If you walk past downtown Main Street on North Haven island, past Waterman’s Community Center and the old laundromat, there’s a new sign hanging up in the once-empty house known as “Etta’s Place” on Iron Point Road. The sign reads “Fox I Printworks”—a new screen-printing business that has recently set up shop.
On any given day, you’ll find owners Claire Donnelly and Sam Hallowell preparing their screen-printing press, selling their designs or thinking up their next T-shirt idea. Vintage dressers are teeming with shirts for the Farmers Market. A printing press is seated center stage with a few screens ready to go.
Though their storefront shop has only been open since May, the idea for a screen-printing business is over two years old. “We spent lots of hours this past winter sitting around the wood stove and deciding how we could start our own business,” says Donnelly. Hallowell had designed shirts for friends and Outward Bound on a small scale. This past spring, Donnelly visited a screen-printing shop in Portland to have some of her designs put onto shirts. “The owner showed me the process and I thought, this was something we could definitely do,” she says.
Friends heard that Artforms in Westbrook, Maine was selling a small-scale printing press. They loaded it into Hallowell’s truck and stored it in a boat shed until they could find a space. “We had the press before we even had a place to put it!” says Donnelly. Once “Etta’s Place”, formerly a studio for artists including Angela Adams, became available, they moved in and purchased the rest of the equipment they needed on Craigslist.
The business is part-time for both Donnelly and Hallowell. Donnelly works the bar at Nebo Lodge several nights a week and as an assistant to photographer Cig Harvey. Hallowell, a native North Haven resident, works full-time as island caretaker for the Hurricane Island Foundation. Their spare time is spent filling orders, turning Donnelly’s photos into designs or selling their tees.
The first big order Fox I received was for the Summer Solstice Regatta in Rockland, Maine. “It was great to have a big deadline to force ourselves to take the business off the ground,” says Donnelly. After that, they focused on creating their own designs in time for North Haven’s first farmers market on July 1. Their first T-shirt designs and current staples were of the Sparkplug Lighthouse, the North Haven ferry and a map design of North Haven that Chellie Pingree once sold in her store.
“The first farmers market was slow. We got great responses but we weren’t selling out right away,” says Donnelly. Since then, however, business has picked up. Fox I was asked to make over 375 T-shirts for North Haven community days. “When it’s just two people making almost 400 shirts, it’s quite a lot of work,” says Donnelly. “We sold out of our inventory and then started printing one off’s since the demand was so high.”
Custom orders have ranged from T-shirts for a surprise 40th birthday party to a design for the North Haven Casino. All T-shirts are screen printed in their shop on 100 percent cotton T’s. Though most orders are for shirts, Fox I will print on sweatshirts, totes or virtually anything that can be screen-printed. Fox I accepts a minimum order of 10 custom shirts, though Donnelly says for the right request, they’d consider doing even less.
You can purchase Fox I T-shirts at the North Haven farmers market or visit them in their shop. New designs include a North Haven/ Vinalhaven “we play nice” shirt. “Some of our designs come from asking people for ideas,” says Donnelly. “A list of Mullen’s Head beaches that reads “Big & Boyscout & Vista & Campsite & Exit” came from a friend’s suggestion.
Now that business is booming, the only concern is where to go this winter. “The shop isn’t winterized,” says Donnelly. “But we’ll be in there as long as we can.”