Images_June_2020_Digital_Edition

www.images-magazine.com JUNE 2020 images 31 IS DECORATOR PROFILE Peter Joyce talks to Mark Ludmon about TOTShirts’ new 75,000 sq ft home and the company’s roadmap for further growth, including an expansion into fulfilment for online retailers S ome of the biggest legends of rock ‘n’ roll greet you when you arrive at the new home of TOTShirts: Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Iron Maiden, Eric Clapton, even Lemmy from Motörhead. The whole wall of the two-storey reception in Edmonton in north London is plastered with gig posters stretching back decades. They are testament to TOTShirts’ founder Peter Joyce’s love of music, especially rock, which has been core to the business he started 36 years ago. “They give a bit of impact when you walk, in,” he explains. “We have printed for most of them, or they’re very important in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. There are also a few personal favourites and bands that feature boys and girls who have worked with us over the years.” From printing official merchandise for the likes of Pet Shop Boys in its early days, TOTShirts has become one of the UK’s leading T-shirt printing and garment decorators. At the start of A tour de force When we get back to some kind of normality, we will be properly fit for purpose 2020, it was ready to supply T-shirts to a long list of tours as well as major sporting events. And then along came what Peter calls “the dreaded lurgy”. TOTShirts has customers in other sectors including promotions, corporate clothing and fashion retail, but the cancellation of live events since March was inevitably a blow. “May or June was looking to be the best the garment industry in the UK has ever experienced. Lots of bands touring, everything was shaping up, everything was going exactly as we expected it to until the start of March. We were Peter Joyce in the new reception lobby (above) ready to deal with whatever the trade threw at us during touring season. Now there are no bands touring, no football tournaments, no theatre merchandise. We will get to the other side but nobody knows when that is going to be.” NME, Underworld and the Olympics It will not be the first time TOTShirts has faced setbacks and emerged stronger. Peter came to garment decorating through his love of music and art. With an engineering apprenticeship, he worked as a press tool designer in the late 1970s, but his passion was punk. “I was a bit of a rebel. I was going to work with spiky hair.” A summer job at his dad’s company had introduced him