From being recognized as one of Arkansas’ best businesses in 2021 to being named to the Inc. 5000 list as one of America’s fastest-growing small businesses, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate at Ink, a merchandising agency in Maumelle.
However, Caleb Harris, partner and senior vice president of business development, said the company is most proud of its people, from watching entry-level workers grow into leaders to hanging a couple of custom jerseys from the rafters as two long-time employees prepare for retirement.
That level of commitment to employee development is a far cry from his experiences in corporate America, he said.
Caleb Harris
“The best part is growing with like-minded people who want to make an authentic, personal impact, rather than feeling like a cog in a machine,” he said. “It takes a certain personality to thrive in a small business. Our team is full of hard workers, team players, visionaries and creatives who take ownership, support one another and share the wins together.”
The Ink story began in 1988. Holt Condren, founder and CEO, was a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville when he came up with a vision to put a custom T-shirt on the back of every college student in the conference.
Condren quit his job selling computer forms and hit the road, visiting fraternities and sororities by day and figuring out how to produce the merchandise on nights and weekends. With a loan from his grandfather, he bought his first screen printing equipment and taught himself — and some friends — how to use it.
Five years later, he hired an artist whom he had been outsourcing work to. That artist, Scott Masters, later became company president. Together, Harris said, Condren and Masters have spent nearly 40 years building a company where people genuinely want to work — a place that prioritizes people over profits and champions creativity, integrity, humility and reliability.
“In our logo, you’ll notice the spelling ‘!nk’ with an exclamation point out front,” Harris said. “We chose that because, to us, the exclamation point symbolizes a great idea. We believe great merchandise starts long before the product; it starts with the idea behind it.”
Originally on Westpark Drive in Little Rock, the team at Ink Enterprises, as it was then known, took themselves and their goal of becoming a worldwide manufacturer of custom products very seriously, Harris said. Employees wore business attire, and the company embraced what Harris called a “fake it till you make it” mindset.
“After about a decade, they realized they had their priorities backward,” he said. “They were trying to build a big, polished business where people were simply the building blocks rather than investing in the people and letting the business grow organically as a result.”
He added that he often jokes that he would not have wanted to work at that version of the company.
“Today, we’re nearly unrecognizable from who we were 20 years ago,” he said. “Ink has become a fun, inviting, creative environment where we wear the products we make. Employee development is our top priority, and we work every day to enrich the lives of our team, our customers and our partners around the world.”
Now with 80 employees, the company has grown from a custom screen printing operation into the full-blown merchandising agency it is today.
“We’re much more than a screen printer, embroiderer, creative team or fulfillment warehouse,” Harris said. “We have a unique in-house team that helps brands take their ideas from initial concept all the way to commerce — and everywhere in between.”
From providing bulk merchandising guidance about style and trends to generating artwork and producing the goods — not to mention creating e-commerce sites and delivering directly to customers — Ink prides itself on walking alongside clients at every stage of taking a product to market.
In addition, the company also helps larger brands outsource their merchandise through exclusive overseas partnerships, which Harris said helps save clients money on high-volume inventory while allowing them to continue their relationship with the reliable, accessible team at Ink.
“Every day, we’re guiding customers through their custom products,” he said. “Whether personally or through our self-guided MyProjects manager on inkteam.com, our sales, service and creative teams handle the details so our customers don’t have to stress about accuracy, quality or logistics.”
Meanwhile, he added, the company’s production teams are hard at work decorating merchandise, often completing as many as 10,000 custom apparel items per day during peak seasons.
In 2015, the company launched Ink Gives Back, for which a portion of every sale supports local and global initiatives from hunger relief and disaster recovery to school supplies for children.
“It’s our way of proving that businesses helping businesses can create a ripple effect of good,” Harris said.
The future of the company, he added, is not just dependent on what Ink grows into but how it grows.
“Our aim is for Ink to remain relevant, mission-driven and bold in pursuing a promising future,” he said. “We envision growing into a family of companies and multiple locations, taking ideas from concept to commerce and everywhere in between. As we grow, we’ll deepen our ties to the communities we serve, becoming inseparable from our hometowns, and we’ll use our strength and profitability to bless employees, partners and communities.”
