Company
Overview
For over 20 years, Active
imprints has built a company with one purpose in mind:
to help you achieve your particular goals. From
custom-decorated apparel to the latest, most exciting
promotional products, we’re ready—and more than able—to
help you from start to finish.
Active Imprints maintains
it’s own garment decorating facility plus an in-house
graphic art department that assures you strict quality
control and on-time delivery. In addition, we guarantee
on apparel we supply that our decorations will last the
lifetime of the garment!
We have won several awards
in the apparel industry for our outstanding
screen-printing and embroidery including "Impressions"
magazine's "Best Overall Design" Award. These award-winning
designs and garments have earned us a reputation as
one of the top screen printing and embroidery companies
in the United States. We pride ourselves on being one of
the more technologically advanced facilities in the
apparel decorating industry.
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History
The First 20
Years
Once upon a time, many,
many years ago, Duane Watlington took a high school
graphics class to earn an easy A. It was in this
graphics class, taught by Mr. Wisnefsky (“The Wiz”),
where Duane was introduced to screen-printing. While
working on projects for this class, Duane came up with
the idea of making a pre-print line of surfing related
T-shirts to sell at surf shops on the Jersey Shore.
During his junior year at South Brunswick High School,
Duane invested $1600 that he had saved up for a car,
bought some equipment, and created 3 designs to sell. He
called his new company “Ocean Atlantic” or “OA” for
short. Duane got the name for his new company from
another successful line of surfing shirts called Ocean
Pacific or OP for short.
During that summer, Duane
tried to sell his line of shirts to various surf shops.
The shops he showed his designs to liked the quality of
his printing, but did not want Ocean Atlantic’s name on
the shirts. Instead, they wanted Duane to make them
shirts with their name on them. They explained to Duane
that it was hard to find someone who could print
multicolor designs really nice like his shirts. So,
reacting to the feedback he was getting, Duane changed
the business model he had developed and started to
provide custom screen-printed shirts to local small
businesses and organizations.
Over the next school year,
Duane’s business continued to grow. More and more local
businesses and teams heard about Ocean Atlantic and were
giving Duane their orders. Just after graduating from
High School in 1984, Duane quit his job at a local
pizzeria and started printing shirts full time. With the
help of his little brother Keith, they cranked out a lot
of shirts that summer from their grandmother’s
garage.
Over the next several
years, Ocean Atlantic supported Duane as he attended
Rutgers University’s School of Business. Duane spent his
mornings on the road selling, his afternoons in class,
and his evenings and weekends printing shirts. Upon
graduation in 1989, with a BS in Finance, Duane built a
shop next to his grandmother’s house and opened
Watlington T’s located at 620 Ridge Road in Monmouth
Junction, NJ. The same site where the corporate office
and showroom is now located.
In 1991, the demand for
embroidered garments was exploding so the company
purchased two embroidery machines to bring our
embroidery production in-house. With the volume of
business doubling each year, from all our satisfied
customers, Watlington T’s had to move the
screen-printing division to a larger facility in 1992.
We also made an investment in another embroidery machine
and more screen-printing equipment including all new
computers for our art department. Over the next couple
years, demand continued to grow. At that time, it was
decided to increase our production capacity by
purchasing our first automated screen printing press.
The acquisition of this machine opened the door for us
to competitively, bid and produce really large orders,
and offer contract-printing services.
In 1995, Duane noticed that
his customers were requesting more and more non-wearable
items to be imprinted. Items like mugs, magnets, key
chains, and pens could also be imprinted with the
customer’s logo that we already have on file from doing
their wearable orders. To be able to offer a full range
of promotional products, Duane joined ASI (Advertising
Specialty Institute), which gave Watlington T’s access
to over 2,500 suppliers with more than 500,000
imprintable items. This new association enabled
Watlington T’s to satisfy its customer’s needs for
“Everything Imprintable”.
The following year, Duane
decided to change the business name to one that more
accurately defined what we do. Active Imprints was
chosen since we imprint using different methods on
activewear, not just T-shirts. Plus, Watlington was hard
to spell. This new name, along with a proactive
marketing approach, propelled the company even more. In
1998 our production facility doubled in size and at this
time the screen-printing and embroidery divisions were
merged under the same roof. This move made more space
available at the Ridge Road location to be utilized as
our sales and corporate office. We also purchased more
embroidery and screen-printing equipment to keep up with
our ever-growing demand.
