Our Story
Beloved parents immigrating out of Soviet Union aggression and dictatorship to the land of opportunities raised Balakishi brothers in the spirit of entrepreneurship. Going through all the hardships of the regime they finally got happy in the US - land of freedom. Providing their children independence, self confidence and justice along with happiness were their main goals and achievements. Hardly working throughout decades they did their best to pass best of their knowledge, education and fair opportunities to their kids.
Being raised in the US was undoubtedly the main reason for the Balakishi brothers’ success.
As most of the common success stories this one also started in a small old garage. The brothers started their endeavor with a single head old manual screen printing press on shirts for their friends and family. Slowly it spread out to their neighbors and other members of the community such as churches, schools and kindergartens. The strong spirit of entrepreneurship and passion for hard work got brothers out of the garage to over 2000 sq.ft space with a multiple head screen printing and embroidery machine under their operation. Slowly the team started growing from just the brothers to 5, 10, 20 and then eventually up 100 people in their staff.Â
The stable growth and prosperity did not draw away the brothers’ focus and concentration on their main goal – serving the community and providing them with the highest possible quality products and services. Keeping this idea in mind the brothers like a magnet started attracting local small shops and having them join the movement. Movement of success and professionalism. Rather than competing and beating each other by lowering prices the brothers created a gold standard of quality which got a lot of small shops to raise their level of service quality higher and higher.Â
The brothers understood that the way of doing business is changing – the whole World is changing and they had to keep up with the new World – The Era of digital assets. The Goddamned Covid showed all of us that no matter what – the future is Online. This was a trigger for the brothers to create a smart digital platform – Viva Shirts where their customers are able to create any design shirts on the tip of their fingers. Slowly the platform grew from being only t-shirts to all other apparel and accessories like hoodies, sweaters, dad hats, tote bags. and etc. Viva Shirt now is a tech company creating new assets and values nationwide with a highly talented team of programmers, data analysts and digital marketers.Â
The steady growth of the online platform keeps Viva Shirts’ production team and other local print shops busy printing more than 500 orders a day. T-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, polos and headwear for sport teams, small businesses, local stores and for any events like birthdays, family reunion, you name it!Â
