Tom Davenport is part of the DNA of Motion Textile. A 75+ employee shop with a 50,000 square foot facility in California, Motion Textile is known as one of the industry's standard bearers for contract printers.
Focused on "high-volume handmade" contract screen printing, Motion Textile's clean branding and relentless pursuit of better print quality led to a recent acquisition by one of their earliest contract clients.
The transition to new ownership has been deliberately slow, allowing Tom to dig in to the problems he could never handle when he was only concerned with getting the next big order out of the door.
Tom Davenport regularly writes for The Ink Kitchen. The tasteful, clean, and resonant aesthetic that Tom helped create for Motion Textile's branding telegraphs everything you need to know about Tom and his business: purpose, quality, and simplicity are paramount.
From 90s skate punk to contract printing: the early days
Tom grew up in Sacramento, CA. During the mid 90s, Tom's love was punk music and skateboarding. He looked up to an elder skateboarder in his neighborhood that was a screen printer – and he wanted nothing more than to learn to print awesome punk band t-shirts.
He started as a screen cleaner and eventually worked his way onto the manual press. From there, he relocated to Oakland and worked at Cinder Block, a defunct music merchandising company from the 80s and 90s (think Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, and Rancid).
At Cinder Block, he got a taste of the contract printing lifestyle: high volume jobs that take days to print with the t-shirts taking up thousands of square feet. He spent about a year working in that $50M yearly revenue contract facility, and it set the standards for his expectations.
After another relocation, Tom worked with the boss that gave him a valuable learning experience. Only it wasn't that this boss was a great boss – he was a terrible boss.
"The owner did everything the wrong way. It was really helpful. I would think, 'What would he do?' and then do the opposite of that."
Read the full article here:
https://www.printavo.com/blog/from-skate-punk-to-contract-screen-printing-with-motion-textileThis insightful and inspiring interview will make you want to take your shop to the next level.
