Print Hustlers, Past, Present, and Future
How Print Hustlers Conferences started, has grown, and what you can look forward to next year.
Print Hustler’s Conference was originally created in 2016 by Printavo’s founder Bruce Ackerman. His goal was to provide education to the apparel decoration space. His belief is to be a leading company, you need to lead with education.
In 2020 while the conference originally scheduled for that year was postponed, Bruce reached out to MADE Lab and asked if we might like to be involved as a co-producer of the event. We worked together on the first MADE Lab X Printavo collaboration for Print Hustlers 2021. The event brought in speakers of all different industries, as well as, a sold-out crowd of attendees. A very special energy was felt in the room and created the platform to continue the collaboration for years to come.
We decided to move the conference out of Chicago for 2022. In order to give the event a different feel and attendees a different look at our industry, we brought them to Fort Worth. Since MADE Lab is headquartered in Downtown Fort Worth, it gave us the unique opportunity to print people onto our home turf and even offer tours of local facilities such as Printed Threads, Trust Print Shop, Mrs. Renfro’s Salsa Factory, and MADE Laboratory.
This year we decided to move the conference to the west coast. Looking at the opportunities to tour some world-class facilities, the Print Hustlers conference has morphed into a day of education sandwiched between activations at factories that our audience might find interesting. This year we had a beautiful setting in Newport Beach and the opportunity to take a walk through Liquid Graphics, as well as, a full tour of the Bella + Canvas cutting floor and sewing operation.
We realize that the west coast is a long way to go for all of our friends on the east coast, so we have decided to show them a little love in 2024. As we were thinking about places in the midwest or towards the east coast, we realized that we have some great friends in Cleveland that we could showcase. From Nov 2-4th of 2024 we will be taking the conference to Cleveland and getting tours of Jak Prints, as well as, Stakes Manufacturing.
Our education day will be hosted at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where we will hear talks from amazing minds and then get to spend the evening checking out artifacts from the musicians that have been the soundtracks to millions of shirts being printed. Please join us next year for another impactful, educational and fun time with your peers in our industry. Seats will be more limited in 2024, so make sure to grab a ticket while you still can.
Read what the industry is saying about Print Hustlers Conference
Shirt Show Episode 179 – Print Hustlers Recap With Friends
Apparelist Article – Print Hustlers Packed In The Education
ScreenPrinting.com Blog – Key Takeaways from Print Hustlers ‘23