Colleges help man's packaging idea take off

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - An area businessman is finding a market for his twist on packaging compressed T-shirts and golf shirts. <br> <br> Jack Gyr, owner of Field Crafts Inc. in Benzonia, came up with the idea of packaging the shirts into the form of a small shrink-wrapped book. Although compressed shirts weren&#39;t new, he got a patent on the book shape for BookWear packaging. <br> <br> &#34;I feel really good, considering most in this industry had drops in sales,&#34; Gyr told the Traverse City Record-Eagle for a Sunday story. &#34;Last year we didn&#39;t have any of the business that is now our major strength. We&#39;re gaining momentum.&#34; <br> <br> Field Crafts has been designing, printing and embroidering custom shirts for 25 years, selling more than 200,000 a year. Gyr hoped the book-style packaging would open a mass market and smooth out a seasonal cycle his business suffered. <br> <br> Typically, he would have to let about five of his 12-member crew go each fall and winter, and then scramble to pick up that many employees again in spring to ramp up production for tourist season. <br> <br> After some minor test marketing and spending thousands of dollars for packaging equipment, Gyr took aim at what he thought would be the best market for BookWear: book stores and libraries. But that didn&#39;t take off. <br> <br> Meanwhile, Gyr noticed that while campus bookstores weren&#39;t buying, but some alumni groups, admissions offices and fund-raising offices were getting excited. And that was where he found his market. <br> <br> College officials said the product, customized for each school, was great for incoming freshmen, graduating seniors, reunions, fund-raisers and other promotions. <br> <br> Carthage College in Wisconsin bought 3,200 and Ohio State University bought 5,000 for its new students. The average order from colleges and universities so far, he said, has been about 1,000. <br> <br>

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