{"id":48850,"title":"Starting a New Venture with Old Roots","description":"Dipping my toe into the Teemill print on demand experience.","content":"

The first T-shirts with my Celtic Art on were way back in the second half of 1990\u2019s. There were just two designs as I recall. I still have one somewhere. It was the way things were done then, screen print a batch and see if they sell. My publisher at the time produced them, so it was nice and risk free from my point of view.

That publisher also happened to be an Apple Mac reseller, in the days just before the iMac really did change everything. Macs then were almost a rarity and considered the domain of creatives. So I was in. No-one could have foreseen then just how much technology would race ahead and in the directions it would go. Hand-held devices with access to the world at your fingertips, don\u2019t be so ridiculous. When I received my first book commission, as it happens to illustrate a book with a lot of Celtic Art, the only technology I had access to was a photocopier at the local print shop. It was not that long ago, honest. Getting even a basic Mac was quite a leap forward.

It took a while for things to mature to a level to be really useable. The long wait for dial up modems to download something, anything, really did slow things up and restrict what could be done. Through that time, I kept having the idea of getting more of my Celtic Art onto T-shirts. From time to time I would look at print companies with the idea of doing it myself. And inevitably wince at the cost. Print on demand had yet to arrive. Finally it was a thing and made what hitherto had been the domain of those with deeper pockets than I, achievable.<\/p>

Now I will admit, I have dipped my toe into print on demand T-shirts prior to this outing. There are a number of players out there these days and I gave a couple a go. But it never felt satisfactory. Something was missing. Quite a lot really. I had a hankering to do it in a different way. Then I discovered Teemill. The more I looked into the way they work, the more I thought this was the way I wanted to go.

Being able to design and layout my own web site using my own domain name while Teemill do all the logistics printing, production and shipping was in itself quite a selling point to me.
Then there is the Teemill ethos of organic cotton, natural materials, sustainable fashion, plastic-free packaging all sounding good. But would those principles hold up to good clothing. Once samples arrived for me to be able to do promotional photoshoots with friends and I got to see the finished T-shirts in the flesh, I was sold.

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