By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK Register Reporter
At Iola Computer Products you’ll find T-shirts and mugs awaiting personalization. You can have a sign made for your business or a trophy made for your star player. In fact, at Iola Computer Products, the thing you’re least likely to find are computer products.
It is a problem, said owner Steve Garver. Not that those things aren’t there, but that his business’ name doesn’t accurately reflect the metamorphosis it has undergone over the years.
“We’ve more or less converted over to the sign business,” Garver said of the transformation. For a while, both signs and computers occupied the space. Before that, the businesses co-existed with farm implements.
“We’ve had this store since 1996,” Garver said. “Her dad owned a business down the street called Heiser Implements, and I worked for him,” Garver said, referring to his wife Sandy.
Garver worked for Heiser for 25 years, and started his computer store there, he said. “I had a lot of customers — schools, businesses, farmers.”
While working at Heiser, he developed his computer business, building and servicing computers for clients. When his father-in-law retired, he had two choices: take over the implement business, or focus on computers.
“It looked like computers were going to be a thriving business, which it was for a while,” Garver said. So he picked computers.
“We owned this building so we moved here,” he said.
Still, something lurked in the background.
“I’ve always been artistic, and my wife is artistic,” Garver said. “We both like to create.”
And so “We really morphed the business into something more artistic.”
That, too, began with farm implements.
“When I was working at the farm store, I would create decals for tractors and combines,” Garver said. “That was basically the start of the farm business.” Garver realized they could design almost anything, and print almost anything. With his computer savvy, the couple started marketing their printing services on line.
They print T-shirts and mugs and street signs for people and groups all over the country, as well as creating “dash plaques” for auto shows.
Dash plaques are like small flat trophies handed out to show participants, Garver said. Particpants collect them, added Sandy.
“We do a lot of car shows,” Sandy said. “Not just locally, but all over the United States.”
One of the appeals of ICP’s print work is it’s color layering. The company uses seven screens to print true-to-life color on T-shirts that are sold throughout the country. One client is the Safari Museum in Chanute.
“They wonderd how we could get such perfect flesh tones,” Garver said. He credits his printer, Ken Brakel.
“I’ve got the best screen printer in all of Kansas,” he said. “I’ve had other screen printers contact me through the Internet and want to know how he did that,” Garver said of Brakel’s work.
Garver explained with the printing they do, “There’s no room for error.” Because color is laid beside color to create a new tone, the placement of each screen has to be perfect. “Nobody can print like he can,” Garver said.
Besides amazing T-shirts, the company prints mouse pads, ceramic mugs, coasters, adn ceramic tiles. They make dog tags for dogs and people.
“When a lot of the guys were getting shipped off with the guard,” Sandy said, “parents came in and had pictures of the dads put on dog tags for the kids, and the dads were wearing pictures of the kids and the wife.” It helped the families stay close, she said.
And if you like, you can even get a dog tag for your dog, with your name and address on it, of course.
Other popular print art includes award medallions (popular with schools and clubs) and magnetic sports mementos. Shaped like basketballs and more, the magnetic plaques can be personalized with a player’s name and number, or even the team logo. “The kids like to put them on their lockers,” Sandy said.
“Everything we do, we do here,” Sandy said. “We design it and sell it.” And they design and sell quite the variety of things.
“You bring me a picture of the kids and I’ll put them on coffee mugs and mouse pads,” said Sandy. “I put them on ceramic tile — These will sit in easles, like a decorative plate,” she said of the portrait tiles one family had done.
Mugs are popular with reunions and businesses, she said. Showing an example, it is obvious the quality of the print work done at ICP. Ceramic mugs, for example, utilize a special ink that permeates into the glaze, Sandy said. There’s no difference in surface level, so whether you print a photo or a saying or a company name, it’s permanent and can’t be scratched off.
That sort of quality is what the Garvers strive for. They like to be top-notch in their work, be it embroidering your pets names onto fleece for Christmas pillows, as one customer was doing, or having a personalized street sign made for your den.
One apparent favorite is a phoot collage printed onto a mouse pad.
Sandy will compose a montage of images from your personal photos, then print them onto a mouse pad. Families often have one printed for every memmber.
One family, she said, had ICP put their heirloom geneological photos on coasters to display around the house. “That way people could pick them up to look at them closely. You wouldn’t want people handling the originals that way,” Garver said.
Sandy said the coasters are also popular with dog breeders, who include them in gift baskets or sell them at dog shows.
From signs to shirts, ICP prints it all. Whether you’re looking for Iola or other local color gear, or need a new wall sign for your company or its rigs, if it can be printed, they can print it at ICP.
Now if they only had a sign that said all that...
1/29/09
No comments:
Post a Comment