We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mirj Gschwind a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mirj, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I was married to David Sofro for 13 years. We started DM13 in 2003, after David graduated from FIDM. I was a professional makeup artist. It was rather easy for us to come up with a name, we both had connection and a love for the number 13. DM13 stands for David the D and Mirj for the M and our lucky number of 13.

Mirj, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

David had a long background in the craft of screen printing on t-shirts which he started doing in a garage his junior year at Pitzer College. I worked for many years in the fashion industry in Europe working with photographers and fashion shows. In 2003 we were living at the Brewery Artist Colony downtown LA. We both decided to purchase which was essentially hobby screen printing equipment and start DM13, which is an apparel screen printing, embroidery and promotional products business. We produce company uniforms, lots of t-shirts and swag for big and small companies, sports teams, restaurants, etc. What sets us apart from our competition is that we treat all clients, big or small the same way and pride ourselves on customer service, quality products and on time delivery. In the beginning there were some extremely lean times financially and what we are both the most proud off is that we never gave up!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

David and I both had a love of Deep House music and were introduced thru a mutual friend at Marques Wyatt’s house music club called Deep in Hollywood. We shared a lot in common and would eventually get married. We had a nice 13 year run at marriage but decided we needed to go our separate ways but would keep DM13 going. We both feel like God put us together to be really good friends first and extremely compatible business partners. David is Chief Executive officer and Creative Director and I’m Chief Financial Officer and client relations coordinator.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

There are 4 team members apart of DM13. Maintaining a team with high morale takes effort and confident leadership. Manufacturing is extremely labor intensive and is a craft that has its ups and downs and there’s a learning curve. Sean Warner our store manager and lead printer has been with us over 5 years. He’s extremely bright and hardworking and has gained our trust.

Contact Info:

• Website: dm13.net
• Instagram: @dm13apparel

Image Credits
picture 1/1 Mirj Gschwind picture 2/2 David Sofro and Mirj Gschwind picture 3/3 David Sofro, Sean and Mirj Gschwind Picture 4/4 DM13 Picture 5/5 Wonderful agency (products we produced for them, hat/t-shirt/custom cut and sewn mask) Picture 6/6 PCLA Parkinson’s community Los Angeles (products we produced for them, hats/tote bags/t-shirts)