Welcome to Startup Screen Printing

My name is Jesse, and I want to tell you why this site exists, because it is not the reason most people assume.

I started my own print company in 2017. The plan was simple: replace my day job income with a side gig. That plan lasted about as long as it takes to say it. Screen printing turned into something I loved doing for its own sake, and once I noticed that, I got protective of it. I stopped posting about it. I stopped mentioning it to people I met. I decided it would stay a hobby, on purpose, because I had seen what happens when you turn something you love into a business too fast — the joy leaves first, and the money doesn’t always show up to replace it.

So for a while, that was the whole story. I printed in my garage, for fun, and told almost no one.

What changed

In 2021 I took a job as a consultant. I got assigned to accounts as the “subject matter expert,” training people on software I had barely learned myself, wearing a label — expert — that felt bigger than what I actually knew. But the work itself taught me something true about myself: I loved teaching. Not the certification, not the title. The part where someone else got unstuck because of something I explained.

By early 2022 I knew that much. What I did not know yet was how it connected to screen printing. It took another year to work that out, and if I am honest, most of that year was spent being afraid to publish anything. I had wanted to start a podcast for at least a decade and never had the nerve. Putting your name and your voice out there, in an industry full of people who already have followings and courses and credentials, is uncomfortable when you do not feel like an expert yourself.

Why I started publishing anyway

Here is the actual reason Startup Screen Printing exists. When I was starting out, and later when I was trying to actually run this as a business instead of a hobby, the information I needed to find was in one of two places. It was locked inside somebody’s paid program, positioned as the secret you could only get if you bought in. Or it was free and out in the open, and it was wrong — outdated pricing advice, equipment recommendations that made no sense for a one-person shop, “just raise your prices” as if that solves a cash flow problem by itself.

Neither of those served the person actually standing in a garage with a used press, trying to figure out if this could work. I remember being that person. I did not need hype. I needed someone to tell me straight what a realistic minimum order looks like, what water-based ink actually costs to run compared to plastisol, and what to say to a customer who wants twelve shirts when your minimum is twenty. Nobody was writing that article. So I decided to.

What I actually am

I am not a guru, and I do not want to be positioned as one. I am a working printer. I run Alpine Apparel Co, a one-press, water-based and DTF shop, out of Castle Rock, Colorado. I spent four years before that working at a shop in Cleveland, Tennessee, learning the trade from people who had already made the mistakes I was about to make. I have 25-plus years as a graphic designer, which turned out to matter more to this business than I expected — half of what separates a shop that gets repeat customers from one that does not is design work that looks like it was made for the shirt, not slapped on top of it.

None of that makes me the hero of this site. You are. If you are reading this because you have a press in your garage and a question you are embarrassed to ask a Facebook group, this is built for you. My job is to hand you the plan, not to be impressive.

What this becomes

This started as a blog. It is not staying just a blog. There is a YouTube channel now with over 120 videos, all free, covering the actual mechanics of running a shop — not just pulling a squeegee. There is Screen Printing Toolbox, a free set of calculators and templates for pricing and quoting. There is The Print Crew, a free Discord for people who already have a shop and need other shop owners to talk to, because this business gets lonely in a way people do not expect. None of that is the point, though. The point is still the one from 2022: I like teaching, and I like watching someone go from stuck to moving.

I am not claiming this will be my full-time job, and that was never the reason for starting it. I am here because I remember not having anyone to ask, and I am not willing to let the next person go through that if I can help it.

Where to start

If you are brand new, start with the /start-here/ page — it will point you to the right first steps instead of making you dig through years of posts. If you already have a shop and just want other people who get it, look at The Print Crew. And if you have a specific question right now, put it in the comments. I read them, and I would rather answer the question you actually have than the one I assume you have.