Bill is a proud 28-year Navy veteran who worked in the aircraft electronics and avionics maintenance field. After leaving active duty, he continued to work for the Navy as a Technical Representative, teaching electronics maintenance to a new generation of sailors.

With his Navy pension and the income from his wife's granite business, they settled into a very comfortable suburban life in San Diego area. But Bill quickly learned that playing golf three times a week was not fulfilling. At a home and garden show, Bill and his wife met some people from a promotional product printing organization. Bill committed himself to learning about the promotional product industry with the same zeal he had for electronics. He discovered that it was a steadily growing industry that showed good potential. Soon he set up shop at his house and began to offer various promotional products to the greater San Diego business community. As Bill acquired low-tech equipment such as a pad printer and a button-making machine from the promotional product organization who introduced him to the industry, he wondered if he was wasting his talent as an electronics wizard. But he liked the business and its potential to grow.

 For more than two years, he offered pens, pencils, buttons and other items that he imprinted with his equipment. The promotional apparel orders, the most profitable segment of his business, were sent out for screen printing or embroidery.  From the beginning, he ruled out bringing a messy screen-printing machine into his neat suburban home.  He was also unhappy about the limited color range and cumbersome process of screen printing. Because of his technical background, he was already aware of the technology for the digital printing of clothing. Soon, such machines began to appear on the market-but he was not satisfied with their capabilities.   He decided to wait until he found the right printer.

Meanwhile, he joined the PPAI, a national trade organization for promotional product distributors and suppliers. It allowed him to network with others, and opened up new opportunities. Since he was tech-savvy, he designed and created a Web site for Bonita Promotional Products, with which he could offer a wider variety of products.  And at last, he found a garment printer that appealed to him. 

Bill says his installation of the AnaJet Digital Apparel Printer in a spare room was the most exciting thing he'd done since he entered the industry. A year prior, about half of his business was garment decoration and the other half an assortment of other imprinted items. In the last year, Bill's business has more than doubled thanks to clothing item sales. Today, more than 90 percent of his business is in promotional apparel, most of which he prints with his direct-to-garment printer. He still subcontracts orders for embroidered garments. He stopped using the pad-printing machine because it was too much trouble and the profit margins were too small. The inks dried too quickly and the machine required too much maintenance. Hundreds of dollars of pad printing inks will dry and spoil if they are not used within a few months of purchase. Most of his non-garment items are now business cards and buttons, which he contracts out.

For marketing, Bill likes to network with other PPAI members around the country, and he hopes to work with other promotional product distributors who do not print their garments in-house. Locally, he sends out promotional brochures by direct mail. Some of his best leads come from local fictitious name announcements, networking and word-of-mouth. After he began to work with other promotional product distributors, his garment printing margin declined to about 50 percent because he has to give discounts to these trade orders. That's okay, Bill says, because the trade orders from other distributors are repeated frequently. Bill attributes his success to two key decisions: joining the PPAI and purchasing a direct-to-garment printer. He thinks he will have enough business to move into a commercial space this year, but he is in no particular hurry. He is too busy enjoying life.