Steve Lafler Holiday 2013 T-Shirt Catalog

I've put together a bunch of great designs with a new T-Shirt shop at Redbubble at this link.

Here's a couple samples:

This is Frankentiger, with the monster playing Jerry Garcia's custom Doug Irwin guitar

This design is inspired by Oaxacan Street Food.

Steve Lafler

Manx Media Wants to Print Your T-Shirts

Who Are We?

We are custom screen printers, offering high quality printing on T-Shirts and Sportswear at the wholesale level. Manx Media is Steve Lafler and David Perkin. I'm Steve. I handle the order processing, invoicing, sales, graphics, marketing and general office/business tasks. David runs the press, burns screens, handles shipping and maintains the production facilities. We've been working together as custom screen printers in Portland, Oregon since 2005, but both of us have been in the business since the 80s.

David is located over in the St. John's nieghborhood, Portland where he maintains the shop.  I work remotely from Oaxaca, Mexico where I've been since 2007.
 

What Have We Done?

David and I have printed T-Shirts and Sportwear for dozens of clients. Currently we do tourist T-Shirts for the San Francisco market, and summer camp T-Shirts for a company that has three camp sites in the Bay Area, California. We also do shirts for comic book stores and cartoonists.

Here are some of the clients we've worked with:

Cartoonists: Lloyd Dangle, J.R. Williams, Mary Fleener, R.L. Crabb, Renee French and Keith Knight.

Entertainment:

Sparkplug Comic Books, Top Shelf Comics, Margaret Cho, Liam Sullivan, The Residents, Anticon, Doseone, and Peaches.

Business, Schools and Organizations

Ruth Asawa School, Sony Music Distribution, Apple Computer,  Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Transports, UC Berkeley Rugby, Comic Relief, Acme Bread, the Oakland Zoo.

My Latest T-Shirt Design

What Can We do for You?

We can print your T-Shirts and Sportswear. Our focus is on top quality and service. We want to deliver the best possible printed shirts to you that exactly fulfill your needs. We put the goods you need in your hands, when you need them.For example, when Margaret Cho (a comedian) was on tour, she wanted 2 - 400 T-Shirts to magically appear at each venue the day of her show. We made that happen.

We'll match you up with the style and color of shirt that fits the bill. There is a dizzying array of T-Shirts and Sportswear to choose from. Before we print the job, we'll show you a proof to be sure you are satisfied with the quality of the work.

We can print up to 500 one color T-Shirts per day, 250 mulit-color shirts (2 - 4 color) or 150 full color shirts (5 - 6 color.) 

The Dancin' Cat Design

How Do We do it?

We are expert garment printers. We print on a Workhorse 6-color manual press. We can print up to six colors in perfect registration. We offer a complete in-house art service at realistic rates.

Ask For an Estimate on Your Custom Screen Printing Job

Call me at 503-213-3671 or send me an email to request a quote.

Steve Lafler
Manx Media

Your Portland Oregon T-Shirt Printers

Manx Media is a Custom T-Shirt company with production in Portland, Oregon. Essentially it's a two man operation. David Perkin operates the press, burns screens and maintains the shop in the St. Johns neighborhood of North Portland, while I handle sales, business, art and graphics from my laptop in Oaxaca, Mexico.

We have been printing shirt jobs together in Portland since 2005, but both of us have been in the business for a long time. I set up my first T-Shirt shop in Eugene in 1981, before running a shop for many years in Oakland, CA. David, a Portland native, has worked in several shops over the years, including my shop in Oakland..

We came together in the wholesale custom screen printing business with a commitment to quality and service. We print with a Workhorse six color, six station manual press, with spot curing capability allowing us to produce multicolor prints on dark shirts. We are T-Shirt geeks, willing to go the extra mile to get it just right.

Current clients include Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland, Haight Ashbury T-Shirts in San Francisco, and Sarah's Science in Castro Valley California. In the past we have printed for dozens of mom and pop operations, as well as entertainers like comedian Margaret Cho and cult band The Residents.

Manx Media also works with some great ink slingers in the San Francisco Bay Area, with Mats Stromberg and Mike Perkin (David's brother) handling overflow production.

Manx would like to be your custom T-Shirt printer. We're ready to set you up with exactly what you need, and guarantee the highest quality work. Show us your graphic and tell us what type of shirt you'd like to print on, and we'll come up with a price for your T-Shirt project.

Thanks for considering Manx!

