Today we’d like to introduce you to Hatim Sulemanji.
Hi Hatim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
The beginning of my story and opening this business begins before I was born. In the 1970’s, our family moved to the United States due to the Idi Amin Revolution. After a lot of hard work and time, our family had settled into our new hometown, Houston. Since then, the United States and Houston have been nothing less than interesting and awesome. I really enjoyed growing up in the suburbs of Houston with all of the opportunities and great experiences.
I have always been someone that loves staying busy and active. Growing up one of my main activities was playing baseball. Through that I was able to learn a lot of things that still help me every day in business like getting through tough situations, thinking about different scenarios constantly, and always striving to be better day in and day out. Another organization that taught me a lot was my 10+ years in the Boy Scouts. Living in Houston, we do not have as much nature and greenery as some other places. But through Boy Scouts, I was able to travel around Texas and some other states while learning a lot of great skills like First Aid, Leadership, and much more. In the end, I was able to earn my Eagle Scout while gaining many chances to do things I would have never had the opportunity to. With merit badges we always had a chance to learn something very obscure like wood carving, plant science, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and more. I have always enjoyed trying new things and learning new hobbies but those two activities along with focusing on school were consistent focuses all the way up to the end of high school.
Afterwards I went to University of Houston and graduated with a Bachelors in Biotech and Minor in Business Foundations. Throughout my time at University, I tried to better myself inside and outside of the classroom. Through staying involved with organizations and also finding like minded people to study with in my classes. One of my favorite things about UH was all of the different types of people and places people had come from. There were always completely different people everywhere with different stories and ideologies all there essentially for the same purpose. To help me grow as a leader, I joined the Ignite Leadership program to learn new skills and was involved in different organizations with roles from president, historian, treasurer, and member to help me gain experience while doing things I liked with people I also enjoyed spending my time with. This time helped me grow as a person to be more independent and be able to work with all different types of people on different projects and goals.
After college, and some time traveling, I was able to try something new again by going to New York to find a Biotechnology job. After a couple of months, many interviews, and a couple of offers it sort of clicked that opening another shop in my family business was something I wanted to do at some point, so why not now? New York was great but Houston is home and it was where I needed to be.
I came back to Houston and started immediately learning as much as possible about the industry through our other family run shops and the internet. In 1983, my grandfather had opened our families first T-Shirts Etc. in Houston. After about 10 years my uncle had taken it over and grown his clientele and business to what it is today with great customer service, quality work, and hitting deadlines for his customers. A little over 6 years ago, my cousin had opened a second shop in the Katy area. With both of their industry knowledge and support of others, I was able to open my own shop in March of 2020.
Of course, after about a week of being open we had to shut down for covid. For a custom print shop, this stopped us from going out into the neighborhood to gain new clients as all events and organizations were shut down. We learned to start focusing heavily on our online local presence to help people learn that we are in the area. After a little bit of time being closed, we are able to adapt and start getting back to business servicing any one we could from essential businesses to direct customers. Over the last year there have been many ups and downs but all three shops are still here and getting busier as more people get back to their normal lives.
At this point, I do not think our shop will ever get back to what we called normal but have definitely evolved since the beginning of last year. All of the twists and turns have turned us into a stronger company. We were taught a lot about how we can adjust and run our business to expand our reach to many more people. As events and organization still open back, we are starting to see an influx of local quote requests and orders which is a great sign all around. Helping my family business reach its full potential is my number one priority at this point and we are very much looking forward to learning and growing with all our customers throughout the Houston area and beyond.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would not consider it being a smooth road but might describe it as a road with a lot of random speed bumps and turns. There are events or things that have happened that have slowed down or changed how I have thought and do things. Many of the things I might consider obstacles or challenges are temporary and things that just happen. For example, in high school I broke both of my wrists during the first baseball game of summer league right before senior year. While I have had many other sports related injuries in the past, that one shifted my daily livelihood, how I spent most of my time, and some of my priorities. I was eventually able to get back to playing and practicing every day and even played intramural baseball all throughout college. There are always things that happen, and some are more impactful than others, but all have to be dealt with head on at some point. Learning this has helped me deal with constant daily issues of running a business. There are always things that go wrong at the shop from missing packages, wrong color codes being used, machines going down, etc. and are not able to be controlled. You have to use resources and be level headed when needing to handle the situation. I make mistakes constantly, but those mistakes just force me to keep learning on how to minimize those same mistakes and make different ones. It is consistently trying to make a perfect process but also knowing that is impossible.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about T-Shirts Etc. West Houston?
