For the last few years, my shop was paying the bills and paying the crew but not really growing. I was comfortable, and I didn't see the writing on the wall. Sometimes it has to hit you in the face.
Now AI is part of every hour of my day. I rebuilt our shop software with it. I'm planning for a robot at the end of the dryer. And out of a 12-hour day, I spend at least two to three hours just looking at what new and exciting tech came out that day.
Here's what has changed so far, and what I think it means if you run a shop or a brand.
1. Why standing still stopped working
DTF is chewing up a lot of the small-run work. A traditional screen printer can't affordably screen print 24 shirts the same way that DTF can. Now anybody with a heat press can buy dependable transfers and press that job from their garage, without the overhead of running a business with rent, employees and overhead.
At the same time, everything in this industry is consolidating: print shops, distributors, blank suppliers. COVID let everybody grow as fast as they wanted. Now a lot of people are finding out they didn't know how to get through the hard years.
I still think this business has a lot of years left in it. It's still fun. But I think it comes down to being willing to adapt: build in efficiencies, take marketing seriously, and keep moving with the punches.
2. I rebuilt our shop software from scratch
We were paying close to $600 a month for industry shop management software. It didn't have everything we needed, and new features came slowly. So I built my own with Claude.
It took about a year, and it's got everything in it, down to our own team chat. It costs about $50 a month to run, on top of the Claude subscription I already use for everything else. AI even moved our old records over at night.
Here's the part I'd tell any owner. I probably should have launched two months earlier, but I'm a perfectionist and I was scared. Every day I told it to make things better and look for bugs. Then I was watching an episode of Ted Lasso and a quote from Mark Twain was spoken: "Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection." Finally I said I had other things to focus on, and we went cold turkey with the move-over.
We spent the first couple of weeks fixing little bugs, and it's been a great success. It's not going to be perfect. You just do it, learn from it and improve.
3. Use AI in every way, every day
I've got agents working for me all day, and it's saving me hours. One of them booked my flight to a trade show and told me to stay at a Hilton that was $710. I said no, find me something at a third of the cost. It came back with three.
That's small, but it adds up. And I'm not even using AI to its full capability. I just use it every hour and keep learning.
I talk to a lot of people who don't know where to start, and some who swear they'll never touch it. I get it. People are scared, and I think some of them still think Terminator is real.
But we've seen this before with the automobile, the telephone, credit cards and email. People said what they had was good enough and they'd never adopt.
Then everybody did.
If privacy is the worry, look around. If your TV is from the last five years, it can hear you. So can your phone. Short of a cabin with no internet, that ship has sailed.
4. AI generated art is bringing people back to the Digital Squeegee
This is the change our customers feel the most.
The Digital Squeegee was made for beautiful, highly detailed artwork. The catch was that it took a talented artist to create that artwork. Now AI can do it, so a lot more customers have art that's harder to print with traditional screen methods.
I'm hearing from a lot more people who say they need 2,000 shirts, here's the art they created, and their local screen printers are saying "I can't print that."
Print Hybrid can.
We can print it fast, and we can print it exactly how you see it on screen.
The friction is usually the file. A customer sees something beautiful on their screen, but it's an image four inches wide. The fix isn't hard, because the AI that made it can rebuild it. Tell it:
"This is exactly what I want. Now build it at 12 inches wide at 300 DPI on a transparent background and send me that file back."
Decorators shouldn't fight customers over AI art. Teach them that one prompt and get to printing.
The Digital Squeegee can do things customers don't think to ask for, too. It's called printing with "variable data," and it lets you change the digital print as long as the base white stays the same. We've printed limited editions with a different number on every shirt. People see it and go, wow, this is literally one of 200. You couldn't do that (easily) any other way.
5. Brands: stop printing 144 shirts to test a design
One of my brands was stuck, so I told them this. Instead of printing 144 of a new design, get one DTF transfer and put it on a shirt. Take your pictures, put it in your layouts, throw it up on the store and see what hits.
In a photo, nobody can tell it isn't screen printed. And you won't have 100 shirts sitting there in stock when the design turns out to be a dud.
I've told that to two brands lately, and they both said the same thing: that's genius. It's just something they had no reason to know. They're brands, not decorators.
AI art makes it even better, because you can try more designs, make mock-ups and test samples faster. And I'm happy to share all of this. The better my customers do, the more they sell. And the more they sell, the more I get to reprint. That's a win-win.
6. The boldest thing I'll try in 2027
I know I'll have a robot in the shop by the end of 2027, at least at the end of the dryer. It's going to cost about $40,000. That kind of investment normally buys equipment that prints shirts. This is more like paying an employee's full salary all at once and hoping for labor cost reduction.
It probably won't work for the first month or two while we tweak it. I'm doing it anyway.
I'm not looking to replace people. Nobody likes to sit at the end of a dryer for eight hours picking up shirts and stacking them. Someone with adaptive thinking should be making decisions somewhere else in the shop.
The same goes for the office. I expect agents to take a customer's email, build the artwork/mockup and the quote, and send it back for approval in two minutes. That workflow today can take multiple people potentially hours to complete. Let the machines have the boring parts, and let people do what people are good at.
That human part is getting more valuable, by the way. I can tell in a second when an email wasn't written by a real person, and I value the real ones more. If human-made is your lane, double down and market it, because there's definitely a market for that. There are also plenty of people who just want it done fast at a good price. And that's the efficiency of machines that can get you there.
7. The shop that's gone in five years
Picture two shops exactly like mine, five years from now. One is thriving and one is gone. I think the one that's gone refused to adapt.
And adapting means more than being willing when it shows up. It's easy to work your eight hours, go home, kick off your shoes and watch TV. But if you're not actively looking for this stuff, it's not going to find you.
Any shop or brand that isn't working out how to bring tech into its workflow is going to dry up. The companies that do it can handle two to three times the work with the same people, faster and cheaper. The rest are going to get scooped up.
I was comfortable once, and it cost me two flat years. I'm not doing that again.
Got art somebody told you can't be printed?
Send it over. We run traditional screen printing, DTF and hybrid on two Digital Squeegees here in Lubbock, so we'll tell you straight which one fits your job.
Email info@printhybrid.com or call 1.806.500.9396.
