Company History
An Interview With Target Graphics’ Founder and CEO, Tom Vann
Question Tom, when did you start Target Graphics?
Tom Vann I started in February, 1987, while attending classes for Commercial Illustration at College of DuPage.
Q What spurred you to start your own business?
TV One of my best friends had just come back from school in Colorado and entered the program at COD as well. One night while trading stories about skiing the Rockies, we came up with an idea to make some ski money. We thought we could illustrate some parodies of our hometown, Naperville, print them on T-shirts, and sell them to local merchants.
I had taken some basic graphics classes in high school and was convinced we could print our illustrations using 4-color process. Before attempting anything as daunting as 4-color process, we did some t-shirts for my father's business. It was gold ink on a navy shirt. To make a long story short, we learned the hard way that water based inks from the art supply store didn't work.
Subsequently, I landed a job creating artwork for an established screen printer who was kind enough to give me a screen printing trade magazine (Impressions) and leads on the proper equipment and ink. In the first several months, we struggled with home made equipment and many very small jobs for people we knew at school or work. Then came the big lead with Sportmart - a 10,000-piece bag order that helped finance some better equipment.
In the next four years we grew from one small corner of my parents basement to the entire 1100 sq foot basement. We grew our customer base with many cold calls & guerilla marketing tactics to the point we had to move. All the while, our business stressed top quality and 4-color process. And yes, we did 4-color process on manual presses!
Q What were the early days like as a small-scale screen printer? What equipment did you use compared to today?
TV Our first press was hand made using screen clamps, wooden frames and a very clever devise to raise the surface of the shirt for imprinting. For multiple color jobs, we had to manually line up each screen, one shirt at a time. Our first professional machine was an Atlas 4-color manual rotary, which allowed us to register 4-colors in succession.
By the time we moved from the basement we had (2) 4-color and (1) 6 color manual press. We exposed screens using a homemade device using a 500w light bulb. Before that we exposed screens by sunlight, no kidding! For graphics, we went from hand cut rubylth and a photo typesetting machine to computer graphics and a vertical camera.
In the late 1980's, we paid $24,000 for a t-shirt graphics system from Stahls that would cost $1200 nowadays. By the way, we paid for all of this by going to the bank and borrowing money against purchase orders. By the time we moved to the new building, we had a growing staff, growing expenses and our personal income became non-existent for many, many years.
Q What was the work like in the early days?
TV In the beginning, I split my days between selling, administration, and production. At night, the artwork would get done. Often, more time went into a piece of art than the customer ever paid for. We spent unheard of hours creating and producing what we thought mattered - t-shirts people will love.
I look back and realize all the years were a study of the entire process. I believe those first dozen or so years of endless but passionate work all served as "school" for what Target Graphics does now. I didn't have a pot to piss in until I was 30 years old, but it was worth the wait. And I don't mean just the money, but the ability to say “We are the BEST!"
Q When did you finally outgrow your parents’ basement and make the move to your first facility?
TV In 1991 we moved to a 4000 sq foot space. Looking back it is funny. We had no budget, no money, just a lot of gumption and the desire to make it on our own. It was official we were screen printers.
Q How did your business grow after you made the move?
TV By 1993 we added our first automatic press just in time for some Bulls Championship shirts. By 1995 we had another automatic press.
Then in 1996, we completely changed our business plan as we saw huge potential doing contract work for promotional product distributors. Overnight we stopped selling direct, turned decent accounts over to distributors we knew and joined PPAC (Promotional Products Association Chicago).
Now armed with nearly ten years of experience and excellent 4-color process printing, our business began to take off. Next we had to double our space to 8000 sq feet, taking over the entire building from our landlord. By 1998 we had 4 busy automatic presses.
Q How did you finally develop and perfect HiRes AccuColor 4-Color Process?
TV In 1997 we began an extensive R&D program to perfect 4-color process printing on dark garments. By this time, we had a fairly good local reputation for excellent 4-color process on white, but colored t-shirts were off limits even to us.
Obviously, we were not starting with a blank slate, since we had more knowledge on the topic then most just from our own work over the years. Moving forward, we enlisted expertise from ink manufactures and other consultants. Needless to say, we spent over a hundred thousand dollars in R&D over the next year.
We won our first award for 4-color process on darks in 1998 and have won every year since.
Q What are three key milestones in the lifespan of Target Graphics?
TV 1) Focusing solely on promotional product distributors
2) Perfecting HiRes AccuColor 4-Color Process
3) Outgrowing our previous location and forcing us to move to our new 45,000 sq foot facility.
