ACW History
ACW History
We are Amalgamated Culture Works, direct descended from the Amalgamated Cultural Workers of America, and we've been screenprinting t-shirts since 1981. We're located in Burlington, Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Burlington is the largest city in the state and the home of the University of Vermont. We're proud of our home; it is a great place to live and work although occasionally it does get a little cold.
Wayne Turiansky, who is still at the helm, although no longer at the squeegee started ACW in March of 1981 in his living room in the hills outside of Wallingford VT, in the central part of the state. Originally, we only sold custom printed t-shirts, although within six months of our start-up, a potential customer suggested that we create a line of Vermont shirts to peddle to stores who made their living primarily from our state's substantial tourist trade.
Wayne ran around to every artist he knew and within a few weeks had cobbled together a small line of simple humorous designs. They took off and after logging over 40,000 miles on his 1966 Volvo station wagon within the next year, Amalgamated Culture Works became the world's largest producer of Vermont t-shirts, a distinction we hold to this day.
By summer of 1982, we had outgrown the living room and had moved to a storefront in Rutland, some 13 miles north, and had hired our first employee. Years of growth followed and in the spring of 1986, we made the big move north to Burlington. Now a company of several employees, we were well received in the Queen City.
Ed Cawley joined us in our office in 1989 and, two months shy of his 20th anniversary with the company, is still in charge of sales. Chances are that he'll be the friendly voice on the other end of the line should you choose to phone us regarding a job in which you're interested.
The next major event in our evolution and one which most shaped our next decade occurred in the fall of 1990, when Ben Cohen, the ice cream emperor, approached us to print a design for his fledgling company, Community Products, the manufacturer of Rainforest Crunch. Ben needed the box art from his candy reproduced on t-shirts. Looking at too big a job to turn down, we stumbled into four-color process printing, which although scary to us at the time, quickly became our stock in trade at a time when very few printers were willing to undertake this exacting work. We took the job and did it to everyone's satisfaction, including our own.
With that challenge met, Wayne remembered a conversation held two years earlier with Lance Richbourg, a well-known painter of historical baseball subjects and a friend as well. Lance had suggested that ACW reproduce his paintings on t-shirts and try to market them nationally. Past our fear of and lack of experience in process-printing, we decided to take Lance on. The line was a big success as we sold the line to several major department store chains, numerous Japanese trading companies, and even sold quite a few thousand Shoeless Joe Jackson shirts to the folks who own the farm in Dyersville Iowa where the film "Field of Dreams" was made.
As we entered the 21st century, the technology of t-shirt printing evolved into the digital age and we hopped right on board at the very beginning. Early in 2005, we received an email from the distributor of the about-to-be-released Kornit 931, the first and still the best digital t-shirt printer on the market. We've had this machine for nearly four years and you can read all about it and the work we can do with it on our digital printing page.
Custom printing is now about two-thirds of our business and we ship shirts all over the country every day, though we're still small enough that customer service is our number one focus. We'd be glad to do whatever work you need. Give us a look over and feel free to contact us by email, phone, or our Request for Quotation page and we'll do our very best to satisfy your needs.
Our Full Time Core Staff
Wayne Turiansky - President and Owner since 1981.
Ed Cawley - General Manager and customer service. Ed has been with us since 1989, knows the business inside and out and is, hands down, the best customer service person in the business. He'll make the often confusing process of buying custom printed t-shirts easy and pleasurable. Just don't ask him about his five year old daughter, Hannah, or you'll have to listen to him gushing about her for as long as you care to listen.
Jen Whitcomb - Customer service and Lisa Simpson sound-a-like, Jen has been with us for 14 years and has only recently moved into the customer service area. She's delightful to deal with and is totally on-board with our company policy that nothing is more important than meeting your needs.
Colin-Patrick Charles, or Paddy or Cakes, depending on who's doing the addressing, has been in charge of design and art direction for the last year. A total whiz with his Wacom tablet, he'll be the guy communicating with you about your artwork. He's not just good, he's friendly, helpful and personable.
Rob Pitone - Production Manager. Rob joined us just a year ago, in February of 2008. Feeling a need for a strong leader in our shop, we've found a gem in Rob, who has both a history in the screenprint industry and in leading a production crew. While we've always done quality work, we're now operating with greater efficiency than ever before. Rob is also the man behind the controls of our Kornit digital printer, keeping the sometimes finicky technology-heavy machine in good working order
Don Doubleday - Pre-press. Don has been with us since 1990 and is in charge of our pre-press operations. He is the guy who makes sure that all screens are ready when they need to be and that all of our color matching is done accurately.
Jonah Salzman, Cory Ward, and Curtis Prestash - Printers.