With the Packers making a deep run into the playoffs, unofficial T-shirts and other gear supporting the team is popping up all over the place.
A Bay View screen printing shop is getting on on the action with one of the more popular designs, a T shirt with a flexing Clay Matthews and the slogan "I Wanna Get Sacked By Clay Matthews."
"We always kind of talk about what funny shirts we should do and my friend Matt Terbeek sent me a text just saying that 'We should put "I Wanna Get Sacked By Clay Matthews" on like a girls shirt. I think a lot of girls would be into that because they love Clay Matthews.' For good reason," laughed Jeff Meilander, who started Redwall Screen Printing out of his parent's garage while playing in bands in high school.
"I did the design and probably within an hour I had it on the first shirt. He put it on Facebook and pretty much right away he had a good 15 or 20 people who wanted them," Meilander said.
The Matthews shirt is one of a handful of designs Meilander has printed for the meeting between the two heated rivals, including another that depicts Jay Cutler passing gas, and Aaron Rogers looming over an outline of Illinois that reads, "Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood."
"We printed out that first little run and took them out to bars watching the Packer game that weekend. A lot more people wanted them and we put them on eBay and have been selling a lot of them that way," said Meilander. "It just kind of happened. We'll probably keep it up and keep selling them until nobody cares any more or we get in trouble."
Meilander's screen printing operation has grown substantially from its DIY punk roots. He's turned hand screening shirts for his old bands like the hardcore act Seven Days of Samsara, into an 8,500 square foot warehouse operation located at 350 E. Ward Street.
"It got to the point where doing it by hand was just tedious to do them all by hand and stack them in the garage, I realized I needed a way to do it more professionally so I bought a little set up," Meilander said.
With word of mouth drawing more and more bands and eventually corporate clients, Meilander's business continued to grow. In honoring the small time roots of his success Meilander continues to do short run prints like the Packer's shirts, taking orders for as few as six shirts at a time.
"Sometimes we lose money on them, but some of the biggest jobs that we've gotten are because of those people. We do the little ones. We take care of them and they tell people," Meilander said.
Meilander said he's been excited to see the Matthews shirts popping up on strangers around town, but said he gets just as big a rush off seeing any of his work around.
"It is rad when I see people wearing shirts that I printed popping up in totally random places like in magazines or just when I see someone walking down the street. Even if I just see a dude wearing a Stone Creek Coffee shirt I am like, 'Whoa, that's kind of cool,'" Meilander said.
Meilander said he's already begun thinking about what to print if (when) the Packers win on Sunday.
"We'll come up with something," Meilander said.