Turning t-shirt designs into dollars for businesses

If you're a business in Waterloo Region, and you have a t-shirt design, Civilian Screen Printing wants to turn it into money in your pocket.

“We've seen all these small businesses struggle with keeping up with orders, with revenue,” said Curt Crossman, Owner of Civilian, a t-shirt printing company in Kitchener that's also felt the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Going through this, we saw our orders almost decline 90 per cent.”

And so the question became how to keep Civilian's presence, along with helping the business community.

The answer?  T-shirts.  It's what they do.  Sounds simple enough.

Enter the “KW Awesome” initiative, which started with a short list of clients and businesses, but has expanded since.

All a business needs to bring to the table is a t-shirt design.  If you don't, Crossman says there's no worries on that front.

“We're working with a firm in town, called Him and Her,” he said, “They've been great and they're offering free designs to business who maybe can't afford it, or don't have the resources to find a design.”

Each shirt is posted for sale online at kw-awesome.ca, and cost $25.

The money generated is split down the middle between the feature business and Civilian.

“Both parties benefit from it,” Crossman says, “There's absolutely no committment for these businesses, it costs them nothing and it's great exposure for everybody.”

And for Civilian, the initiative is helping them keep working, keep the lights on and pay rent.

They were even able to hire back a worker who was laid off before because of the pandemic.

The initiative has taken off.  Crossman says they've raised $9,000 in the last two weeks.

If a business wants to take part, Crossman says you can contact him through email curt@civilianprinting.com or send Civilian Printing a message through Instagram.