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About Us/Policies
  
I was first introduced to screen printing my sophomore year of high school at CAA in Mr. Beline’s technology class. Though there were newer forms available he still taught the method of hand cutting Ulano stencil film to create your image. I remember thinking it was a really cool idea but after 3 unsuccessful attempts to create a design I gave up and ended up barely passing the course. A year later when my band got our first gig in Portland we decided we needed shirts. After quickly finding out that $10 for a printed shirt was way too much to pay for our meager budget I decided to go back to Mr. Beline on hands and knees to see if he would let me try my hand at silk screening again. This time with some motivation to kick my butt into action I actually was able to silk screen my own shirts! It’s amazing the difference it makes when you’re excited about learning something!
Through the rest of high school I convinced Mr. Beline to let me use the schools 4 color 4 station Hopkins press in the afternoons to print shirts when ever my band needed them. This continued even after I graduated until Mr. Beline finally thought it was time for me to leave the nest and told me to buy my own press. With shirts to print and no money for a press to print them I called up our friends band who had purchased the book “How To Print Shirts, for Fun and Profit.” He told me he knew how to make his own wooden printing press. With a few modifications, some nails, glue, a cutting board, and scrap lumber our press was done. My friend also introduced me to photo emulsion to expose my screens instead of hand cutting them. Wow, was that a disaster. We basically taught our selves how to print, doing most of it completely wrong, but still making some pretty cool shirts. About twice a week we would turn my mom’s kitchen into the Not Long After t-shirt factory. She’d come home to find Ryan, Brandon, and Chris completely making a mess around her kitchen, with the oven door open and blazing to cure the shirts, and ink all over the place. Mom’s don’t like ink spilled on kitchen counters, especially when you don’t know the right product to take it off! Besides the mess and lectures on cleanliness, we actually pumped out thousands of shirts in that kitchen which we sold on tour to pay for gas and Taco Bell.
For one particularly long tour I needed to raise some money to pay for my bills while we were gone. I thought of different ways I could make money and came to the conclusion that if my band printed our own shirts, other bands might want to print their own shirts as well. I made another wood press, bought some ink, emulsion, a screen, a squeegee, a few chemicals, and wrote up some instructions on how to print shirts. Then took a crude photo of it and stuck it on Ebay. To my excitement it sold, and then another, and another, until I was selling about 5-7 of these little starter kits each month. I started getting emails from people who had bought kits from me wondering where they could buy inks or screens. I would simply direct them to the nearest local supplier. However, if they lived out in the country and there was no local supplier and thus they were out of luck. I began to think it would be a good idea to put up a website to sell screen printing supplies and equipment so anyone could order supplies no mater where they were located. Having no clue how to build a website and no money to pay someone else to build one, the idea basically sat in my mind gathering cobwebs and dust.
It was about this time that my dad invited me to come along with him to an internet marketing workshop put on by a company called Storesonline. It was an all day event and being a young rocker at age 21, I could think of about 100 different things I would rather be doing then attending another of my dad’s get rich quick’ seminars. After some convincing and bringing out the point that they did offer a free lunch with the deal, I decided that it may be worth attending. Right about this time I just started dating a pretty cool girl named Amanda, I thought there could be real potential there and figured she may want something more concrete than a band boy. By the end of the seminar, I realized I had found a vehicle to make my idea of starting a screen printing website happen. Four months later, in April of 2004, after some very hard work and creativity www.SilkScreeningSupplies.com went live.
