Dan Smith
Marj Easterling in her screen-printing room.
As soon as her new friend made the suggestion, Marj Easterling knew it was a winner.
Easterling, who owns Big Lick Screen Printing in Roanoke, had just met Sloan Coleman of St. Louis at a screen printers conference and they were chatting about Coleman’s new initiative for her Tiny Little Monster business. Seems her shop had become something of a central clearing house for small businesses in the area with Tiny Little Monster making T-shirt sales for the businesses and sharing the profits with them.
“I’d been doing an online store for businesses for about a year, as fundraisers for businesses and schools,” says Easterling. “However, because of the dire situation small businesses are in now, we’ve made one big local store where we feature the individual businesses and they get $10 for each $20 T-shirt sold. Normally, we wouldn’t be able to afford to do this.”
She is now writing checks on a weekly basis to the businesses whose T-shirts sell, at least partly because of the current virus crisis where so many businesses are suffering.
“We do the Roanoke Valley Children’s choir stuff [T-shirts, hoodies and other logo goodies],” says Easterling. “I do the printing and packaging and they simply pass it out. For teachers and coaches, who generally have to do it all, this makes it easier.”
Easterling calls the new initiative Here for Good South Virginia (“It’s a double entendre,” she emphasizes) and it’s in its initial stages right now. “Sloan has been going for about 10 days and already has given out $10,000 to small businesses,” says Easterling.
She says that “I’m not trying to steal other screen printers’ business. I’m trying to help people keep their businesses open. It takes some time to build an online store and time is something we simply don’t have these days. We don’t know when, as businesses, we will have to close.”
Here for Good is finding a good bit of generosity among its clients. Easterling talks of a company ordering T-shirts with its mundane logo. She asked a friend to re-design it and he did it free of charge. The new logo is stunning.
Those interested in taking a look at what Big Lick Screen Printing is offering can go to its website HERE or call 540-632-2695.
Participation is free for businesses. Easterling emphasizes that “at the beginning of this week, we were pretty close to panicking. We could clearly see that COVID-19 was going to drastically affect our business and the businesses of most our customers. Would we have to close? Could we weather this storm? If you know us, you know that ‘doom and gloom’ aren't really in our vocabulary.”
About the Writer:
Dan Smith is an award-winning Roanoke-based writer/author/photographer and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame (Class of 2010). His blog, fromtheeditr.com, is widely read and he has authored seven books, including the novel CLOG! He is founding editor of a Roanoke-based business magazine and a former Virginia Small Business Journalist of the Year (2005).