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Fresh Prints grows in Youngstown with Youngstown pride shirts
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Some people wear their pride on their sleeves.
Others wear it right out front for the whole world to see.
That’s the case with the owner of the West Side business Fresh Prints, which sells silk-screen Youngstown shirts for those with Youngstown pride.
“I love Youngstown,” said Lisa Zitello, owner of Fresh Prints.
You may have seen some of her shirts around town. There are the customer favorites: “Youngstown ‘Till I Die” shirt, the Hills Department Store shirt and the iconic Idora Park shirt.
But Zitello doesn’t just make Youngstown shirts. The artist, who started out of the garage of her Austintown home, has made thousands of custom shirts for a number of customers.
She uses the silk-screening process: a stencil process in which paint is forced onto the material to be printed through the meshes of a silk screen.
“Silk screening is something everyone can use,” Zitello said. “It’s a very intense process. There’s so many steps, and if you mess up any one of them, you have to start all over. Getting really good at the steps is satisfying.”
Fresh Prints also offers embroidered shirts and fun tie-dyed outfits for children.
Zitello went to art school in Cleveland and later started a painting business. She worked selling landscape paintings and others, but it just wasn’t paying the bills.
She always wanted to work for herself. She also wanted to stick with art, so she picked up some design skills in Adobe Illustrator and started her research into silk screening.
After watching countless videos on silk screening and research into running a business, she decided to go for it. She bought a silk-screening press four years ago and started the business out of her garage.
As Zitello continued to learn the art of silk screening, she gained more customers through word of mouth.
“It was like a hobby in the beginning,” she said. “It was just me part time in the garage.”
And then, last summer, business started to really pick up. Schools, businesses and organizations came to her to make shirts.
“It got to the point where we had to have a little more room,” she said.
The spot at 2903 Mahoning Ave. was perfect for the business because it was in the city and on a busy road.
Since the move from garage to storefront about a year ago, business has increased for the small shop.
A lot of customers have come back to order from Zitello. With a low overhead, the business is able to offer products at competitive prices.
Brian Tarajack, a friend, helped the company gain business from local schools.
“It’s good to see them expanding and doing well,” he said. “I am always willing to help out.”
He doesn’t mind bragging about the quality of the product and the pricing because, to him, Fresh Prints offers good quality products at reasonable prices.
“They do good work,” he said.
The work is done at the West Side shop. Zitello has more than one press now. She added a four-color, three-station silk screening press to her four-color, one-station press.
The process to just make a screen is 14 steps long. Zitello uses Adobe Illustrator to develop a design for customers. Before she screens it, a proof is sent to the customer.
Once approved, the process of getting it on a shirt begins. The shirt is placed on the press using spray adhesive. Then a squeegee loaded with plastisol ink is pushed over the screen, leaving an imprint on the shirt.
From there, the shirt is moved to a heater for the colored image to stick. The final product plops into a box to get it ready to send off to the customer.
“I love it,” Zitello said. “It’s a different kind of stress.”
Zitello makes 15 consistent designs. Outside of the Hills shirt, the Youngstown Pride World Basketball League team shirt is a hot seller once it comes off the presses.
The team played from the late 1980s into the early 1990s.
The next move for Zitello is to print shirts after the closed high schools of Youngstown.
She said she is surprised by how quickly her business has grown.
Fresh Prints is open from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.
For information on Fresh Prints, go to: zitellofineart.com/.