Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Weems.
Hi Justin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My best friend and I were given an abandoned venue to operate in our hometown of Nacogdoches, TX. We had to find a way to fund it so we started designing t-shirts and having them printed as our promoter name, Fine Southern Gentlemen. Looking back, they weren’t great but our friends and musicians were all buying them.
After that summer, we decided we wanted to move to Austin so we took those same tees and shopped them around and found a very prominent spot on S. Congress that agreed to carry them (formerly known as Parts & Labour). This gave us a reason to keep it going.
After having a few orders made by other local shops in Austin, we finally saved up enough to buy all of our own equipment and started printing out of my garage. As soon as our friends knew we could do it, they all wanted shirts made. We were quickly printing at festivals, for big name comedians and even got to do some World Cup shirts for our buddy Clint Dempsey.
My friend eventually moved onto another opportunity as we were still doing this part time. I brought on another partner that I had been working with at my day job and we started focusing more on custom print orders and live printing and we moved into 3 different, bigger shops together and started hiring employees.
My partner at this time had been juggling running 2 businesses and was offered to take over the other which has left me on my own but still with a great team to help support.
At that point we were moving into another space (with air conditioning finally), perfected our processes with a bigger staff and more volume.
During covid, we pivoted to a fund raising model to get us and a ton of other small businesses through the shut downs. That prepped us for really scaling our online retail business for the future.
We’ve since moved a couple more times and continue to balance between our custom printing and retail business.
We’ve been going since 2007 but are still trying every day to tweak and perfect every aspect of what we do.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nothing is EVER smooth in the screen printing world. If I could do it all again, I would have opened up a restaurant with like 6 menu items. There are so many variables with every single step of screen printing that the tiniest thing can ruin an order.
In our last location, the city did not take too kindly to our want/need to throw shows in our space which is something that has clearly been important to us from the start. We tried doing everything that they wanted us to do to get the space permitted to their standards, but were ultimately told it was going to cost about $100k+ to get a green light to continue on with live music. That and our rent being raised by $13k/month was enough for us to leave the last space behind.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
There are a ton of screen printing shops in Austin but I think what sets us apart is how tapped in and involved we are with everyone around us. When we started really growing our online shop we were reaching out to as many local artists as we could. We partnered with bands we loved to release music under Feels So Good Records just as a way to help promote. We’ve opened our retail shop doors to multiple vintage vendors to give them a place to sell. We still maintain a retail storefront for almost everything we carry on our site and continue to host more scaled down version of live shows in our new space.
FSG wouldn’t be alive without all of the community that it was built with and we want everyone to be able to be a part of it, even if you’re not buying anything. Just come by and have a good time.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
You have to figure it out and adapt, no matter what it is.
Things are always changing in the print world with new machinery, new print processes and new software. Your customers’ expectations are going to grow and you need to be ahead of it and able to offer them what it is they need.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.fsgprints.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/fsgprints
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/fsgprints
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-weems-62b19330/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@fsgprints
