OUR ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE:
To encourage the youth worker and help find ways to rekindle their idealism for ministry.

WHAT SETS US APART:
We love what we do, and we do what we love, which is providing amazing service and turnaround along with a dose of encouragement and a heart felt appreciation for the sacrifices that are made at the local church level.

WHY US:
We offer amazing customer service, create relevant designs, and deliver it all within 72 hours of art approval.

HISTORY

1993

Our founder, Steve Hooper started an apparel imprinting company (Taylormade Creations, Inc. in honor of his first born son Taylor) in 1993. Steve left his job as a commercial banker, and with his wife Heather they started printing shirts with transfer paper, a color copier, and a heat press in their living room. At the time, his sons Taylor and Josh were 2 years and 5 months old respectively.

1995

In the fall of 1995 Steve and fellow part time youth pastor, Chip David, attended the Youth Specialties convention in Nashville, TN. Chip was an amazing artist and had worked with Steve as a free lance artist up until this point. On the way home from the convention, the guys popped in a cassette tape of a speech from Mike Yaconelli, the founder of YS. Mike prophetically announced that one day a company or individual would hopefully come along and love youth pastors where they were at and provide Youth Pastors with a voice and encouragement as they attempt to change the world. On that day, we pulled off the side of the road and Uth Stuph (youth stuff) was born.

(Up until his death, Mike Yaconelli was a great influence and encouragement to Steve as he struggled to balance business and ministry)

1996

We (Steve and Chip) introduced the concept of Uth Stuph to an audience of youth workers at the youth awakening, sponsored by the National Network of Youth Ministries, and Promise Keepers. That year, with the help of Pam Birdsong (our first employee Sept 95) we worked with nearly 200 youth groups in providing design and apparel for youth group events. We had three full time employees and one part time production worker.

1998

At this time we had grown to a staff of 6 or so. About half of our production was dye sublimation (color copier and transfers), while the rest was screen printing that we contracted out. In May of this year, we purchased our own manual screen printing equipment and operated our “production facility” out of a utility shed. Steve was our printer and he admits to always buying twice the amount of shirts he would need for a job because he was bound to screw up at least half.

1999

Steve’s brother Chris joined the company and the brothers acquired a warehouse full of bank repossessed equipment that we were told were two automated screen printing presses and a gas dryer. We moved into a 5,000 square foot shopping plaza, but quickly realized we needed another 5,000 square feet for our expanding office staff. The older equipment was finally set up and we were now the proud owners of automated screen printing equipment, along with our manual press.

2000

We acquired a video production/ multi media company (Black Coffee Productions), and began a band merchandising division, a new pre-printed line of apparel (holycotton.com), and strategically partnered with Group Publishing to build a strategy of connecting with youth pastors. We launched the munch, jump and soar initiative aka the Sooper Tour, where we fed youth pastors (munch), we planned and were going to launch a youth rally (Jump Events), and we would culminate with a giant youth pastor gathering called the Soar Event. After six months we spread out what little resources we had in so many directions that we almost put ourselves out of business. After six months of lunches, Group decided that they were going in a different direction. At the end of this year we decided to go in a different direction as well. Instead of doing everything we decided to become the best custom design company and custom apparel imprinter in the US dedicated to serving churches across the US.

2001

We continued our 30 to 40% growth but we focused on automation and developing systems that would make us better at doing what we do. We zeroed in on providing custom designed apparel within 72 hours of art approval. By this time we had replaced our older presses with two brand new automated presses.

2002

We moved into our current headquarters in Orlando, FL which is a nearly 15,000 square foot facility that houses our growing staff of artist, sales reps, production team and administrative team. By now we have worked with over 5,000 churches since the birth of the Uth Stuph brand in 1996.

2004

We continued our growth with a 57% improvement in revenues and a client base that had exceeded 10,000 churches. In August Steve and his family moved to Franklin, TN to start Stuph Merch, which was a sister company with a very similar set-up as we had in Orlando. While we expanded and did our best to handle the strong growth, in many ways we outpaced our infrastructure.

2006

We finished building our new tracking system that allows us to track every job and keep up our commitment to provide a wow experience with the quickest turnaround in the industry. In addition, Steve brought on his best friend from college (Carson Newman College), who had over 20 years experience working in the local church. Steve’s experience in the church and his passion for helping those “beat up” by local church ministry drew him to our Uth Stuph brand. The two Steves (Steve squared) set out to fulfill our mission to leverage our resources to Change this World. The idea of the Stuph Foundation was established to help those in ministry rekindle their idealism for ministry.

2008

We are looking forward to the launch of our online initiative geared at encouraging and changing this world one youth worker at a time. It never has been about printing shirts, but rather making a difference and encouraging you the youth worker.