Steve Lafler
Call for a quote 503-213-3671 or email Steve

Manx Media Custom Screen Printing

Holiday Catalog - T's & Comics

I'm offering a FANTASTIC array of T-Shirts and Graphic Novels this Holiday season! Click on the art below to view the catalog.

Happy Holidays!
Steve Lafler

Mobile Marketing for T-Shirt Geeks

There are now more mobile phones than people in the United States, with Smartphones in the hands of more than 50% of mobile users. I've been looking at articles from the NY Times, Forbes and Inc, and they all report that mobile advertising and marketing is growing, uh, wicked fast.

I'm no expert on mobile marketing, but clearly it's time for custom T-Shirt printers (hey, that's me!) to add mobile to our marketing mix.

How are we gonna do that? Well, I'll take the easy way out and refer readers to some slick guys in Australia, Oz Promo TShirts, who've put in the work and have posted a darn good article about Mobile Marketing for Custom T-Shirt Printers. I note that most of their comments apply to small business as a whole.

Turns out we're shifting to making tools now (apps), not websites, to aid our marketing efforts.

Steve Lafler
503-213-3671

Monsters, Cars & Guitars: Steve Lafler T-Shirts

It's my heartfelt belief that everyone should wear T-Shirts featuring Monsters, Cars and Guitars.
I've created a line of T-Shirts with the discerning fan of the like in mind.
This link sends you to my Steve Lafler/Cafe Press webstore, where you can get yourself set up with some stylin' looks.
Here's the designs on offer...



The classic Wolf Man plays his Gretsch Rockabilly guitar



This one's called Frankentiger, because Frankenstein is playing Tiger.



They call it the Vocho down in Mexico. The classic VW bug.

Adventures in Full Color T Shirts

Here at Manx Media, we have had a season of strong demand for full color printing on both light and dark T Shirts, mostly on slinky women's styles from Bella and American Apparel.

We printed the Spring / Summer line for Eden Dawn Apparel of Portland. The line featured 14 items, including six full color designs. It was both a technical and production challenge to pump these clever designs out, but by all accounts the shirts looked great. This is a young designer with a lot of style and a great future, so be sure to visit her site.

Next up was a new color design from beloved kick-ass comedian, Margaret Cho. Margaret is now doing a show called "The Sensuous Woman", and the shirts feature a faux-forties style pin-up illustration of the notorious Cho in full lingerie. Wow! Who knew? This is one of the best shirts we've ever done, it just looks superb (thanks to the great illustration of Margaret by Olivia).

Okay! What have we at Manx Media learned about printing full color on Tees? Simple! With our level of technology, the best results come from enhanced process color printing, usually using an underbase white and either a "popper" spot color, or a high light white. Before this rash of challenging jobs, I usually would go with "simulated process" or index color for full color on a dark shirt; I've had good results with these techniques before. But to tell the truth, I've gained experience and confidence with process printing that makes me ready to tackle more full color images.

One caveat to full process color printing--with the cost of setting up six films and screens for a job, best to consider a minimum of 100 shirts to defray the cost of set up. There are always transfers for short color runs...

Kudos go to David Perkin, my stalwart press operator who couldn't print a bad shirt if you paid him. You're the man, David!

Steve Lafler

Tour Merch

Manx Media Custom Screen Printing has years of experience supplying touring acts with merchandise. We have provided the whole range of screen printed and embroidered items from work shirts, panties, zipper hoodies and nylon jackets all the way to the ubiquitous t-shirt (in both men's and women's styles) to some demanding acts with ingenious designs. You'd be amazed at some of the unusual print jobs we've produced for our touring clientele--we're always up for a challenge!

White some acts prefer to purchase goods for the whole tour up front and load up the van, others prefer to travel light and have us drop ship the goods to them as they travel from venue to venue. In a pinch, we have shipped overnight or 2nd day when a hot item sells out (we ship via DHL, who are not only efficient, but by far the best deal in the shipping industry). Our priority is to keep our touring clients supplied with the merch they need to make the tour a profitable venture.

Some of the acts we have worked with over the past decade:

Peaches
The Residents
Margaret Cho
Angry Samoans
Themselves
Anticon
Chix on Speed

Send me an email at steve.lafler@gmail.com with any questions you have about touring merch. Let's look at all the garment decorating and design options to come up with the right mix of touring merchandise for your act.

Steve Lafler
Visit the Manx Media homepage.