Boise, Idaho-based Brigade Screen Printing is a classic story of how one business can inspire a new venture purely out of necessity. For owner Shawn Wright, that transition began with his initial interest in wakesurfing and gradually led him to recognize the importance of high-quality merchandise to complement his business.
Now, Brigade has evolved from a side business to a community fixture, with an emphasis on bringing people together.
“What I wake up for every morning is to see everyone else be successful,” says Shawn.
Branching Out and Exploring New Business
After about a decade as an electrician, Shawn says he was interested in branching into something new. Around 2011, a close friend pitched him the idea of getting involved in the wakesurfing industry, something he believed in enough to back with his time, skills, and resources.
Shawn and his partner built Brigade Wakesurfing in his garage with help from his family, and gradually built up a client list. As the business grew, Shawn and his team needed a steadier option for customized merchandise that matched the boards. Several of the companies Shawn outsourced to weren’t panning out, whether due to high prices, lengthy print times, or general quality issues.
Diving Head-First into Screen Printing
Shawn and his wife decided to bring screen printing in-house and bought their first small, manual press. In the early 2000s, he points out, there weren’t many online resources, so the couple taught themselves using whatever tools were available, including DVD tutorials. As they began printing their own merch, staying steady through seasonal swings was crucial.
Screen printing eventually grew from a side hustle into a primary focus as the business began taking on local customers beyond the wakesurfing market.
A Full-Scale Operation
Today, Brigade Screen Printing has grown from a home-based business into a 24,000 square-foot facility with 10 employees. The company has expanded its customer list far beyond wakesurfing, serving dozens of local clients and regional customers as far as Las Vegas. In terms of specialization, Brigade offers a full range of services, including screen printing, embroidery, DTF, signage, banners, wraps, engraving, and more. As the operation expanded, keeping every department aligned became just as important as the equipment—especially for consistent print shop production management across multiple services.
Implementing Printavo for Shop Management
As Brigade’s production volume and service mix expanded, the company needed to upgrade how jobs moved through the shop departments—and strengthen day-to-day print shop production management without relying on memory, sticky notes, or constant check-ins.
Shawn shared that once they started using Printavo, the impact was immediate, especially for the team actually running order intake, invoicing, and daily production management.
“My wife Tara, and my account manager, Lexi, handle a lot with Printavo,” he notes. “I wish we had done it years ago; everything’s streamlined.”
The simplest way Shawn describes the upgrade is visibility and fewer interruptions:
“Everyone in the shop is organized, and everyone knows what’s happening,” he points out.
For a team that used to run on “sticky notes and pieces of paper written on carts with shirts,” it’s a fundamental operational shift, he adds.
Even quoting got cleaner in the ways that matter. Now that the team keeps order details, art files, and context together, everything runs faster, which supports cleaner print shop production management from intake through production.
Automations and Order Management
Brigade’s upgraded workflow with Printavo now runs through Tara, who handles intake and hands off to account managers running Printavo for artwork, digitizing, ordering blanks, and prep.
Production teams (embroidery, screen printing, DTF, etc.) see what’s ready on tablets, update progress, and trigger automated customer communications when jobs are prepared.
That operational clarity unlocked significant leadership for Shawn.
“A year ago, I needed to know everything happening in the shop,” he explains. “Now, the shop doesn’t depend on one person’s memory to ship great work, and that’s been the biggest benefit. I don’t need to be there day-to-day or make all the decisions.”
Mobile Events
Brigade’s reputation for live event screen printing came the same way the business started: one bold idea, followed by constant iteration.
The Boise Music Festival asked Shawn and his team to print merch for their event. The overall goal was to print apparel live without accumulating extra inventory waste.
Shawn joked: “We thought, we could just put the equipment out in the field and print shirts to order.”
The shop jumped at the opportunity, and for a first-time live event screen printing venture, it went relatively well. He says the festival was a learning lesson, but it worked, and it became a proving ground for the systems, flow, and staffing that make live activations successful.
“After every event, the team would debrief and ask what we did wrong, what we could do better,” he says.
That cycle of improvement grew into multiple live setups, as Shawn calls it, their “three little bears” concept. Brigade can flex from smaller indoor installations to full-trailer activations for larger community events, festivals, and outdoor occasions.
Everyone is Welcome
One phrase that pops up frequently on Brigade’s website, “Everyone is welcome here,” is tied to a community project that exploded into a viral moment.
In early 2025, one of Shawn’s friends reached out to tell him about a local school teacher who was being asked to remove a classroom sign promoting inclusivity. Being a family-led business, Shawn and his team jumped in to help, printing hoodies and shirts with the message “Everyone is Welcome Here,” the same one that hung in the classroom.
They set up an online store to manage sizing, shipping, and donations, keeping the logistics clean so they could focus on the mission. Then, the story went viral.
While Shawn was out of town, he says he started watching volume grow to 1,500 orders overnight. By the time he returned, orders were in the thousands. Thanks to local and national news coverage, the community response stretched way beyond Boise.
Continued viral traffic has helped put Brigade in front of a whole new set of customers.
Moving Ahead
While they continue to grow, Brigade’s next chapter is about scaling without diminishing the quality of work people have come to expect from them.
Shawn says they’re currently finalizing another shop move and continuing to build the live activation side, which is both “the most fun” and the most margin.
At the same time, Shawn says the goal at Brigade is to use technology to support growth. That way, he says, they’ll be able to still hire the right people without diminishing high-quality merchandise.
“After lots of live printing events, customers will tell us things like, ‘your team’s so awesome, we felt like family,’” he says.
Keeping that focus intact is crucial for moving forward, whether it’s live event screen printing or a community-focused fundraiser.
0 Comments