We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aaron Cohrs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aaron below.

Aaron, appreciate you joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

It is difficult to figure out how to start a business. My first instinct was to look for someone to start the business with. At the time I got advice that it is better to start a business on your own. That having a business partner can complicate things and run into issues down the road. In hindsight it was probably one of my best decisions. While there are plus side to working alone I would recommend to anyone starting a new business to look into finding someone that you can trust and work well with. For me having a business partner has stopped me from having the option to make bad, impulsive or lazy decisions about the business. Have someone you have to justify your actions to or explain your decisions may be frustrating at times but is a huge benefit. It is also very difficult to keep up the confidence and optimism needed to run a business. Having another person invested in your same goal is of great value. Just having someone who can relate to the situations at the same level is a huge benefit. Today we have a great crew but it was not always the case. We have learned the best way to get quality team members is to reward them. It’s no secret that championship teams have the highest payrolls so these days our goal is to find the best talent.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Our business started with an independent spirit and a love of screen printing. As an art student I studied in a variety of mediums and quickly found I was utilizing screen print techniques in my artwork. Our first clients were coffee shops and galleries were I would hang my work with screen printed images. This mostly through word of mouth has evolved into where we are 20 years later!

So our strength has always been a genuine passion for the service we provide. Over the years we have found that we often share this trait with other successful business we work with. While being an entrepreneur is a definite skill set that I have always gravitated to, I have been blessed to find a passion for something that could be turned into a business. You could say this is what separates us from a lot of our competition and translates to a great environment for our clients.

Being a small business owner, starting it from scratch has given me a genuine admiration and understanding of most of our clients. We get to work with independent visionary people on a daily basis. Small businesses, bands, church groups, non-profits, service providers, artists, schools all have to communicate their message to prosper. A printed t-shirt is a very affective and affordable way to do this.

We are grateful to live in a country were you can pursue your dream and we get to work in an industry that exposes us to individuals doing so on a regular basis. We regularly try and expose this ideal to our employees so they see what they are creating as more then just a way to get paid. We will often visit the businesses, shops, events were our clients printed garments are being sold. This gives them perspective into the life of the garment beyond their role in its creation. Seeing the life of the garment outside of just being a daily job task translates into every department. Sales recommends better garments and ink combinations, they take the time to understand the intended use of the garments. Once our employees see their finished work in the real world the art department takes the extra few minutes to separate every aspect of the design, the printers will take the extra minutes to make sure everything is in line and prints smoothly. You can understand that it’s worth taking that extra minute step to get it right, once you realize that is how the product will look forever once it is printed.

We try to emphasize this ideal with our slogan Quality over Quantity. Most of our industry has been geared to how quickly can we print the most product for the cheapest price. We don’t believe in disposable products and the t-shirt has been put into that category. We try to take our customers out of the promotional product mindset into creating a long lasting quality personal expression about whatever you are working on! The shirt in your closet that you wash at least once a week and look forward to putting on.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Being in business since 2002 we have had several major events outside of our control that had a major impact on our business. The first was Sept 11th 2001. While we weren’t officially incorporated at the time we were doing work for a handful of clients. We had just purchased our first press and the economy was great, our business was taking off. Once the planes hit the towers everything really stopped for awhile. We learned that we were part of an economy that we needed to pay attention to the larger picture and plan for unexpected events.

The housing crisis was another lesson for us as it took down the stock market and changed peoples buying habits going forward. We learned not to place so much trust into other institutions and to make our own judgments on business decisions. Just because we could qualify for a loan doesn’t mean it is something we can afford or should utilize.

Most recently the pandemic has really changed the way we see our relation to work in general. We realized that we need to foster and value our employees, That just trying to pay more than minimum wage doesn’t equate to paying a living wage. We believe that the workforce is understanding and standing up for their value is wonderful for us and society in general.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We have focused on creating quality products. We view our customers success as our success, we want to do everything possible so you will be back to order more. Two-thirds of our orders come back for re-prints and over half we print on a regular basis. We also change our perspective on customer issues as an opportunity to establish customer loyalty. Issues happen if you order enough you will at some point run into an issue with any screen printer (or service in general) It how we take care of the issues that create lasting client relations. It’s the peace of mind that we are going to stand behind our work that let our clients relax and focus on their main business at hand.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.indyink.com
• Instagram: indyinkdenver