When Holly Rojas decided to sell her business, a small screen-printing shop in Prosser, Monica Niemeyer was the person she called to take over.

“The former owner thought I’d be a good fit,” Niemeyer explained. “I was involved with the community and brought her quite a few orders.”

Niemeyer is the secretary of the Prosser High School booster club and advocate for nonprofits around the community. She’d considered owning a business that could help groups like schools with limited resources. But she wasn’t sure if a screen printing shop was the right move.

“My husband (John) likes the creating part, and he said, ‘Let’s do it,’ but I needed time to absorb the idea,” she said.

Before she could come to a definitive answer, Niemeyer received a call from her son, Tyler, congratulating her on her new business venture.

“He said, ‘I heard you and Dad bought a print shop,’ and I said to my husband, ‘Well, I guess since you’re telling the children we might as well do it,’” she recalled with a laugh.

In March 2016, the Niemeyers purchased Happy Sloth Printing for less than $15,000 and renamed the business TRT Printed after their children: Tyler, Rebecca and Thomas.

Their first customer was a local basketball team. The coaches wanted to buy warm-up shirts for their players, but the order grew from 11 to almost 30 shirts within days.

“It went from the players to the parents ordering for themselves and even their siblings. In that order, there was even an infant onesie,” Niemeyer said.

She assumed sales would continue to trickle in from sports teams and the occasional individual T-shirt order. Niemeyer expected about five orders a month. Her only hope was to have enough business to perhaps take a family vacation after a few years.

“Now we don’t even have the time for a vacation,” she laughed. “After our third month, I was getting a call from an 800 number. Our shirt vendor wanted to offer us bulk pricing. My account manager laughed and said, ‘Don’t you know you’re doing well?’ We didn’t. We had nothing to compare it to.”

Located at 1120 Meade Ave., TRT Printed shares a building with Becky’s Coffee Shop in downtown Prosser. Niemeyer has a 500-square-foot section on the east side of the building.

“I’m in my best friend’s coffee store,” said Niemeyer, who would occasionally help Becky Jansen’s business by making espressos in between taking orders and printing shirts.

But six months after taking ownership, business has been stronger than expected. Niemeyer said they always have at least 32 orders—both big and small—in the pipeline.

“We started out with quite a few sports team orders, mainly from Prosser. Now I have some Grandview teams, then business came in from the schools, and then the Fraternal Order of Eagles,” she said. “And then one of my friends who works at Walmart suggested I try to become a preferred vendor for the company.”

That first order for Walmart’s distribution center in Grandview was small, just 10 shirts. But Niemeyer said it allowed her to showcase what she could do. TRT Printed redesigned the shirt, and the company liked it enough to place another order—this time for 732 shirts.

“That’s 14 boxes,” she said. “They’d been getting their shirts elsewhere, and we deliver for free within a 30-mile radius. They were happy with our bid, and after that order they listed us as a preferred vendor. If I understand right, I’m in the directory for the entire company, which is like the Walmart yellow pages.”

As orders have expanded, so have the lines of credit TRT Printed receives from vendors. Up until recently, the Niemeyers were paying cash and waiting to be reimbursed from customers.

“The lines of credit have been very helpful,” she said, adding that while the commercial orders have been an unexpected surprise, they plan to continue operating the business with schools and nonprofits in mind.

The couple have redesigned the print shop section to better display the variety of products they offer. TRT Printed can custom design aprons, bags, sweats, tank tops, sweaters, jerseys, shirts and, most recently, high school letterman jackets.

“It was an idea for the boosters,” said Niemeyer of the jackets. “Letterman jackets are so expensive. They can be upwards of $500, and I thought it’d be great to help kids afford them, as well as help the boosters raise money. So I bought and donated a jacket—complete with the leather sleeves—to the boosters to raffle off. The jacket can be tailored to any school.”

The Niemeyers may live in Prosser, but they’re Sunnyside High School alumni, and they hope to serve clients from all over the Northwest as business continues to grow. TRT Printed is already operating in the black, and the owners said they might even need to add to their staff in the future.

“John and I have been so busy. We’re looking at someone helping us part time,” she said, noting that maybe an extra set of hands might help them take that vacation. “I’m sure like everyone else, the dream vacation is Hawaii, but what we can afford time-wise right now is our cabin at Fish Lake in Leavenworth—which is just as fun.”

To see some of the products TRT Printed has to offer, check out the company on Facebook.

To see some of the products TRT Printed has to offer, check out the company on Facebook.