Exceptional Software at down-to-earth prices!
|
|
|
|
KTI Screen Prince, the parent company of MytCORP Software Company, was
founded in 1978 near the small country village of Lowville, NY. Originally
called Koala-T International, the business name was truncated to KTI when we
began receiving junk mail under twelve different business names.
Screen Prince was added at the same time linking the name to a recognizable
industry. Several factors led to a successful outing.
We knew that weekend we were destined to become millionaires... WRONG! In the spring of 1979 the partnership was dissolved and the business was taken over, a business about which absolutely nothing was known. A Florida company had designed and printed our Olympic shirts and the oil crises had caused freight prices to go sky high. We were shipping shirts from a Pennsylvania manufacturing facility to Central Florida for printing... and back to New York state for distribution. Freight approached 40 cents on a shirt that originally cost $1.50 each. Quite understanding of the freight costs, the printer forwarded the film positives to us. Now I was dangerously on my own.
If there was any help out there, I had no idea where to find it. There was no internet, no chat rooms or bulletin boards and anyone who knew anything about printing shirts wasn't talking. Like a Blessing, there was a nearby company that manufactured & screen printed three ring binders; one of their salesmen was a friend. He arranged a tour of the facility with permission to hang out in any department for as long as desired. Questions could be asked and the employees were authorized to answer. In return a waiver was signed agreeing not to sue in the event of injury. Two days later I went home (they ran 24 hour shifts) with sufficient knowledge to ask semi-intelligent questions about screen printing. At the Florida print shop a year previous, conversation was overheard in which the name Precision Screen Machines was mentioned. Used in the same sentence had been the term contract printing. Now at home and still semi-bewildered, access was gained to the Thomas Directory (a national listing of manufacturers). Precision Screen Machines was located in New Jersey. They were called and boldly asked if they could direct me to a few companies using their equipment who did contract printing. Not knowing what contract printing meant, I held my breath hoping they wouldn't laugh. To my surprise they offered a half dozen printers within a six hour drive of home. Three days and 800 miles later we had three contract printers doing Olympic shirts and additionally had met a talented contract artist. Whew... back in the shirt business. I vowed never again to be left out of what was happening. My partner had handled all the purchase and printing arrangements in Florida while I was along only for the ride. With the Olympics over and never thinking of residual sales, we turned once again to race tracks. In the spring of 1980, being really pumped at having acquired rental property across 16th Street from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we printed enough shirts to supply a large majority of the half million people who go to the Indy 500. big... Big... BIG MISTAKE. Went home almost in tears. Our design smelled, a competitor was there with a dynamic design and we could barely give our shirts away. Almost threw up. Still get sick thinking about it. In the post race traffic jam, standing in the middle of a six lane city
street, I was hawking shirts for a buck each. Some were sold to a lady from
Wisconsin. Fortunately we had brought plastic bags with our business name and phone
number on them. After arriving home with some 2100 left over pre-prints, I
began planning a different career. A month later the lady from Wisconsin
called and ordered shirts for a Water Festival she promoted. The job had
enough profit to cover our
loss at Indy and to profit a few dollars. She thought our Indy shirt was
terrific. God bless her... thankfully she didn't know a thing about designs. Back in the shirt business again. Sold for a couple more
races at Watkins Glen until their bankruptcy, which followed the 1980 US Grand Prix. Began printing in an upstairs bedroom and curing with a home made flash unit. Did great until my wife would ask a question and interrupt my counting. Was that 15 or 25 seconds under the "flash"? When the shirt fried I realized it had been 25. Never knew they burned up that fast. A couple years later she got tired of the mess being created and leveraged the printing operation out of the house. You know how that goes! A few years later she leveraged me out. In 1983, after a contract printer massacred our Indy shirts, it was concluded that I could ruin them a lot cheaper than they could... thus we began printing. By this time many trade shows had been covered and untold seminars attended. Lots of all-nighters were pulled testing the various techniques learned at the shows. A conveyer dryer was built from the information in Scott and Pat Fresener's book, "How to Print T-Shirts for Fun and Profit". It worked fine for three years, after which it was replaced with a commercial unit. TO BE CONTINUED.... |
|
