Lakeshirts, Inc.

Lakeshirts is a wholesale supplier of custom-designed apparel located in the heart of lakes country. We are proud to call Detroit Lakes, MN our home where we grew up spending summers on the water and winters at Detroit Mountain. Our customers are our friends; we collaborate with them to develop great products creating relationships that last a life time. You’ll find our garments at resorts and gift shops across the country. If your favorite t-shirt was purchased while you were on vacation, chances are, it’s one of ours. The Lakeshirts story starts more than 30 years ago when two childhood friends, Mark Fritz and Mike Hutchinson, started printing shirts in Mark’s parents’ basement to sell on Detroit Lakes mile long beach. At that time, the company consisted of two teenagers, a couple dogs, a homemade plywood printer, two secondhand kitchen ovens, and cookie sheets for curing the ink. The product line included a handful of screen-print designs that were sold at the small beach store and custom artwork for local resorts, restaurants and businesses. We didn’t have many rules back then other than no beer until after 8 pm, no Frank Zappa while customers were around and lastly, no leaving until the orders were out the door. We have a few more rules now, but we’re still focused on wowing our customers. Today, Lakeshirts has grown to over 350 team members, 6 dogs, one super hero and more than 10,000 satisfied customers. What started in that basement next to the lake has grown to a 275,000 square foot production and warehouse facility. The single plywood printer has been replaced by 31 automatic screen print presses, 26 multi-head embroidery machines, six 60-foot laser appliqué bridges, three sublimation presses and a digital direct-to-garment press. After 32 years of business, our goal is to be an exceptional company. Exceptional companies are very rare. There are thousands of good companies, but very few exceptional ones. We strive to exceed not only our customers’ expectations, but bring value to all our stakeholders - customers, employees, vendors, owners, and the community we call home.