Screen Printing - February/March 2018 - 26

Go time: Left, Clarence Smitherman adds the final score to Alabama's design. Middle, Darrel Scott outputs the
final screens on the shop's i-Image. Right, the final screens are washed out and prepared for the presses.

Oftentimes, a shop only has the license to print apparel for
one team, so if they are doing the hot market and that team
loses, all of the time and prep work was for naught. "Last year,
we were set [to print] for Alabama [for the National Championship game] and it was a heartbreaker when Clemson
scored with one second left," Tidwell remembers. "I mean,
we've got everybody here, presses are ready set to go, and
Clemson scores. I had to walk out back to let everybody go
home." Though the diehard Tide fans on the crew may not like
the team on the shirts they're printing tonight, they can rest
assured that there will be work to do.
Another common hot-market strategy that F&E has
employed in the past is printing "kill" shirts. This approach
involves printing thousands of shirts for a team expected to win
- say, the Purdue Boilermakers - with no score in the design,
and sending boxes labeled "Do Not Open Unless Purdue Wins"
to large stores such as Hibbett Sports or Dick's Sporting Goods.
If the team wins, then the store is ready to start selling T-shirts
in the morning. If the team loses, the shirts either get thrown
away or sent off to a developing country, since they can't be
released anywhere in the US. Tidwell tells me F&E has taken
this gamble and lost one time, printing 5000 undistributable
Kentucky Wildcats shirts before Wisconsin beat the undefeated
UK basketball team in a nail-biting 2015 NCAA Tournament
Final Four game.
With the reassurance that thousands of shirts must be
printed tonight one way or another, the crew strategically
arranged a Georgia Bulldogs left chest design on one end of
the screen ("Just in case," Scott laughs. "I think Bama will
probably win.") and an Alabama left chest on the other end.
Regardless of the winner, the front left chest design will have
white-highlight white-black ink, "so this way you only utilize
a total of three screens for the whole set," Scott explains.
He'll set up two presses (a 16-color M&R Sportsman EXG and
12-color Gauntlet II) on the left chest design before the game
tonight, and quickly tape up the losing team's portion of the
screens when the score is final.
The remaining two presses are being set up with each
team's winning design for the back of the shirts. Georgia's
design is a relatively simple 4-color (white, highlight white,
black, and liquid gold) print onto red and charcoal shirts - by
now, Smitherman has gotten the OK to tweak the design to
26

SCREENPRINTING

work for the second shirt color. Alabama's, on the other hand,
is a 10-color, photorealistic score recap design for 14,000
black and charcoal T-shirts, which means two different underbases; a bit more complicated to set up, but not a problem
once things get moving, Scott assures me. He's done a couple
test runs for both colors to ensure the designs themselves and
the presses are both ready to go with no issues.
There's a commotion in the unloading area, so Scott and I
walk over to check it out. A truck has arrived with blank shirts
for tonight's hot market. "We usually get all of this in house two or
three days prior," Scott comments. But with a hot market, things
never seem to go quite as planned; thousands of T-shirts are still
missing, and at least one box has the wrong color shirts. "The hard
part is getting all the pieces of the puzzle together at one time,"
Tidwell adds. "Missing 8000 shirts is a pretty big deal right now."
"Maybe they're just sitting across the street [at AB Sportswear]," Scott laughs. "It happens." I make a mental note to tell
my Uber driver he's not the first one to make that mistake, if I
happen to see him again.
I notice a huge stack of boxes along the wall and Tidwell
explains these are all the unused shirts from the recent Iron
Bowl and SEC championship hot markets. "That's one of the
agreements [we make with our suppliers]: for the team that
doesn't win, they will take the shirts back without a restocking
fee," says Tidwell.
With the game kicking off in about nine hours and the
overnight crew heading home to get some rest before the big
night, I decide to do the same and head back to my hotel while
Tidwell and Scott sort out the mystery of the missing shirts.
The anticipation and excitement in the air is almost palpable
as the crew of Alabama fans (and seven or eight Auburn fans
who will be rooting for Georgia tonight, as they always do
when their team is out) finish up their work.

TAKE THE BALL AND RUN
After finishing up the rest of my usual workday and ordering a
delicious room service dinner, I switch on the TV to catch the
start of the big game. After a scoreless first quarter, Georgia
starts pulling away in the second quarter with a 13-point lead.
Around 10 p.m., I mentally prepare myself to spend the night with
a bunch of bummed out Alabama fans as I make my way back to
the shop to watch the "organized chaos" of the hot market live.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - February/March 2018