STRICTLY BUSINESS: HORIZON SCREEN PRINTING INC.: A STORY OF SUCCESS

For Rhoda Reeves, screen printing was just another hobby in a long list of arts and crafts pastimes.

That was in 1983.

How a business that Reeves admits "was never intended to become a full-time business" blossomed from a two-cellar operation to one that now produced as many 2 million T-shirts a year was the topic of conversation recently for Reeves and Nancy Stearms Bercaw, editorial director of Virgo Publishing Inc.

Virgo publishes Imprintables Today, a trade magazine for the screen-printing industry. Bercaw was in Cape Girardeau as part of Virgo's "T-Shirt Nation Tour."

Reeves, president of Horizon Screen Printing Inc., has watched her company grow to one that provides T-shirt designs for accounts in 20 states.

"I'd always wanted to learn how to screen print," she said in recalling the history of Horizon. "Usually, after I'd mastered a craft -- macrame, pottery, ceramics -- I'd go to something else. I never intended to work fulltime."

Screen printing, though, turned out to a be the hobby that "got out of hand," Reeves said. "And, with technology changing all the time I've never become bored with it."

From the beginning, Reeves did the artwork and made screens in her basement, while a friend and early partner handled the printing in her home on a home-built, one-color press. They used a floodlight to burn screens and cured shirts with heat lamps.

That process, Reeves said, "was real slow."

Reeves recalls the first "real" order for the new screen-printing business was 200 T-shirts for the local Girl Scouts, a job that took two weeks. That same order today would be a 15-minute job.

Other local orders started coming in, and Reeves' hobby gathered steam.

In the third year, Reeves bought out her partner's interest and consolidated the two-cellar hobby operation into a single commercial plant.

At this point, husband, Glenn Reeves, who had been moonlighting as the company vice president, retired from Sears, Roebuck and Co., after 33 years.

Glenn Reeves had been involved in the company earlier. In fact, he built that first one-color press. His retirement from Sears was a key factor in Horizon's hobby-to-business transformation.

Rhoda Reeves is still president of the company, with Glenn Reeves as vice president.

"But, we're equal partners," she said. "He's always been a business adviser. We've always attended shows together and we've always made the decisions together."

Also in the Horizon ranks is the Reeves' son, Dru, who has been a part of the business since he was in high school. Today he is production manager. Also working in the business is a daughter, Sara, who works in the office while attending Southeast Missouri State University, where she is a junior.

Horizon now employs about 40 people, with more than two-thirds of the employees on a full-time bases. A number of part-time jobs are filled by university students.

The company, which produces up to 2 million T-shirts a year, often runs double shifts to keep up with the demand.

Horizon now has one six-color and two 10-color automatic presses; one each of a four, six and eight-color manual press; and two flatbed presses.

"We can produce as many as 10,000 decorated shirts a day now," Glenn Reeves said.

Reeves emphasized, however, that Horizon takes on all orders, small or large. "We're happy to take on orders as few as one dozen," he said. "And we have numerous orders of 100 and 200."

Although the new, automatic machines can turn out thousands of T-shirts, the Reeves say their primary base of business remains in Cape Girardeau, Southern Illinois and the Bootheel.

"We'll take anything - 12 or up," he said. "We have people come in and order 12 shirts for family reunions, holidays and other special occasions."

"The small customers are still the fun part of the business," Rhoda Reeves said. "The big orders are like a factory. With the small customers we can create. That's one of the reasons I started the company and that is one of the reasons I still love it."

In 1990, Horizon added an ad-specialty business with the purchase of Marcon Enterprises.

The Horizon company now encompasses three floors of the building at 430 Broadway, a total of more than 15,000 square feet.

Nobody really knows when the first screen art processors placed the first picture on a T-shirt, but by the mid-1960s T-shirts were being decorated in a number of ways.

Retail shops featured rack upon rack of the T-tops in all colors, decorated with sequins, beads, feathers, even fragrances that permeated the air when the wearer scratched the appropriate spot.

During that era the most popular T-shirts were those printed with "famous faces" - movie and television stars, rock 'n' roll stars and other musical groups - and meaningful messages.

T-shirts suddenly became the biggest sellers at many stores that previously had saved their space for coordinated sweaters and skirts and tailored shirts.

Schools, businesses and other groups hit upon the idea of having T-shirts decorated to sell, either as fund-raisers, or as a means of advertising.

There has been no letup. New screen-printing companies have sprung up across the nation, providing new jobs and a new product to the country's economy."

