While many students turned to print shops like Custom Ink or University Tees to print their T-shirt designs for Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day on Friday, Brandon Johnson, senior in LAS, took a different approach.

Johnson is the co-owner of Silky Screens Print Co., a print shop he started with his brother five years ago in Loves Park, Ill. Since coming to the University, Johnson and his brother have not only been designing shirts but printing them as well.

“My brother started screen printing for fun in the back of our family’s bike shop, ‘Bob’s Bike Shop,’ Johnson said in an email. “From that, we started taking in small orders and saw a market.”

The company printed approximately 650 T-shirts for Unofficial this year, up from about 150 to 200 in 2012. The company’s total growth Friday was about $6,200 with a net profit of $2,800, marking it as the second busiest time of year for the business. Although the company runs all year round, Unofficial is usually behind both football block and fraternity rush when it comes to sales, Johnson said.

“Football block throws everything out of the water because you have frats and sororities,” Johnson said. “Unofficial would be my second biggest (in sales) this year. But, in the past, it hasn’t been.”

He credits the rise in business to the three student ambassadors he hired this year from his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, and their efforts to publicize the T-shirt designs over social media.

Devlin McKay, ambassador for Johnson and sophomore in LAS, said the team advertised the shirts through Facebook but also used fliers and word of mouth.

“We started this program called Silky Screen Ambassadors,” McKay said. “The idea of it is when (Johnson) leaves, we will maintain a relationship with all of his business partners.”

Along with his fellow ambassadors, McKay will continue to serve as a Silky Screen’s campus representative until he graduates and plans to continually recruit members from his fraternity each year to keep up relations in the campus community.

Silky Screen’s most popular design this year showed the rapper “Chief Keef” wearing a Native American headdress, with “Hate Bein’ Sober” on the back of the shirt. The design accounted for 90 percent of the company’s T-shirt sales, Johnson said.

Once the shirt designs and orders were finalized, Johnson sent the orders to his brother Ben Johnson, who serves as both the graphic designer and the printer for the company in Loves Park, Ill. The business is still located in “Bob’s Bike Shop,” but is now in the garage and consists of a dark room, a rinse room, a print room and an emulsions room, he said.

“In order to print the ink onto the shirts, (Ben) must make screens for every color of ink used in the graphic,” Johnson said. “Then he applies each screen through different processes and the ink is pressed into the shirt. After the ink is on the shirt, it is put through a 15-foot two-stage dryer.”

Max Mendelson, a recent University graduate, visited campus Friday and was one customer sporting a Silky Screens T-shirt. He ordered 33 Unofficial custom-designed T-shirts for friends and co-workers from the company this year. He said he decided to purchase from Johnson’s company instead of a larger print shop because Silky Screens does business on a more personal level.

“He updates people on the way with what the process is at and where the production is at, and you’re actually talking to the owner of the company,” Mendelson said. “It’s a lot more involved.”

Emma can be reached at [email protected].