As any screen printer who's been around the block for 10 or more years knows, change is survival. It may be comfortable to do the same thing year after year, but to keep your company profitable and growing, you've got to change directions with the trends and markets in your area. And sometimes this takes a lot of guts.

Rod Watson, owner, Teamwork Graphics, who's been screen printing in Montoursville, Pa., going on 24 years, recently had to make such a change when a former employee decided to go to work for someone else and take as many of Rod's customers with him as he could.

Watson had built his business on offering contract printing services to sporting goods stores and decorating athletic uniforms. He estimates that, at one time, this made up approximately 90% of his overall sales. But as the new competitor started slashing prices to get the business, Watson declined to play that game. He stuck to his prices and one by one he watched his sporting goods store clientele shift over to the cheaper shop.

"Everyone else leaped to the cheaper guy, and he quit in five months," says Watson. "We have two stores because they kept with us."

In the meantime, Watson did a complete flip-flop of his business and instead of 90% contract, he is now doing 90% custom, and the results have been a more profitable business. By shifting his emphasis to simulated process, index printing, and specialty inks, Watson created a whole new niche for himself in his local market.

"We don't want to do just the easy stuff," says Watson, who has the only automatic presses in his entire county. Watson also was among the first in the industry to use FastFilms. He mastered the software more than a decade ago, and his work has won several awards, including first place in the Index Separations-Automatic category and an honorable mention in the same category in the FastFilms? 2nd International Excellent T-Shirt Contest in 2000. He also garnered first place in 1999 in the 1st competition in the index separations-automatic category.

With two eight-color automatics and six employees, Teamwork Graphics now has shifted its focus to custom screen printing for a wider range of clients, from colleges to construction to corporate, in addition to offering embroidery, digital transfers, and sublimation transfers. A typical order size is 12 dozen, although Watson will go as low as one piece and as high as 6,000 pieces.

The business still caters to some sports clients, including the Little League World Series, which has its headquarters in Pennsylvania. Every August, youth baseball teams from around the globe congregate to compete against each other, and the event is broadcast on ABC Sports. Watson prints booster shirts for the event. This year he is doing three designs for which he estimates he'll do a "couple thousand" of each design. He also prints approximately 300 shirts for each of the 16 teams, which are worn by the team members, parents, and other supporters. To better meet this demand, he is upgrading one of his eight-color autos to a 10-color this year. He would have upgraded to a 12-color if he'd had the space.

To stay ahead of the competition and keep his edge in the local market, Watson recently joined the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) and began offering promotional products. "If they come in and need a T-shirt, they might need something else," he says. As a subscriber to ASI he has access to mugs, coolers, pens, bags, and plenty of other items. "It has made me more well-rounded, expanded our horizons, and brought in new customers."

Watson attends trade shows to keep up with new products and technology and still participates in classes from the U.S. Screen Printing Institute, mostly in the form of DVDs, which he shares with staff for training and refresher purposes. "If you think you've learned everything, you may as well just close up shop," he says. "Things change every six months or so."

Keeping up with the latest strategies for marketing also has boosted business. In addition to his main promotional avenues-the Yellow Pages and word of mouth-Watson has successfully used the Internet to drive customers to Teamwork Graphics, and although he doesn't offer e-commerce yet, he cleverly chose to set up his Web site so customers can transition seamlessly to Alpha's online catalog.

"Just today, an advertising agency called and we said, 'How did hear about us?'" says Watson. "They said, 'You're online and you're the only person around that does simulated process work.'"

Of course, a good Web site is still no substitute for a solid reputation, and Watson has certainly earned his. "Our secret to success is honesty and quality," he says. "We do good quality at a fair price and we deliver."

Since the screen printer founded the home-based screen printing business in 1980, he has kept his integrity and stuck to these core values. Educated in industrial and graphic arts, Watson is a sports enthusiast and early on he recognized a need for imprinting on uniforms. He was the first shop in town to zero in on the sporting goods market and after working out of a room attached to his house for nearly a decade the business had grown so much that he built a separate 4,500-square-foot shop approximately 15 years ago.

Business grew steadily until the recent loss of the sporting goods business, which could have been devastating. But Watson adapted successfully to a tough situation-while staying honest and sticking to his convictions of high quality and fair pricing-and things are going so well he's thinking of expanding. The whole process taught him some important lessons: that entrepreneurs should always be prepared for the unexpected and never get complacent.

"If you think you're going to stay with one thing, think differently," says Watson. "Make sure you're ready to work. You have to go to shows and learn the new technology to keep up. There's always something new."