Our Story

SPECIALISTS IN CUSTOM APPAREL & PRIVATE LABEL SERVICES

One Off Apparel (OOA) has evolved from a “one off” t-shirt printing business operating out of a basement in the beginning stages into a high volume custom apparel producer for top brands such as; Reebok, New Balance, Hasbro brands, Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, Diageo brands, MIT, and more... Our in-house art department, top of the line printing equipment, and cutting edge fulfillment technology allows us to offer our customers the HIGHEST QUALITY garments and accessories with the LATEST imprinting technology at the MOST competitive prices.

 

OUR STORY

TALES FROM THE WOODSHED 

 


In 2006, as a senior at UMass Amherst, Jeff Lavin (One Off Apparel Founder) was very hungry to gain some real world business experience. He took up a family friend on an offer for a free trip to a tradeshow in Las Vegas in exchange for helping him run his exhibitor’s booth. At the show, they were going to debut a brand new apparel printing technology that merged silk screen printing and direct to garment digital printing… a revolutionary new technology in the field. After being introduced to the apparel imprinting industry for the first time, Jeff was hooked.

Upon returning from the show, Jeff’s family friend offered him the opportunity to sell these new printers to local screen printing and embroidery shops. As Jeff soon found out… local shop owners didn’t want to spend $30k with some kid who knew nothing about the printers he was selling. So… Jeff was never able to sell a single printer. Discouraged, he decided it might be a good idea to head home on weekends to learn how to print on a demo unit that his family friend had at his house. In the process of practicing with the demo printer, he was able to gain some technical knowledge that he was hoping would lead to a printer sale. While learning how to use the machine, Jeff ended up printing & selling beer league softball jerseys, bar crawl tees, and the like for his buddies at UMass. With this new found way to generate beer money, Jeff decided to throw in the towel with trying to sell a printer and instead figured it would be a better idea to start a business using a printer.

After graduating, he passed up some opportunities to work in the Finance field and began printing t-shirts in his parents’ basement. After a short time below ground, his father generously offered to renovate the woodshed on the side of the house to move the print shop into. Soon thereafter, Jeff had brought on his brother Mitch Lavin and long time friend Bob Skinner to help print tees. He also brought on another buddy from UMass, Mike Tran, to help with sales and at times Jeff also had to have his Dad come into the shop to help print tees when things got busy. 

 

NEW FRONTIERS

OUT OF THE HOUSE AND INTO THE WILD

 


 After many days and nights of working around the clock to get orders out, warehousing product in the living room & dining room, and having to constantly battle the family cat and dog off of stacks of shirts that were laying around… it was time to move out.

In mid 2008, One Off Apparel moved into an old Civil War era building in Millbury, MA. After spending a couple of years there, another move was made to our latest print shop in West Boylston, MA in 2010. It was in this new 10,000 square foot facility that the business really started accelerating to new heights. With our core business starting to take off, we decided to launch a new retail arm for the business with a custom print shop & retail store on Gloucester street in Boston in 2012.

After being on Gloucester street for about a year, we decided to move our new retail store to Newbury Street in Boston. One Off Apparel’s retail store and custom print shop was the first of it’s kind by allowing customers to produce private label quality apparel including All-Over printed tees, tanks, socks, and tons of other items in under 10 minutes.

 

LUDICROUS SPEED

JOURNEYING TO THE GREAT BEYOND

 


At our high volume production & fulfillment center in West Boylston, Massachusetts, we have made major improvements over the last few years with upgrading equipment and increasing our capacity to better serve our customers’ needs. Our team can produce 20,000+ units in 24 hours and has done this on numerous occasions for the Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox directly after championship victories or for last minute stadium giveaways.

Our second location retail store & custom print shop on Newbury Street in Boston was converted from a brick & mortar location to an online store in 2015.

In 2018, we partnered with our sister company Levi Mason Trading to assist with production of apparel orders and expand the markets we serve. Levi Mason Trading is a Veteran Owned Custom Apparel Division that provides apparel imprinting and private label services to government entities, corporations, and other business brands. 

It’s been a long, difficult road to get to where we are but we are so happy to be still be at it and growing & improving every day! We are forever grateful to all of our loyal customers and know that we wouldn’t be here without you.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about who we are and where we’ve come from… now, we’d like to get to know you! Please contact us about your next apparel project!