Story of HCB

The Story of HCB

My in-laws, Bob and Joan Mongiello, started a pizza shop in the eighties. They were making tons of money. The pizza was great and the costumers loved the place, but they had too much employee theft. They were unable to catch the employees so they decided to open a t-shirt booth near the beach in Erie, PA where their pizza shop was. They started making money right away. With no employees, the profits were greater than the Pizza shop and the hours were less for them. And, because they did not have lots of employees to deal with, they were able to cut back on a great deal of stress.

The t-shirt shop was great! The only problem was the shirts said California on them and they were in Erie, PA. The shirts sold anyways, but my in-laws wanted to print shirts that said Erie, PA on them. So they embarked on finding out how to screen print. At the time this was not very easy. There was no information for new people on how to print shirts. Once my in-laws finally came up with how to do it, they were very surprised about how easy it was!

The next step was to get the equipment; this was even harder than the first step. All the companies were so expensive; the equipment cost in the $10,000s just for the printer. Very few places sold the dryers. But it was the fact that it took six months to even get the equipment that convinced my in laws to build the equipment themselves. Finally they were printing the shirts themselves so the costs were way down. When fall came around, the t-shirt selling business would cut out, but the printing business would not, businesses would still demand t-shirts and sweat shirts for advertising.

Situations in Joan's family in California made it necessary that they move the family across the country. Instead of moving the equipment, they put an ad in the paper to sell it, with the intention of using the money to build another set in California. They were awakened the next day at 5am by a man demanding they hold it for him to drive 90miles so he could pick it up. While waiting for this man to arrive, they received 5 more phone calls. All of whom insisted on leaving a phone number in case the sale fell through. The problem here was that 2 of the new callers were good friends with Bob, and 2 others were current screen printing customers who were disappointed about losing the silkscreeners who had been printing their shirts for years. This was when both of them realized that selling the equipment would be beneficial to everyone. Many people needed shirts to advertise their business; it is one of the most cost effective ways. And, helping people get started in their own business printing t-shirts, was going to help people work for themselves.

My in-laws tackled the task from an entrepreneur's perspective. They knew how easy it was to print shirts, so they made a simple video on how to do it. They also wanted to cut the prices back to make it affordable to everyone. They had run businesses before so they offered their knowledge and expertise to their costumers also.

Like all business it took alot of work and there were plenty of hard times to weather through. My wife and her sister wanted to enter into a screen printing business on their own. My in-laws pointed out that helping people get started in business and hearing their success stories is one of the greatest things. Having worked here and helping them to run it I had to agree. My in-laws are the reason why this industry is so affordable and easy to get into.