Icon Screening, Inc. started in 2006 as a couple working out of their garage, making band t-shirts. They weren’t producing shirts for their own garage band. Instead, they enjoyed using a manual hand press and a small dryer to create apparel for local musicians.
Over time, the money they earned was reinvested into additional equipment. After a year and a half, Icon Screening upgraded from the garage to a 1,000-square-foot industrial space.
Fast forward to 2017, Icon Screening, Inc. is a well-established screen printing business with 15 large pieces of equipment, 64 employees, and 25,000 sq. ft selling to major retailers like Target and even Disneyland (they are in the OC after all).
“At Icon Screening, we take pride in the fact that we go beyond ‘just sending shirts out the door’," Bryan Huber, President of Icon Screening, Inc, says. “We invest countless hours and dollars into the best people, equipment, systems, and procedures to deliver not just a printed t-shirt, but a world-class product of the highest quality.”
All this growth was possible in part due to a flexible lender who understood the business’ market and equipment needs. Beacon Funding financed seven pieces of equipment for Icon Screening including large automatic printing presses, gas textile dryers, an automatic folding machine, and a delivery truck.
Financing gave Icon Screening the opportunity to expand into packaging jobs and print at a larger volume than ever before.
Icon Screening, Inc. Snapshot
From Design to Delivery
Icon Screening, Inc. offers a full range of custom t-shirt printing services in Orange County, CA. These include color separations, sticker printing, graphic design, retail packaging, and distribution.
“The main thing that makes Icon Screening different is that we are essentially a smaller shop by industry standards, yet we have the capability and capacity of larger shops,” Bryan says. “This means we’re more nimble and can give a little more TLC to our customers.”
Huber describes Icon Screening as a medium-sized business—not too big and not too small—allowing them to better cater to their customers’ needs.
Another key differentiator is their ability to package and distribute orders in-house. With their own folding machine and delivery truck, Icon Screening handles the entire process from start to finish. The folding machine proved especially valuable when a customer had a labor-intensive packing need that couldn’t be handled manually.
“We couldn’t afford the machine right off-the-bat with cash, so a call to Beacon to finance a new folding machine enabled us to increase our packing capacity dramatically, thus enabling us to land a contract with a company that had a lot of packing needs.”
Acquiring equipment has opened a lot of doors for the decorated apparel business, especially due to the diverse needs they’ve had over the years on their equipment financing journey.
Financing For All Equipment Needs
The financing process has become routine for Icon Screening thanks to its lending partnership with Beacon Funding, which began in 2010.
“The process is always really smooth,” Huber says. “After the initial verification of your financials, it’s easy to pick up the phone and talk to your rep at Beacon. They send over the paperwork for your next piece of equipment, you sign off on it, and the funding is available.”
This partnership started when Bryan was shopping for equipment he couldn’t afford outright. A consultant from The M&R Companies recommended Beacon Funding as a lending option.
“Another great thing about Beacon Funding that I didn’t know at the beginning was that they lend for all types of equipment, not just industry specific. I also needed a big delivery truck to start delivering some of this stuff, and it turns out that Beacon funds vehicles, as well.”
Beacon financed the delivery truck along with six other pieces of screen printing equipment, helping Icon Screening continue its expansion.
Lesson Learned
Bryan’s business has grown significantly since its early days. Today, Icon Screening prints up to 40,000 shirts per day—more than the company produced in its entire first year.
With the addition of a folding machine and delivery truck, Icon Screening can take on larger jobs and manage fulfillment more efficiently.
Bryan also learned firsthand how impactful financing can be on cash flow.
“It’s a lesson learned the hard way,” he says. “Cash flow is something you can’t fully understand no matter who explains it to you. Having the equipment on the floor and paying for it in increments is worth far more than making a large upfront cash purchase and creating a hole in your balance sheet.”
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Thank you to Icon Screening, Inc. for participating in Beacon Funding's Success Spotlight program. The Success Spotlight program gives Beacon customers and partners a chance to shine with recognition of their equipment financing success. This is achieved through enhanced exposure and free nationwide publicity through Beacon's online channels.
To learn more about the program click here.