During the summer of 2000,
while on vacation at the Jersey Shore, Duane had to make
some copies and visited the local print shop, Coastal
Printing in Ship Bottom. As Duane left with his copies
in hand, he noticed a screen-printing business located
right next-door called Starving Artist T-Shirts. Duane
stopped in and introduced himself to the owners, Beverly
and Ray Laird, and talked shop a while. Their businesses
had a lot in common with each other as far as their
commitment to quality, their customers and community.
They, like Duane, had also been in this industry for
over 17 years, but were looking to transition out.
Duane, on the other hand, had excess capacity and saw
this as an opportunity to grow his business.
In March of 2001, Active
Imprints purchased Starving Artist T-shirts and opened
up a second sales location at 518 Central Avenue in Ship
Bottom. Beverly and Ray donated most of their equipment
to a charity in Philadelphia that helps train inner-city
kids the art of screen-printing. It also enabled Ray an
opportunity to pursue his dream as a youth minister.
This was a win-win situation for all parties involved
including the customers of Starving Artist
T-shirts.
Today our plan is to
continue what we have been doing for over 20 years. We
provide our customers with quality decorated apparel and
promotional products in a timely fashion and within
their budget. The fact that over 76% of our new business
comes from referrals tells us we must be doing something
right. In addition, it is our employees that are
responsible for Active Imprints’ continued success. This
All-Star Team of professionals is highly experienced and
ready to meet any need you may have. Poised for new
challenges and continued growth, the Active Imprints
staff is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead
and look forward to serving you for the next 20
years.
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Mission
Statement
To provide each of our
customers, the finest quality, custom imprinted products
with outstanding customer service in a timely manner and
at competitive prices. We view our employees as family.
We reward a solid work ethic, positive attitude,
innovative thinking and the acceptance of responsibility
among our employees. Teamwork, organization, quality
workmanship and efficiency are the backbone of our
company and we recognize that it is the employees who
deliver that payload.
We believe that by
listening, promising and delivering as a team we can
establish a long term, working partnership with our
clients. We consider our word as an all out commitment
and will do whatever it takes to keep that commitment.
It is our goal to have moderate growth, annual
profitability and national recognition by providing
unrivaled service, superior design and quality
craftsmanship.
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Award-Winning Designs
Many of our designs have been recognized by the
Screen Printing industry for their excellence. Here are
just a few that have won awards.
|
"David
Horsnall Pro Fuel Harley"- This design was honored
in Screen Printing magazine's Terrific T-Shirt
Contest for exceptional use of multi-color on a
large press. |
|
"Wolf"-
This design comes from our popular Nature's Wear
collection of shirts. It was honored in Screen
Printing magazine, in the category of
multi-colored light ink on a dark shirt. The
original painting was done by Paul Fenwick and is
available in black on T-shirts, sweats, and long
sleeve tees. |
|
"Cougar"- Another
Fenwick design which was awarded best overall
design by Impressions Magazine. The Cougar is also
available in the Nature's Wear collection, Screen
Printed on a pebble 100% cotton Hanes Beefy-T. |
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Locations
Central
Jersey - (Click Here for MapQuest
Directions)
Our corporate office and
central NJ showroom/sales office is conveniently located
just north of Princeton at 620 Ridge Road Monmouth
Junction, New Jersey. Our production facility is located
in an industrial complex, also in Monmouth Junction, New
Jersey. Both of these locations are easily accessible
from Rt. 1 and Interstate 95 as well as the New Jersey
Turnpike. Most of our blank wearable inventory is kept
in two warehouses located near Philadelphia
PA.
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Long Beach
Island - (Click Here for MapQuest
Directions)
Our Long Beach Island
showroom/sales office is conveniently located just off
the causeway at 518 Central Ave. in Ship Bottom, New
Jersey. We are located at the corner of 5th Street and
Central Ave. between Coastal Printing and Tramontano
Fruits and Vegetables.
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