Fresh Air is celebrating half a century of printing for the biggest bands and musical acts on the planet with a record-breaking summer of tour tee action
It’s been 50 years since Fresh Air printed its first T-shirt. Over the following five decades, the company has grown into a multi-million pound operation, employing over 120 people and producing hundreds of thousands of prints every month.
Record-breaking
Based in north-west London, Fresh Air is well known for printing massive quantities of band tees, as well as producing garments for high street retailers. But even by its usual impressive standards, 2024 has – fittingly for such a landmark year – been a bumper one.
In June alone, the company produced a record-breaking 960,557 prints, its highest-ever number of prints in a single month, with a further 240,000 printed at Kwik Shirt’s in Harlow, which Fresh Air has a joint venture with.
MD Lee Craze says the company’s success is due in no small part to the talented team of staff. A large party is planned for later this month to mark the landmark 50th anniversary, with employees firmly at the centre of the celebrations.
“It’s been a very challenging and extremely busy summer and the record print numbers reflect that. I am extremely proud of all our staff – T-shirt printing is hard graft and they haven’t put a squeegee wrong.”
Sales account manager Rebecca models a Stevie Nicks T-shirt, which has been a favourite not only at gigs but across social media
Production manager Agustin wears one of the technically challenging Take That tees
Domi, Fresh Air’s head printer, rocks one of the 400,000 AC/DC shirts the company has printed this summer
Pan-European
This summer has been a standout one, with some very high-profile music tours pushing the company to new heights.
AC/DC, which celebrated its own 50th anniversary last year, embarked on the Power Up Tour in May. Fresh Air began printing merch for the Australian rock band the same month and, as the repeat orders kept rolling in, continued to print every single day until the tour ended in
mid-August.
More than 400,000 shirts were produced – 12 tour and nine event tees, all with front, back and nape prints – as the band played 21 shows across Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, England, Slovakia, Belgium, France and Ireland.
Printing began in June for the UK and European legs of Stevie Nicks’ world tour, the American singer-songwriter who is well-known for her solo career as well as being part of stadium filler Fleetwood Mac. The team produced 35,000 shirts across seven designs – and the response has been huge, confirms Lee.
“This tour has seen our social media go crazy: 43,395 views on social media platforms across three video reels. People love her merch!”
It’s not just about volume either – for Take That’s UK and European ‘This Life On Tour’ concerts, big photorealistic prints were created using discharge inks.
Production manager Agustin Bishka explained that these were “incredibly hard” to reproduce perfectly, yet the highly experienced Fresh Air team pulled together to create more than 50,000 flawless shirts across nine designs, front, back and nape.
A year to remember
Without doubt, Fresh Air’s 50th anniversary year is shaping up to be just as memorable as the iconic music tees it has been producing since 1974. And while it seems remarkable to think that it has been printing for world-famous artists for half a century – since Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’ was topping the singles charts! – as Lee says: “Time flies when you’re having fun”.
