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The Work We Do: Stephen King Jr., EESG Custom Apparel

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My name is Stephen King Jr. I am a principal here at EESG Custom Apparel in Mattituck.

My dad started as East End Sporting Goods on Love Lane back in 1977. We used to offer traditional sporting goods. The market has changed throughout the years, so now we focus on custom apparel for businesses, organizations, athletic teams, we do fire departments, police departments.

There’s a wide range of customers, which is nice.

We embroider, silkscreen, print or engrave everything we do.

Our typical day is coming in and starting the machines and completing custom orders on a daily basis. A lot of people think we get the work and we just print it, but there’s a lot of organization that goes into ordering, processing the orders and then actually customizing the garments and getting them back out to the customer. There’s usually due dates — a lot of them.

When I was a young kid, I used to get a bottle of Windex and clean the racks and work for lunch. I thought that was great.

I actually lived in New York City for a while, I was a tax accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Eventually, I felt like the city wasn’t for me anymore. It was a great experience, but I decided to come back here. I’ve been back for going on six years now.

The best part of what we do here is actually being able to engage with our customers on a daily basis and really try to help them.

From start to finish, we help where we’re needed. We do have art services available. A lot of times, an organization already has a logo but sometimes the art needs to be changed based on how it’s going to be applied to whatever product it is.

We get to see some of the same faces on a regular basis, sometimes multiple times a year. People pop in and out and we develop relationships and get to know them, so it’s not like you’re sitting behind a machine all day long in a back room with nobody to talk to.

I really enjoy what I do here. It’s fun, it’s always changing. Every day is a challenge.

“The Work We Do” is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork.