How Ambient Inks ended up running merch for the Eaux Claires festival
July 02, 2018
The lineup at Eaux Claires may still be under wraps — but it's no secret who will be in charge of the merch. Eau Claire's own Ambient Inks print shop, known for their work with musicians like Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso and Iron & Wine, does all of the music festival's T-shirts, hats, can koozies and other gear.
This year, lots of the merch includes a line calling the fest the "Fourth Annual Family Reunion," and Ambient Inks' co-founder Aaron Brice said that the music festival, which is running on July 6 and 7 at Foster Farms, really does feel like a reunion for him.
"It feels like a giant family reunion for our clients, and a bunch of friends and family come back to Eau Claire for it," he said. And while he's obviously close to all the goings on, Brice said that even he doesn't know who is actually playing (I tried).
"All that we know is that there's a whole bunch of artists coming. We'll see what happens. There are probably going to be a lot of spontaneous and in-the-moment type performances," Brice said.
Brice, who is from Eau Claire, and his college buddy Tim Brunner first came up with the plan for their business in their shared dorm room at the University of Wisconsin - Stout in Menomonie. They both loved designing and screen printing custom t-shirts for friends in high school, and when they moved into a house their junior year, they bought some used equipment and created a "bare bones" print shop in the garage. In the winter, they had to move it all into the basement to keep from freezing.
They scored their first band client — Minneapolis' We Are The Willows — and printed for some student organizations and Menomonie small businesses and a growing number of smaller bands in the Eau Claire music scene.
Then they got an email from Kyle Frenette, Bon Iver's manager.
"It was like, 'Hey, if hypothetically we had a run of 2,500 shirts, or something like that, by this date, what would it cost?' It didn't mention the band, but it was pretty obvious who it was for," said Brice. He grew up about a half-mile away from Justin Vernon, so the request wasn't totally out of the blue — but it was a really big deal, he said. It came right before the band released their second album.
"We kinda knew the opportunity was there, but at the time it wasn't something that we were really even thinking about, because we were so small and they were so big. It just seemed like, they are way out of our league," he said.
"At the time, it was like, well, we kind of have to do this! I don't know how we're going to do it, but we'll somehow figure it out. I think we had like 11 days, 12 days or something to print the most shirts we've ever printed, in our basement, during finals week of our junior year. It was pretty wild," he said.
That went well, and Frenette asked them to print for Bon Iver's entire summer of touring. That's when they decided to set up shop for real in Eau Claire, with equipment they scored in Grand Forks, SD, and lots of help from family and friends.
"My mom came and worked after her other job. It felt like a 24-7 operation for like two weeks," Brice said. His mom still helps out as the company's "freelance seamstress," he said — but now he and partner Brunner have 17 employees in their shop's Water Street location downtown.
They manage the entire merch operation for about 60 bands — including Poliça, S. Carey and Charlie Parr — printing gear, running web stores and shipping out products, and just do printing for about 400 more clients, Brice said. They do some custom designs in house, and a sister company, KNorth, does branding.
Ambient Inks has kept Brice in the hometown he thought he'd leave behind.
"I grew up here and all through my adolescence and high school I figured I'd be long gone by now. I didn't make it super far, obviously," he said. "The business kept me here, which ended up being awesome, because I feel very at home here. Maybe more now so than when I grew up, just because there's a lot more stuff going on, downtown especially."
