Well, here I go with my first blog posting. As the founder of Pro World 38 years ago and still active in the industry, I hope to share some of my experiences, knowledge, and insight that I have gathered in my memory bank over the years. As I get older, the balance in that bank seems to be decreasing but I’ll try my best to make some withdrawals.

The name Pro World came about as a result of my starting off selling sports souvenirs to retailers in the Philadelphia area. I worked out of my home and drove a van with the merchandise available for ‘instant’ delivery. In the early 70’s many of my customers were independent sporting good stores, before they were replaced by the box store chains that we have today. Most of these sporting good stores had a heat press that they used to print numbers and names on athletic uniforms. A company called Quik-Set in Ohio and InstaGraphics were two of the major suppliers of both the machines and the lettering.

As luck would have it, the Philadelphia Flyers became a very popular team and one of my customers suggested that I sell ‘iron on decals’ with the team logo. He supplied the name of a local printer who was printing these (licensing was very weak in those days) and I ended up buying them from him and selling to virtually everyone that had a heat press. This turned out to be a very successful venture and I added other designs that this printer offered. Now, for the first time, the stores were selling novelty designs along with the sports related transfers. For the most part, they were pleasantly surprised at the demand for t-shirts with all types of transfers, not just sports. As this part of my business grew rapidly I was able to become a distributor for companies like Roach (now evolved into AirWaves), SolarTrans (gone), PhotoTrans (gone), and QuikSet (gone).

During the 70’s and 80’s there was hardly a mall or small town that did not have at least one t- shirt shop. I realized that the successful shops were the ones that offered a wide variety of designs but were usually concerned with the amount of inventory that they had to purchase to stock them all. At this point, Pro World’s no minimum policy was born. I would offer all the designs from all the transfer manufacturers and these shops could purchase any quantity they wanted, one piece or several dozen.

As time marched on I rented a small warehouse, hired an employee, and exhibited at the first trade show in our industry. It was held in Dallas, Texas and produced by Bill Windsor, who I believe is responsible for coining the phrase’ Imprinted Sportswear Industry’. He also began publishing a magazine called “Impressions.” We were advertisers in the magazine from the first issue and continued for many, many years. It was the first magazine devoted solely to garment printers, suppliers, and retailers. It literally gave birth to the business we all now share in one respect or another.

I won’t bore you with all the details. Pro World has grown over the years, has thousands of customers worldwide, many employees, and I feel proud that it is a respected leader in the ‘imprinted sportswear industry’. In recent years much of this has become possible due to our strength on the Internet. In 1995 we were first in the industry to have a website. This was due to the foresight of my son, Matt, who joined the company in 1992 and now is the ‘main man’.

I’ll fill you in on some other details in future blogs but right now I have to meet a friend for lunch. If any of you remember the ‘old days’ I’d like to hear from you.  Also let me know what you want to hear more about, or topics you want to learn about.