T-Shirts Etc. West Houston is a family owned and operated business in Houston, Texas that specializes in creating custom apparel and products specializing in screen printing, embroidery, direct to garment printing, promotional products, and more. We try to be a customer service and logistics company that happens to create custom apparel and products. DELETED Piece of sentence
A few things set us apart from the hundreds of other print shops that are available is that we care about our customers goals, what they are printing for, and the garments they are printing on. We always do our best to inform and educate our customers about print processes, garments, why designs might not work, etc. This helps create a better product for what they are wanting by using our expertise to help elevate their idea to the next level. Focusing on creating quality impressions for our customers’ needs is something we strive to do every day by offering different ideas to help increase the amount of times a person will use or wear the product. To get someone to love and consistently wear a product is the goal and creates a more sustainable model for our customers to be able to grow their own organizations with ours. We are very proud of being a local Houston family owned and operated business. As local Houstonians, we very much enjoy servicing the people in our community and all of the organizations as well. We get very excited when given the opportunity to help a local business start their custom merchandising process.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
There are many qualities that I think a leader should have but empathy is one quality I try to strive towards and have thought about a lot lately.
Empathy is quite an important quality for anyone in a customer service business. We need to do our best to understand our customers to help give them the best experience.While we are manufacturing products, every single order is very different and has many factors that we need to understand to help our customers. For example, if a customer is wanting to get shirts with embroidery for their employees that are going into and out of offices all day then I would probably recommend a collared polyester to help stay a little cool as well in the Houston weather. On the other hand, if someone is creating merchandise to resell for their business then a higher quality t-shirt with a removable neck level is the best option for them. Understanding their needs and wants helps us help them hit their goals with recommendations and ideas.
Empathy also helps in the day to day operations and ease of working with others. It is easy to get very into the grind while forgetting about the people hand creating and delivering the products. With all of the mistakes that can occur during the process there needs to be some sense to remember that mistakes happened and my few packages being sent is out of millions. Empathizing with people that happen to make a mistake in your process helps get through the day with less stress and headaches worrying about things you could not do anything about.
As I mentioned before, there are many essential qualities I think someone at the top of an organization needs to try to have but cannot be perfect all of the time. It is difficult to always act professionally and treat customers perfectly but doing your best will be noticed and appreciated.
Pricing:
- What apparel or product do you need printed on? As well as any specifications for size, type, color, etc.
- What design/idea is wanted for the product?
- Each design placement for the designs. (Full Front, Left Chest, Right Sleeve, etc)
- Do you have a hard due date?
- Optional-What will you be using the products for? One time event, resell, employee morale, vacation shirts, etc.
Contact Info:
- Email: tshirtman713@gmail.com
- Website: www.tshirtsetcwesthouston.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tshirtsetcwesthouston/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tshirtsetcwesthouston
- Other: Google My Business – https://www.google.com/search?ved=1t:65428&hl=en&_ga=2.139126387.1165756200.1625188324-2067438317.1624241586&q=T-Shirts+Etc.+West+Houston&ludocid=11779124535681523433&lsig=AB86z5VnEYtmmzBdWI-lTpzS8Tqf#fpstate=lie TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@tshirtsetcwesthouston?lang=en
Image Credits
Insiyah Sulemanji
