Lincoln man innovates as he works to keep business alive

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - For the past 26 years — the pre-pandemic era — Rick Poore has owned and operated a screen-printing business.

His shop, Shirts 101, is in an industrial complex just off the North 27th Street viaduct as you’re heading toward Cornhusker Highway.

His company designs and prints T-shirts and polos and sweatshirts and caps for hundreds of customers all year-round.

One of his biggest customers is the Sports Car Club of America. And there are a lot of sports car clubs in America.

Many of them were hankering for spring last winter, and 2020 was setting out to be a very busy year. January was great; February was terrific.

“We just had the best two months of any year since I started. It was the best,” he told the Lincoln Journal Star.

And then it wasn’t.

“People were canceling events. Customers weren’t planning events. Distributors weren’t ordering shirts from their suppliers overseas. I’ve never seen a complete supply chain in total ruin like this.”

Overnight, Poore was in the business of staying in business.

He joined a throng of thousands of companies big and small, whose livelihoods were laid low by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Real early on, I had a little come-to-Jesus meeting with myself,” the 66-year-old McCook native said. “I thought, ‘This is going to get ugly.’”

Poore had 29 employees, and he didn’t want to lose them.

He’d heard about the government’s plan for what would become the Payroll Protection Program, and he wanted to be ready. He talked to his accountant, gathered his paperwork, filled out the required forms online as they became available and waited for the application period to begin.

“I think I pushed send at one minute after midnight that Thursday night.”

A week later, he had his check. (Thanks to Union Bank and its own speedy response.)

By then, Poore had already fashioned a new revenue source, tailored to the times.

Decades of doing business and a knack for being light on his feet gave him a head start.

“My son says I was thinking outside the box; I said I was born outside the box.”

Poore had a supplier in Pakistan he’d done business with for more than a decade, buying martial arts uniforms to embroider as students moved up in rank. That supplier knew a guy “who knew a guy who had a cousin in China,” who had access to the personal protective equipment used by health care workers, Poore said.

Lifesaving gear that was in desperate demand.

“I thought, ‘I can start bringing some of this stuff in for the people who need it.‘”

Medical gowns and disposable masks and gloves.

Poore had a hard time getting potential customers to take him seriously when he set out. A T-shirt company in the medical supply business?

“What the hell does this guy know?”

But he secured a purchase order with the state Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and another with the Veterans Administration and he was on his way. A $5.4 million order for 600,000 gowns from New York City fell through because Poore couldn’t get funding to import the gowns from China and NYC wasn’t willing to pay upfront.

But Poore wasn’t done.

Everyone wanted hand sanitizer.

And he knew that the owner of the Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis, South Dakota, for whom he’d printed shirts in the past, had segued into the sanitizer business through a connection he had in Tennessee.

And soon, Poore was in business, too.

“Super Saver bought a bunch; some smaller grocery stores are buying a bunch. We’re selling it online.”

Poore and a friendly competitor at 402ink — Dan Okelberry — came up with a tongue-in-check name and old-fashioned logo for the new product line: Rick’s Miracle Hand Sanitizer. Tagline: It’s a miracle we even have it.

And then when the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce launched LNKppe.com — a boon for local businesses and a resource for health care workers and others in need of supplies — he was ready for that, too.

“We already had a website.”

Shirts 101: Stay Safe Supplies takes all major credit cards and offers three sizes of hand sanitizer, along with the standard PPE.

It feels like he’s busier than ever, Poore said, although revenue is down about 50%.

“We’ve found our little niche. It’s not terribly enriching, but it’s brought in some new customers who might need us when this is over.”

The good news: He didn’t have to lay off any employees.

And so far, no one has taken home a short paycheck. The choice to keep them on wasn’t an entirely benevolent one, he said.

“When this does come back, I don’t want to start with new people. I have a great crew, and a lot of them have been with me for 15 years.”

A few employees did decide to furlough, Poore said, and one, a new mom, extended her maternity leave.

The day looks different inside Shirts 101 these days. They box up Rick’s Miracle Hand Sanitizer, and they spend some time filling requests for custom fabric masks. (Poore has sold more than 500 imprinted with the Zoo Bar logo to customers all over the country.) They have a few T-shirt orders trickling in.

Employees are socially distanced.

“The first thing we do is everybody puts their mask on, and we have a lot of hand sanitizer, so that’s not an issue.”

Back in March, when his best year turned into an impending disaster, Poore talked to his employees about the October snowstorm that shut down Lincoln in 1997. How he drove around not recognizing his town.

They might have a parallel view when the COVID-19 crisis is over, he told them.

“You’ll be driving around town, and you’ll see bars that are closed and stores you shopped at that are closed,” he said. “But I want you to be able to look down the viaduct and see a sign that says Shirts 101, and we’re still in business.”