are we even playing that game, right? And so one of the questions I ask a lot is, in your state. How can you be the highest price shop around and have customers lined up around the block? What would it take for that to happen?

Zach Dewhurst 
It's like a restaurant. I mean, think about a restaurant. It's the whole experience. It's not just the food. I mean, we could ink and thread on a you know, that's one thing, but it's the whole customer experience. You know? I'll go back to my very first customer. Was that restaurant. What separated me from who was doing their shirts before was I was making life easier, because I was going there to take the inventory, and I was dropping the shirts off, and I wasn't making it a hassle at all. But we were getting creative as far as, Okay, guess what? It's about to be St Patrick's Day. We need green shirts. Let's spend 50 cents more go with this one. So we were very creative. As far as the time of the year, the color schemes. It really is the case. You have to identify your target market. And when you say target, that doesn't mean do what Zach did. And everybody becomes a target at times, find your competitive advantage and your core competency. You know, in the Shirt Lab group we've talked about it, one of my favorite members of the group is Traci Stern. She's a former nurse, and she understands the healthcare market. So who does she target? You know, hospitals and medical offices, she knows how to speak their language. You there's there's an opportunity for everybody. You just can't get distracted, focus and again, find a way to make yourself different and realize the ink on the shirt. Once you realize that isn't as important, you also don't worry as much about doing it yourself. Marshall, because it's the whole experience, and that's what you need to focus on. And if Yeah, it really is true, and especially with, again, the barriers just getting lower and lower, how are you going to separate yourself from the pack? It's yeah, it's just thinking outside the box. Um. Um, but not not crazy. It's still common sense. Marshall, it's you do, though, need somebody to kind of shake you a couple times here and there, at least somebody like me. That's why I'm humbled every time I joined the Shirt Lab tribe calls, because it's like, glad I asked this is something I'm doing right now. Is the superintendent approached us from a local school and like, Hey, we're doing all this rebranding. We want to do this. And I joined the Shirt Lab columns. Like, hey, Superintendent approached me that's like, you know, that's ideal. Who you want to work with? Should I spend $200 on putting together nice samples and everything, bring them to the school? They could pass them around? Like, Heck, yeah. You think about how expensive it is to acquire a customer like that, and those samples are going to do several different things, but I totally forgot they were like, You should hang tag them with your logo and things. So it's again, I'm not trying to just hey, push Shirt, Lab tribe Marshall, but I really appreciate you having that because it's well, it's helped me in so many ways. I don't you know I am my lane. As far as consulting is, hey, I know how to use tech, network, software, and help people. But it's I love this industry. I love the community that's involved. I love where things are going. We're in it. It's recession proof for the most part. I mean, the pandemic was a disaster for just about any other industry. I know a lot of shops, it was their best year. Now, it was just coincidence that, hey, you needed a face mask. But again, until people stop wearing shirts, we're pretty good, but I Yeah, and again, love being a part of the group, deco network. Again, love being a part of that the software company. Just visit deco network com, do a demo. But yeah, I'd love going to trade shows. Nothing. Nothing is like going to a printing United or a impressions Long Beach show. And I like bringing those shows to YouTube. So that's where, again, a lot of people see me, Marshall, I love sharing what I learn. That doesn't mean I actually practice it. I'm not as good as you, but there is, yeah, there's just a lot to love, and I really appreciate you having me on.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, hey, thanks so much for sharing your story of success today. Zach, what's the best way to contact you as someone wants to learn more about what you do or or maybe how you can help them?

Zach Dewhurst 
So zdewhurst, d e w h u r s t @deconetwork.com it's definitely an email to reach me.

Marshall Atkinson 
Awesome. All right. Zach, well, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate you, and we'll talk to you later.

Zach Dewhurst 
Thanks, Marshall.