Year One

When I started my first apparel business, Pickle Jar Productions, I wanted the business to do the least amount of harm to society and the environment while ideally making a profit. Vendors were chosen based on social and ecological responsibility criteria that were established by W.R.A.P. If apparel manufacturers were certified by WRAP or if they had comparable auditing processes in place, I felt comfortable promoting their products.  I began to expand the evaluation of my business’s impact on the world. The biggest weakness came from the screen printing decoration process. Most traditional plastisol inks contain harmful phthalates. Phthalate free inks require a fair amount of industry knowledge to use them properly. I could not get my local print vendor to provide phthalate free inks,  so I chose to expand the business by adding the print manufacturing step to the company’s capabilities. I chose to partner with an industry colleague who had 20+ years screen printing production experience with specialization in phthalate-free inks, 4 color process (4cp), and water based & discharge process printing methods.  He also ran a small screen printing business on the side from his home. Joseph Piedra and I merged and re-branded our businesses to become Printbrands™

February 16, 2010 celebrates the one year anniversary of our first apparel print order produced in our facility at 8708 S. Congress Avenue.  We have big plans for our second year of business. Printbrands is launching ReferralFundraising (logo appears in the right column),  our community support program. Referral Fundraising is a community partnership program that works with youth and student run organizations that support academics, athletics, music and student run organizations.  The program will launch in late February or early March with eight local Austin, Texas, program participants. The program website, www.referralfundraising.com,  will begin taking organization registrations when it launches later this month for the anticipated expansion of the community support program.

In the next 12 months, you will see a complete redo of our website. There will be greatly expanded features for the catalog, quote requests, ordering, invoice payment and social media integration features added as well. Stay tuned. Please add yourself as a fan to our facebook page and please follow the Printbrands™ tweet , where we shamelessly promote ourselves, randomly post pictures of our clients t-shirt projects and promote other businesses in our community.