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T-shirt maker finds new challenges in 'unretirement'

Klint Lowry/SUNCOAST

Helen Walsh, left, owner of Tee Shirt Magic, and Marlene Leatham show just a portion of the items available at Tee Shirt Magic, Walsh's store at the Gulf View Square mall, in Port Richey.

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: December 4, 2009

Updated:

PORT RICHEY - For a lot of people Helen Walsh's age, a mall is someplace to walk laps. At Gulf View Square, Walsh isn't walking the mall, she's working it.

With the holiday shopping season now in full gallop, a lot of people will likely become more familiar with her work as they search for those inexpensive but personal stocking stuffers.

Walsh owns and operates Tee Shirt Magic, at the southern end of the mall. At the age of 70, she opened the store in May, and like the rest of her fellow retailers, she is keeping her fingers crossed for a busy month.

"I like working; and I want to get my money back," Walsh said, surrounded by a colorful inventory of doormats, pillows, snow globes, aprons, hats, bumper stickers, coffee cups, can holders, mousepads, dog sweaters and more.

"We've got the old lady nightshirts, the young kids' hoodies," Walsh said.

And of course, there are T-shirts, with designs and logos as diverse as the personalities wandering through a mall on a busy holiday weekend. What she doesn't have in stock, Walsh can make from catalogs of transfers, from photos or with her own imagination.

Though the store is new, Walsh is not new to the T-shirt business. She got her start 22 years ago, in Chicago.

She was in antiques, but got tired of moving big, heavy pieces of furniture. She had already made the switch to T-shirts when she moved to Florida to care for her mother. At first, she sold her shirts at fairs and shows. Eventually, she settled in at the USA Flea Market, where she stayed for more than 12 years.

A little over a year ago, she sold her booth at the flea market and planned to retire. That plan lasted three months before she started rethinking retirement.

"I didn't like it," Walsh said. "I like people."

Besides, she found she wasn't as financially prepared for a comfortable retirement as she thought. She decided to get back into the T-shirt business, only bigger. She found an Anajet, a direct-to-garment printer, at a convention that intrigued her, and though it cost about as much as a small car, she decided it was worth the investment.

The people she had sold her business to at the flea market had tanked fairly quickly with their business, and she thought about moving back, but found her new equipment was too sensitive; it needed a controlled environment. Fortunately, store space of just the right size had opened up at the mall.

"When I first got here, I was really scared, because I was so used to the flea market world," Walsh said. The hours are different, and it's a different clientele - younger, much more diverse.

Back at the flea market, Walsh said, there was a lot of demand for Confederate "stars and bars" merchandise. Even though she understands it is a bit controversial, she still carries an assortment, though it represents a smaller portion of her overall stock.

On the other hand, some of the heavy metal, gothic imagery she couldn't give away back at the flea market is now the stuff she keeps right near the entrance; She now has a teen market she never had before.

She's also finding a big part of mall business is with family-and-friends type gifts, particularly those involving sublimation, where the customer brings in a photo that she can then imprint.

"Most people want pictures on shirts, balloons, coffee mugs," she said.

Besides relearning how to market to a different crowd, Walsh has been on a fast track learning new technologies in order offer a wider range of products. In the meantime, she has had the support of longtime customers who've followed her to the mall.

Randee LaForest and Tammy Klager have been steady customers so long they have become good friends with Walsh.

"She custom makes just about anything," LaForest said. "You tell her what you want, she'll figure it out."

"She's just been wonderful for us," Klager added. "My daughter owns a store, her husband owns a company. She does all the stuff for them. I get shirts for all the guys in our company, and we're up in Michigan. I call her up and she does them all."

With that kind of customer satisfaction, it's likely that so long as T-shirts are in style, Walsh can stay unretired as long as she wants.

Klint Lowry can be reached at 727-815-1067 or klowry@suncoastnews.com.

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