As a part of its video series about successful screen printers, M&R, Roselle, Ill., recently introduced a video profile of Rags of Honor.
The decorated-apparel company was founded in Chicago by Mark Doyle following a year in Afghanistan on an anti-corruption task force. Upon return, Doyle was alarmed by the unemployment, suicide and homelessness rate among returning military veterans. Those issues inspired him to found Rags of Honor as a way to provide employment to homeless and unemployed veterans.
Doyle started by putting six veterans on the payroll, but the company wouldn’t own a screen printing machine for the first nine months. Instead, the veterans spent eight months training on a small rented press in the basement of a screen printer and former Marine. Rags of Honor employees also received free training at M&R’s corporate headquarters.
After 11 months, a new manual press was donated to the company, and the team moved into a 1,000-square-foot facility. Since then, Rags of Honor has acquired an automatic press and moved to a 10,000-square-foot space, printing shirts for local businesses, Big Ten conference schools, professional sports teams and the NFL.
Along the way, the company has opted to print on American-made shirts and adopted this motto: “They Had Our Backs. Let’s Keep the Shirt on Theirs.” — M.Q.
Stratasys Ltd. has launched what it describes as a new direct-to-garment (DTG) solution for its J850 TechStyle printer, the newest offering in the Stratasys 3DFashion direct-to-textile printing technology product line.
The Women’s California Wave Wash Sunday Hoodie, offered by the Independent Trading Co., is the latest style in this collection, which also features crew necks, pullovers and full-zip styles.
Per the research firm Future Market Insights (FMI) starting from a 2023 baseline of $3.4 billion, the custom T-shirt printing market in the United States is projected to reach $9.9 billion by 2033.