By Angela Rogalski
Brewer Screen Printing in Greenwood provides custom screen printing for all types of product orders. From T-shirts to decals, banners to signs, and much more in between, Brewer is a full service screen printing company that has been in business for over forty years.
Alton Brewer started the business in 1977, and at eighty-three he still works every day. His son, Barry Brewer, came onboard full-time in 1988 and helps manage the business. Alton Brewer has been in the printing business since 1954, starting out in the letter-press printing business while he was high school.
“He worked for Lawrence Printing Company here in Greenwood during high school, graduated, and then decided to continue working for them,” says Barry Brewer. “And he worked for them for twenty-five or thirty years before he started doing this business full-time. He started the screen printing, which is totally different from what he did at Lawrence, just as a side job at first in 1977. And I worked with him a lot when I was a child. Screen printing is actually the oldest form of printing known. We started out doing metal signs on the side and that went over really well, so he started doing decals for the electrical transformer places that were in Greenwood at the time. There were three companies that made transformers then, we have one today and we still make the decals for them.”
Brewer says he came on full-time with his father in 1988 when the company he worked for at the time went bankrupt. He had always wanted to do the screen printing, but was hesitant to leave the job he had and all the benefits it offered.
“When the company I worked for went bankrupt, I figured it was time to give the screen printing a try,” he adds. “And it really went well from the start. That year, 1988, was a county-wide election year and we had a lot of campaign stuff to do. So, that really got the ball rolling for us. Then everything just began to pick up. We started doing T-shirts for the baseball leagues, they were very happy to find someone local to do them. And we still do T-shirts for the local ball leagues.”
Along with the sports segment of the business, Brewer says summertime offers all kinds of family reunion business, church socials; just any occasion that happens to pop up.
“I do the T-shirts, my dad does the decals, and my nephew, Austin Brewer, joined us, he’s fresh out of college, and he does the wide format printing, which includes car wraps, full-color banners, window signs, just a wide variety of things,” says Brewer. “He actually runs that department.”
Brewer says their business is good year-round with all the sports seasons and other events that happen all the time, such as in October with Cancer Awareness.
“We do the local basketball leagues too and we do a lot of work for Mississippi Valley State, their athletic programs, from basketball to their football program. We love what we do and we appreciate all the local community support.”
