In today’s interview, we’re quizzing somebody who’s been playing an active part in Spreadshirt’s growing development over many years: Markus Kellner. He’s been in Spreadshirt’s production ever since the early days of the company, and he even remembers Spreadshirt from when there was no in-house production in place at all. Find out about what Markus gets up to on a regular day on the shop floor, what changes he’s witnessed and… where did it actually all begin?
My Spreadshirt story set out over 10 years ago in the summer of 2004. Back then, I worked as a stand-in at DeltaDruck, a small printing company where Luke (editor’s note: Lukasz Gadowski, founder of Spreadshirt) had his T-shirts printed in the company’s first couple of years. When he decided to start in-house production, I teamed up with him. This also means that I can pride myself in being Spreadshirt’s first ever employee! Soon we were a team of 7 or 8, and Lukasz would work with us at the T-shirt press.
There are over 500 troupers at Spreadshirt today. That means the company has developed leaps and bounds in a matter of a decade. We can assume it has surely had some sort of impact on your job life as well, right?
Like totally. The increase in workforce has taken on phenomenal dimensions as of late. You could say that the work process has become more structured and optimised with every new employee we hired. And in the early days we had somebody new working for us almost every day! The good thing, though, is that working for Spreadshirt has never lost the appeal it had as an emerging start-up project.
How about your professional development at Spreadshirt? You’ve seen much more than just the production side of the company, but you’re still devoted to the work on the shop floor. How come?
Yes, 100% correct. About 3 years ago I felt like having to develop further within the company. I then started to help out in Product Management and provided input for several departments. The longest I ever stayed in one section was in Supply Chain Management. I have to confess, however, that working in production is what I like best, so here I am – back on the shop floor.
Did you not like working at the headquarters? Or, to put it differently: what’s so great about working in production?
I’d say that having worked in production for a number of years you tend to get a bit of a squeaky bum when sitting in front of a computer all day long. It’s just great to be able to physically touch something after the work is done. Holding the T-shirt in your hands after you’ve crafted it. This is the kind of rewarding experience that I missed when I worked in other departments. I am also free to decide how to schedule my day, which makes my work less monotonous. Having been around for over 10 years has equipped me with the necessary experience to know exactly what screw to twist if something doesn’t work out, and I still keep discovering new stuff on almost a daily basis.
Tell us a bit more about your work. What are your tasks?
I work as a Quality Inspector at the test lab. Before a new product goes into production, I check whether it lives up to our expectations. I put all the products to a stress test. A T-shirt should e.g. look exactly like on day 1 after washing it 10 times. I washed the prototype of Spreadshirt’s Premium Collection T-shirt exactly 100 times, and the item is now known as “the world’s most washed tee” today. It still looks great!
Talking about 100 washing circles – is there a favourite T-shirt of yours, and can you describe it for us?
My favourite T-shirt dons the slogan “My spacesuit’s in the washing”. It’s my own brainchild, and quite a few people have asked me who the copyright owner of the slogan is. I’m pretty sure that I must have washed I this one a least 100 times as well!
What do you like best about your work?
The best days are those like at the T-shirt workshop. On days like these it’s just fantastic to be able to communicate with the outside world, and to see how customers and people completely new to the world of Spreadshirt are impressed with what we’re doing. It’s very pleasing to see them hold the final T-shirt in their hands, bright-eyed and happy.
Having talked about the good stuff, are there things that you don’t like about your work? I mean instances when you feel like dropping it all?
Of course there are times when certain things frustrate you, particularly when you start working with new technology. When we first implemented laser transfer print, we were in for a bit of a surprise. Printing on baseball caps and bags worked well during the test phase, but in production the print foil on all the products we printed on would tear. In the end we discovered that the print material was flawed, but it took 3 days to find out. And those were 3 very long days.
We’ve talked a lot about your work now. What’s the first thing you do when you get home from work?
I produce film and music material and also websites for local companies. I’m interested in design, which has me create a whole variety of material, from photo editing to animations and interactive maps.
Does that mean you just continue to work at home?
Not quite. I didn’t really learn these things, so it’s more like a hobby horse that I keep learning to saddle. It’s a lot of fun to learn how to create cool and tricky effects with different media.
Do you see any parallels in terms performing test runs at work and your media work at home?
There were a few situations at Spreadshirt that helped me gain a different perspective on other things. We used to have a notebook to maintain the register on errors in production. This was done in longhand, which means there was no coherent system in place for using consistent terminology for addressing error messages. We then implemented our error registry 2.0 – the electronic format. I have now developed a similar tool for maintaining the register of how we weed designs.
Apparently you’re a man of many talents. Is there anything your colleagues still don’t know about you?
You mean apart from wearing a cape on my nightly flights? Actually, not really. I just Love creating computer animations, and that’s well communicated.
Please finish the sentence: “Spreadshirt is… “
… a place where colleagues have become friends.
That’s a very nice concluding sentence. What’s left for you now is to designate your successor to be interviewed!
I’ve already been pondering this question long and hard, and it’ll have to be my old buddy Thomas who I got on board with Spreadshirt shortly after I’d started working here. So he’s been at Spreadshirt over 10 years as well, and I’m pretty sure he’ll have a few quirky anecdotes up his sleeve.
Thank you for taking the time, Markus. We’re all expectation as to what Thomas will reveal already.