Live Printing is the Ultimate Win-Win

Jesse MacKenzie
July 14th, 2015

Do it Live

About a year ago, we made the decision to take our printing out of the shop into the wild. We definitely did not invent live printing, but over the past year we have turned it into a big part of who we are with some incredible events. We have made it very simple with a portable one-station manual press and a small dryer that we can load in the back of Jeremy’s truck and take anywhere. We have live printed in grassy fields, in the middle of a closed off street, inside concert venues, and on the second floor of a mall (the elevator was a tight squeeze). We have live printed for bands, clothing lines, whiffle ball games, restaurants, and recently a fireworks show.

Live printing is a great tool for anyone looking to sell shirts at an event. It is one of those rare— but beautiful—opportunities where we get to partner with someone for our mutual benefit. Trust benefits by meeting people face to face, spreading knowledge about our work, and making connections with anyone in need of shirts. The customer benefits by increasing sales, boosting attention, and gaining an interactive experience for their visitors. Live printing also allows the customer to pay for the exact amount of shirts that are sold instead of stressing about guessing the exact amount of people that will show up and being left with a pile of shirts. This also opens up doors for specific event t-shirts that will only be available on that day (we’ve had a lot of success with this). We’ve been a part of some great events over the past year, here are a couple highlights:

Live Printing in Action

Seryn Live PrintingOur very first live printing event was at a Seryn concert at the Levitt Pavilion in Arlington almost a year ago. Live printing had been in our minds for a while by that point, but we finally found the perfect chance to go for it. We got a great deal on our manual press (shout out to Ryonet), bought a small dryer (shout out to SPSI), and had Jeremy build us a portable stand that would house all of the rest of our equipment. Our whole setup fits in the back of a pickup truck (for now—we’ve got crazy plans for a Trustmobile in the future).

 

Open Streets 3

Open Streets 2We partnered with Brewed Gastropub for Fort Worth’s Open Streets festival early this summer, and we got the crazy idea to print with coffee for their coffee themed booth. It was a fun challenge and we loved the results. The space we had and the relaxed atmosphere gave us the opportunity to teach people and let them hand-print their own shirts and posters.

 

photos-1 copyOur most recent event was the Creekwood Family & Fireworks night. This was the first opportunity we had to do something we have always dreamed of: give shirts away for free. We loved the simplicity of the free shirts, and we exhausted ourselves printing and giving away 953 shirts in 3 hours.

In Conclusion

We love the opportunity to get out among people and spread our joy of screen printing. All of us love what we do, and it is always a joy to share that with people and break up our routine at the same time. We are very proud of what we have done so far, and we firmly believe that live printing is a great asset to any events that are selling t-shirts. If you are part of an event or know someone who is putting on an event that could benefit from live printing, please give us a call at 817-453-3121 or email us at hello@trustprintshop.com so we can talk and see if live printing is for you.

 

Jesse is our Creative Director. He splits his time between the Art Department and Creative duties, looking to innovate and push the company in both areas (unless he overslept.)

Filed under: Events