We started small with about 30 core products. It was just me in my bedroom taking on every roll from web development, sales, customer service, production, and shipping. I rented a house with band mates from my friend Jeff Held (now Ryonet Sales & Marketing Manager) in Battle Ground, WA. He had a small pole barn which we used to build wood presses and pack boxes. As our site started to grow in popularity we continued to add products. In July of 2004 I hired my first full time employee Shawn Zimmerman (now Ryonet Customer Service Manager). As our website, products, and orders grew we, Chris Miles (Drummer in Not Long After) and Eric Holzer (now Production Manager) joined the team to take over production of new products and purchasing. By the end of the year we had grown into a nice little company but all very young to the screen printing industry. We needed experience and guidance. Early in 2005 we were able to bring on an experience screen printer who worked with our company for about a year and brought on key product lines like Riley Hopkins Presses and CCI Chemicals. Being a very unorganized male, my then girlfriend Amanda would help me organize and pay our bills at night. One day I asked her if she would come work with me and help me full time, she agreed and we finally had some organization. You should have seen us! Amanda and I working in a small out bedroom that used to be a hot tub room, one working in a spare bedroom in the house, and Shawn, Chris and Eric (plus a few others) bumping into each other in the small pole barn. Ethernet and phone cords running all over the yard and UPS trucks getting stuck in the mud, it was a site to see. Now we all look back on those long hour days at the beginning and laugh, it was an exciting time!
After a year at the pole barn in Battle Ground we finally were able to move into a “real” business location in Vancouver, WA. Our first 8500 Sq Foot location gave us more room for production, products, and employees. By the end of 2005, we had grown into a multi million dollar company with almost 20 employees, manufacturing Squeegee, Scoop Coater, and Exposure Units, and shipping almost 100 orders a day all over North America! With Chuck’s help we also produced our first instructional video’s and held monthly screen printing 101 classes at a second location in Vancouver.
To continue to grow and expand our customer network, in 2006, we decided to add a second distribution location in Harrison, Arkansas to service our Midwest and east coast customers much faster and cheaper! These two locations now allow us to service the entire continental US within 3 days ground shipping!
By 2007, we had doubled our business once again and were desperately in need of more space at our Vancouver location. In June of 07’ we consolidated our two Vancouver locations into one corporate facility. This new 12000 Sq Foot facility features extensive office space for our sales and customer service departments as well as a bustling shop with manufacturing, freight, and shipping departments. Upstairs we now offer over 2500 sq feet of classroom facilities with desk space, a product area with over 4 manual presses, dryers, and pad printing as well as a digital room featuring film output, sublimation, and direct to garment printers as well as vinyl plotters. Covering all the basics from artwork to specialty production we can now hold over 20 students in our monthly classes which have sold out every month at the new location!
After only 3 and a half years, Ryonet has grown from just me to over 30 employees. From a bedroom to over 20,000 sq feet of warehouse in multiple locations nationwide. We’ve processed over 40,000 orders to over 20,000 customers worldwide and currently ship over 200 packages a day. We’re proud to sell top quality AMERICAN MADE products some of which we manufacture ourselves. Each year we produce over 1000 exposure units, over 180,000 inches of squeegee, 2000+ press platens, and 6000 lbs of aluminum scoop coaters. We also coat or expose over 3000 frames a year for customers in our art and screen coating department. The thing that we are most proud of is the 5000 NEW screen printers we’ve started since conception!
We continue to grow and expand our products, customers, and services to meet what the screen printing industry needs. Though we sell a quality product at a good price that is delivered in a quick manner, our success comes from the way we service our customers. Now industry renown, our company wide customer service is hands down the best in the industry. We’re dedicated to our customers, are here to fix problems and find solutions! We strive to treat each customer like they are our only customer! No, Ryonet isn’t perfect, I’m not sure of a company that is perfect, but our close nit team is dedicated to perfection and 99.9 times out of 100 that’s how we roll!
The Ryonet story is unique but it’s not an anomaly, success is available to anyone who goes after it! Through the course of our young journey we’ve met so many amazing people, heard hundreds of incredible ideas, and screen tremendous success in this industry. For more information visit “The Dream” page of website.
Though our band split up shortly after the conception of Ryonet, we’ve recently gotten back together and are going back to our “Roots of Rock” as I call it. I found that the creativity and art involved in screen printing correlates hand and hand with music. Now, three out of four of the Members of Not Long After work at Ryonet with a lot of our music used on Ryonet Video’s and Instructional DVD’s! Oh ya, and now we get to screen print our merch using industry leading equipment! Sure beats a wood press and my mom’s oven, but hey, that just goes to show that you can literally start ANYWHERE.
For more info on Not Long After, visit “The Band” page on our website.
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