Campaign · Print & enterprise on the southeast side

Own the
Press.

Whoever owns the press keeps the proceeds. On Cleveland's southeast side, we are putting the press in the hands of a ten-year-old, and building a business around her.

Shop the drop →Send us your kid who draws

A young printer pulls the heat press handle, smiling.

For buyers

Pressed here. Signed by the kid. Paid to the artist.

Every piece is designed and hand-printed by a young person, and the designer gets paid.

For parents & teachers

From sketchbook to payroll. The kid runs the shop.

Got a kid who loves to draw? We know what to do with them.

For funders & partners

Hustle is a skill. Every shirt counts.

Job training, entrepreneurship and creative expression in one room.

Demo day · October 2026

100%Show-up rateEvery child who signed up came. One brought a friend.

26Shirts pressed13 young people, two shirts each, on DTF and a heat press.

~60Minutes hookedSustained focus, start to finish.

0Parents invitedThey came anyway and asked to make shirts.

The big claim

The talent was never the problem. The press was.

Every young person on the southeast side who draws on a notebook, a sneaker or a wall is a business that has not been registered yet.

Own the Press is the campaign for Mount Pleasant Printing, a working print shop where young people learn to design, print, price and sell. Everyone starts on direct-to-film (DTF), then moves up to direct-to-garment (DTG) and screen printing. The youngest trainees run the shop. Older youth come in as customers. The designer gets paid for every piece.

It is also the engine for every Balance Point campaign: ride tees for The Last Free Sport, totes and bookplates for Read Out, all with a young person's name on the tag.

The long print table covered with transfers on demo day.

The gap

One in seven Americans. One in thirty employers.

Black Americans are 14.4% of the U.S. population and own 3.4% of employer businesses. Black-owned employer firms grew 62% from 2017 to 2023. The gap is closing, slowly.

It starts long before anyone files for an LLC. It starts with whether a young person has ever made something, set a price and watched a stranger pay it.

Black Americans: share of population vs. share of employer-business ownersUnited States, 2023

Share of populationU.S. Census14.4%

Share of employer firmsAnnual Business Survey3.4%

050%

Brookings, Black Business Parity Dashboard (2026), from U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey data for 2023. Scale runs to 50%.

Two numbers that do not belong together

Kids want to build. Almost none get to practice.

40%of U.S. students in grades 5–12 say they plan to start a businessGallup-HOPE Index

<5%of those students are interning at a company or organizationGallup-HOPE Index

Ambition is not the shortage. Practice is. A print shop gives a young person dozens of real transactions a season: a design, a cost, a price, a customer, a mistake, a fix.

Why here

The city that dressed America.

In the 1920s Cleveland ranked second only to New York in making suits and coats. About 10,000 people worked in the city's apparel factories by 1910. Those jobs left in the 1960s and '70s, and the skills went with them. The need stayed.

28.3%of Cleveland residents live in poverty, second only to Detroit among large U.S. citiesU.S. Census ACS, 2024, via Center for Community Solutions

45.9%of Cleveland children live in poverty, the highest of any U.S. city over 300,000U.S. Census ACS, via Cleveland.com, 2024

21.3%of Cleveland 16–24 year-olds were neither in school nor working, vs. 9.9% in the suburbsACS 2012–16, Center for Community Solutions

What the research says

A first job changes more than a paycheck.

Workforce

43%

fewer violent-crime arrests

Chicago teens randomly given a summer job, over 16 months.

Heller, Science, 2014

Job training

Teach it

to learn it

Students who expect to teach material recall more of it, and organize it better.

Nestojko et al., Memory & Cognition, 2014

Entrepreneurship

$5.2B

custom t-shirt market, 2024

Growing about 11.5% a year to $9.8B by 2030. Screen printing is 56% of it. DTF and DTG make one-off and small runs affordable, which is where young designers start.

Grand View Research

Creative careers

$62,960

median graphic designer pay

2025. One in five graphic designers is self-employed.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The equipment

Three ways to put a design on a shirt.

Every young printer starts on direct-to-film. It is fast, forgiving and works on almost any shirt, so a ten-year-old can go from drawing to wearing in one session. Direct-to-garment and screen printing come next, as the orders get bigger.

DTFWhere everyone starts

Direct to film

The design prints in full color, plus a white backing layer, onto a clear PET film.
Hot-melt adhesive powder goes on the wet ink and is cured.
The heat press bonds the transfer to the shirt at about 320°F for 10 to 15 seconds.
Peel the film. Done.

Best for: One-offs, small runs, full-color art, light or dark shirts
Fabrics: Cotton, polyester, blends. No pretreatment.
Young people learn: File prep, gang sheets, placement, heat press time, temperature and pressure

DTGNext step

Direct to garment

Dark shirts get a pretreatment, heat-pressed into the fabric.
An inkjet head sprays water-based ink straight into the fibers.
The print is heat-cured so it lasts through the wash.

Best for: Soft-feel prints, photos and fine detail, single shirts with no setup
Fabrics: Cotton and other natural fibers
Young people learn: Color management, pretreatment, curing, printer care

ScreenFor big orders

Screen printing

The design is separated into one stencil, or screen, per color.
Ink is pulled through the mesh with a squeegee, one color at a time, lined up by registration marks.
The ink is heat-cured.

Best for: Team and event orders, bold spot colors, lowest cost per shirt at volume
Fabrics: Almost anything, with the right ink
Young people learn: Color separation, burning screens, registration, the pull

	DTF	DTG	Screen printing
Setup before the first shirt	Print and powder a film	Pretreat dark shirts	Burn one screen per color
Sweet spot	1 to a few dozen	1 to a few dozen	Dozens to thousands
Colors	Unlimited	Unlimited	Each color adds a screen
Feel	Sits on top of the fabric	Soft, in the fabric	Depends on the ink
In use since	Early 2020s	1996	1907 patent

Printing or pressing? Both. Screen printing and DTG put ink on the shirt. DTF prints on film, then a heat press bonds it. "Press" is in every one of them, and in "the press" that publishes the news. That is where the campaign gets its name.

How it works

From field trip to front desk.

Two audiences, one shop. Kids who love to draw are trained to run it. Teens and young adults with a clothing idea come in as customers, and the trained kids walk them through.

Step 1Schools & partners
One-day session
Every kid presses a DTF transfer onto a shirt. We look for the one or two who light up.
Step 2Kids, then parents
Demo day
Invite the kids. The parents follow, and the kids teach them.
Step 3Ages 9 and up
Training cohort
DTF first, then DTG and screens. Design, typography and gang sheets, learned by making merch for every campaign.
Step 4Serving ages 14–25
Youth operators
Trainees digitize a customer's drawing and guide the press. Teaching is the final exam.
Step 5Own label
Their own business
A young designer runs a label through the studio: content, listings, sales. School print clubs make team merch.