A family print shop from a small Iowa farm town.
Pro Transfers is run by the brother-and-sister team who started it thirty years ago, and the people who print, cut, check and pack your transfers do it in one factory in northwest Iowa. Here is who we are and how we think about the job.
Thirty years, one family, still in Iowa
Paul Whitaker and Terri Larson, brother and sister, opened a small screen printing and embroidery shop in northwest Iowa thirty years ago. We grew up in a farming town, and Terri still helps on the family farm today. Pro Transfers is what that shop became: still family owned, still founder led, still printing in Iowa.
That background shapes how we run the company. We built Pro Transfers to create good jobs in our own community, and to help local businesses, print shops, decorators and brands grow in theirs. When your shop does well, so does a town in Iowa.
Not a link in your supply chain. The team behind your team.
We do not think of Pro Transfers as a place you buy transfers from. We think of it as the crew that helps your shop succeed: the art prep, the technology, the press-room work and the fixes, done by people who want your customer to be happy with what you hand them.
That sounds corny. We are from Iowa, so we will own the pun. But it has real meaning in how we work, and it is why so much of what we do never shows up on an invoice.
Hitting print is the easy part
Printing is maybe a quarter of what goes into a DTF transfer, and it is the easy quarter. The rest is what our team, and yours, actually spends the day on:
- 01
Building the technology
The artwork preflight, the studio and the analysis that tells you how a file will print before you pay for it. Software that makes your life easier, written by people who also run a press.
- 02
Art prep and technical fixes
Every piece of artwork that comes in the door gets checked, and most get refined, before it goes anywhere near a printer. Thin lines, stray pixels, colour space, transparency: handled.
- 03
Printing, then everything after it
Printing, yes. Then cutting, packaging, quality control and a colour check on every order before it ships.
- 04
Linearization and calibration
The printers are linearized and calibrated on a schedule, so the colour you approved is the colour that ships, week after week, printer after printer.
- 05
Fixing it when it goes wrong
Sometimes things blow up, and sometimes it is our mistake. When that happens the job is getting it fixed and back out the door as fast as we can, so you still hit your deadline.
Founder led, from both ends of the business
Paul Whitaker
Co-founder and CEO
Paul leads the company and the technology from Bozeman, Montana, and spends a good part of the year on the road. You will find him, and the Pro Transfers booth, at most of the major trade shows across the US. Stop by and say hello; he would rather talk about your shop than ours.
Terri Larson
Co-founder
Terri runs the factory in northwest Iowa and the team that prints your work: the printer techs, decorators and finishers who handle every order from the first file check to the box going out the door. When the season calls for it, she is on the family farm too.
Behind them is a kick-ass crew of printer techs, decorators and finishers in Iowa who treat your deadline like their own.
One factory in the middle of the country
Every transfer is printed, cut, checked and shipped from our facility in Emmetsburg, Iowa. One location, near the centre of the US, which keeps shipping times short to both coasts and means the person who answers the phone can walk over and look at your order.
Leadership is in Bozeman, Montana, and wherever the next trade show is.
See the work before you trust us with yours
Order a free sample pack and press it yourself, or run your own file through the preflight and see what we see. And if you would rather talk to a person first, call. One of us will pick up.