Native Print Co.

Building a Brand Around Art You Wear

Written by Luc Stringer Photos Courtesy of Native Print Co.

Whether on your favorite T-shirt, water bottle, or baseball cap, you’ve definitely seen screen printing somewhere. This simple process of pushing ink through a mesh decorates our products with beauty. Pursuit sat down with Nate Belote, founder of Native Print Co., to hear more about his life as a business owner and screen-printer. Nate is a one man show, but he caters to many clients each year and plans to expand his business even further.

What began your entrepreneurial journey?

It actually started back in high school. I was in an arts academy screen printing class. We created things for the school district and stuff like that. I did that in high school and continued to do it all through high school, and then graduated with plans to go into the military. At some point, I realized what I want to do. I thought about how much I actually enjoyed the screen-printing thing. I thought, why don’t I just go give that a try for a little bit? I ended up at a company locally, but I was hired as a printer. I was brought into the company just to do printing and other little things. I worked there for about 10 years and became production manager at that time. Then I realized that it was something that I wanted to do full-time.

The owner of Native Print Co. sits with his wife and children in front of the company logo.

Tell me the story of Native Print Co.

I was working at that company as its production manager and was kind of running that shop, but not owning it. The owner would come in a few days a week, but other than that I was there full-time running the place. Over time I thought, well, maybe I could buy this business. So I approached the owner of that company about buying that business from him, and it became clear to me pretty quickly that although he was going to sell, we weren’t going to agree on a price. So that kind of just sparked my curiosity. I thought, “What would it look like to go start something from scratch?” For a while, I was constantly looking for used equipment. Because I’ve been printing for so long, I knew what I wanted. Over time I started buying pieces of equipment and storing them. At the time, my wife and I lived in an apartment. I didn’t have anywhere to put this stuff. My buddy had a garage and said, “You can use this part of my garage,” and so I slowly started adding things to his garage and built up my equipment over probably about a year. Finally I thought, “OK, now I need all the funds to actually start the business.” I wrote a business plan and was starting to present it to banks. Then I was at a family reunion thing for my wife’s family and one of her cousins who was pretty well off… heard about what I wanted to do and said, “show me your business plan.”

If you had to give a student one piece of advice as they set up their own company, what would it be?

I think the biggest thing I had to overcome was a fear of failure. Failure is an option, and it’s not the worst thing that can happen. What is the worst-case scenario? This whole thing fails and I have to just start over or just get another job. That was really my worst case scenario. So (my advice is) get past the fear of failure; (do not start) believing in the lie that if you fail everything’s just going to fall apart. As I work through it, the worst case scenario is I have to get a normal job. And when I thought about it I thought, “That’s not so bad. Why not try?”

Belote completes a complex task using a squeegee to expand the design over a screen.

Get past the fear of failure; do not start believing in the lie that if you fail everything’s going to fall apart.

— Nate Belote

A screen printing press stands in the center of the studio, where all the magic happens.

How has your business impacted the community?

I’m lucky that I can print for a lot of other small businesses — most of my clients are local churches. But outside of that, I like to come alongside local or small businesses or even people who just have ideas. I get to come alongside them and be a part of developing that and and seeing something like that grow.

Where is your business going next?

I’d love to get into social events. I don’t know that looks like yet, but I had the idea of having a kind of a taco truck, but for screen printing. (It would) roll up to events and and people a personalized experience from that event, like a T-shirt that they got to be a part of making. ◆