The oldest printed T-shirt in the Smithsonian Institution's collection in Washington is a child-size model that reads, "Dew-it With Dewey," a relic of New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey's unsuccessful campaign against Harry S Truman in 1948.

The Smithsonian, a publication of the Smithsonian Institution, offers a theory on the T-shirt, saying the name is blamed on under-shirted longshoremen unloading tea in 17th century Annapolis. "Tea" became "T" and the rest is history.

Anyway you look at T-shirts these days, the statement they make is simple and potent: T-shirts are tops now.

In 1990 and 1991, more than a billion T-shirts were sold in the United States.

New on the business scene

Color Tile Inc., one of the largest floor covering retailers in the country, will open a store this summer.

The carpet and tile store, which offers all types of flooring supplies along with wall coverings and window coverings, is tentatively planning a June 6 opening here, a company spokesman of the company, headquartered at Fort Worth, Texas.

The Cape Girardeau store will be about 5,000 square feet, and will be located along Route K east of St. Francis Medical Center.

Color Tile Inc., has more than 800 company-owned stores nationally, and about 200 franchised operations. A dozen Color Tile stores are in the St. Louis area.

The ImageMaker, a new high-tech copy duplicating and design business, will open next month in Lorimont Place, 280 S. Mount Auburn Road.

Sharri Gerecke will serve as manager of the new business that will open with an initial staff of five.

The business will occupy 3,100 square feet between Herbst & Company Jewelers and H.R.H. Dumplin's Restaurant on the upper level of the Lorimont Place development.

The company specializes in high-speed copying, graphic design services, color copies, laminating, desktop publishing, fax and mailing services and hourly computer rentals.

Equipment will include Xerox's DocuTech Publishing Series. The Xerox equipment, which features advanced technology in digital scanning, laser imaging, automated binding and finishing, will be the first of its kind in this region.

A.F. Enterprises II Fairfax opened recently at 625A Broadway.

The new company offers a Fairfax free-standing air cleaner that filters the air.

The air cleaner is classified as a Class II medical device by the Directory of Medical Devices, said Ron Hammer. Hammer and his wife, Karen, are owners of R.F. Enterprises.

The Cape Girardeau office is the second for the company, which opened in Poplar Bluff in September.

The business is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Contractors busy

Permits were issued for more than $13.5 million in construction in Cape Girardeau during the first quarter of 1995.

The list includes permits for 11 single-family residences, at a cost of $1.6 million and seven two-family homes, at a cost of $845,000.

Commercial construction totals more than $7 million, and commercial additions and expansions total more than $3.5 million.

There are a number of construction sites at Southeast Missouri Hospital these days.

The largest project is a new lobby, a $5.9 million project that includes a 20,000-square-foot main lobby with a mezzanine level, an exterior courtyard and renovation of areas within the hospital that were vacated by departments moving into the 105,000-square-foot Clinical Services Building last year.

Included in other construction at the hospital is work on two new parking facilities.

A new employee parking facility at Broadway and South West End Boulevard, is scheduled to open in mid-May. When that lot opens, about 200 additional spaces in lots near the hospital will be available for patients and visitors.

A parking lot under construction along Sunset and Broadway adjacent to the hospital's College of Nursing, is earmarked for students and faculty.

Renovation of one of Southeast's two Cardiac Catheterization Labs is also nearing completion.

Approval to replace a cath lab unit in use at the hospital more than 10 years was given by the Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee in January. Installation of the new lab unit began Thursday, and should be operational soon, hospital administrator James Wente said.

The $1.6 million price tag for the lab is being paid for with accumulated savings earmarked for that project some time ago, Wente said.

Site work is also under way at St. Francis Medical Center for construction of the new medical office building and parking garage .

Construction of the 100,000-square-foot, multi-level office building and an adjacent garage east of the medical center will get under way this summer. Completion of the building and the garage are scheduled next year.

Boat notes:

Harrah's North Star gambling casino at Kansas City set a new monthly record for Missouri casinos by winning $11.2 million from its customers in March.

The Missouri Gaming Commission says for the same month, Casino St. Charles won $10.3 million; Argosy Gaming Co.'s casino in the Kansas City suburb of Riverside won $7.28 million; the President Casino on the Admiral in St. Louis won $6.96 million; and the St. Jo Frontier in St. Joseph won $1.96 million.

More than 1,000 people gathered at the Caruthersville riverfront recently to watch the "City of Caruthersville," a casino riverboat owned by Aztar Corp., dock at its new docking facility along the Mississippi River.

In accordance with Missouri Gaming Commission rules, no tours of the boat were permitted.

Aztar is making final preparations to get the riverboat ready for its planned April 26 opening.