Back in 1991 I was working as an auditor for Walt Disney Co. when a good friend of mine, Bert Morris (no relation), told me he had purchased some equipment and was going to do some screenprinting on t-shirts. He was underfunded and couldn't get everything he needed to make the business work so I agreed to invest some cash into his venture so he could buy a new 6 color press and Renegade Graphics was formed.
Being that my degree was in International Business and I wasn't a CPA, my career at Disney hit a "glass ceiling" of sorts. I decided to move back to Jacksonville and pursue my accounting degree at the University of North Florida while doing the t-shirt business on the side with eventual plans to return to Disney. The business sputtered along but slowly grew and it became a priority for me over my continuing education.
In 1992 we merged with OZart which was a graphic design company owned by Mike Osborne (Ozzie) and moved from Bert's garage into a 800 square foot commercial property in the San Marco neighborhood of Jacksonville. A quirky bit of trivia is that in a previous life our warehouse was a rehersal studio for .38 Special and Molly Hatchet who were two of the nation's most famous southern rock bands.
I took on the role of office manager/sales, Bert did all of the production, and Mike did all of the logo design. Unfortunately, we did not generate enough revenue to support three owners and in 1993 Bert left the business and went on to form a nationally successful radio show which currently finds him on the air in Las Vegas. http://www.dickdaleshow.com/
The business relocated to Atlantic Beach where Ozzie and I continued to make a go of it but in 1994 he also left the business in search of greener pastures. By this time I had learned how to screenprint from Bert and how to do color separations and some artwork from Mike so the skills to run the business by myself were in place.
