Born in the Garage, Built for the 702

Even when the Las Vegas summer air pushed past 120 degrees, the garage door stayed shut and the dryer hummed. Every evening around 5:30 p.m., Caitlyn and Breyland Hellebrand would clock out of their full-time jobs, drive home, and head straight into a sweltering makeshift print studio. Exhaustion was a given, but so was the pull of the squeegee gliding across stretched mesh. Long before they had a commercial storefront or an automated press, the two cousins and lifelong best friends were laying the foundation for 702 Print Shop one late-night shirt run at a time.

Born and raised in the valley, the duo taught themselves the delicate art of screen printing from a spare bedroom with zero industry background. What began as a passionate creative experiment quickly grew into an obsessive second shift. For two years, they balanced stable careers complete with retirement benefits against a rapidly growing customer base that demanded more than moonlight hours could accommodate.

The Leap Before Ready

There is rarely a comfortable moment to abandon corporate security for small-business ownership. When the opportunity surfaced to secure a brick-and-mortar storefront and accompanying warehouse, the Hellebrands faced an existential fork in the road. Neither felt entirely prepared for the financial overhead or the sudden absence of a guaranteed paycheck, but they knew the ceiling of their garage had finally been reached.

“When it finally came time to make the decision, we still didn’t feel ready,” Caitlyn recalls. “But we knew how much work we’d already put in, and we wanted to see how far we could take it if we gave it everything we had. So we said, ‘Screw it. Let’s go all in.’”

Leaving their safety nets behind, they turned the key on a dedicated facility. Walking into a cavernous warehouse was a dramatic shift from ducking between stacked cardboard boxes in the family home, but the underlying work ethic remained identical. The leap validated itself almost immediately as local businesses, athletic leagues, and neighborhood organizations rallied behind two homegrown makers who treated every order like an audition.

Taking the Friction Out of Custom Goods

Custom printing is notoriously intimidating for first-time buyers. Between vector files, garment blends, stitch counts, and color separations, clients often know what event they need apparel for but possess little understanding of how to procure it. The Hellebrands designed 702 Print Shop to demystify that entire process.

Rather than forcing customers through sterile online quote generators, the cousins lean into consultative hospitality. Their shop handles everything from embroidered headwear and vehicle wraps to vinyl window signage and family reunion tees, keeping production under one roof and providing clear-eyed pricing with honest turnarounds. Because they are family, they approach every counter interaction with kinship, ensuring that an entrepreneur ordering their first promotional shirts receives the same dignity and attention as a corporate client branding an entire fleet.

Betting on the Machine

Growth introduces hard choices, none more nerve-wracking than scaling production equipment. For years, the pair relied on a manual press. It was tactile, dependable, and mastered through muscle memory, but human arms have a finite output per hour. Upgrading to an automatic screen printing press represented a massive financial gamble and an intimidating technical overhaul.

Integrating the complex assembly of pneumatics, digital sensors, and compressed air brought their production line to a halt for a full week. In an active, high-volume print operation, seven days of downtime feels like an eternity. Yet the gamble completely transformed their ceiling. The automatic press accelerated their output by five hundred percent, turning full-day marathons into brief morning runs and enabling the shop to take on larger commercial accounts without sacrificing quality or burning out their hands.

Momentum Over Perfection

Looking back at their rapid trajectory from bedroom hobbyists to full-scale manufacturers, Caitlyn credits consistency above all else. In an era where aspiring founders often get paralyzed by branding strategies and premature optimization, her philosophy is disarmingly simple: keep moving forward one task at a time.

“Procrastination kills momentum,” she notes. “Some days, moving forward just means sending the quote you’ve been putting off or finishing the job in front of you. Do one thing today that moves your business forward, then do it again tomorrow. It’s crazy how far those little things can take you when you keep at it.”

That disciplined approach has reshaped how the co-founders measure true success. Early on, winning meant surviving the month and keeping the press turning. Today, success looks like autonomy—having the financial footing and temporal freedom to step away from the shop floor in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon to attend a family milestone.

A Hometown Future

The ambition for 702 Print Shop stretches far beyond sheer volume. Drawing inspiration from fellow local figures like creator Bobby “Bluff” Rivas, who built an audience from scratch and channels his platform back into Las Vegas, the Hellebrands want their operation to be an engine for civic pride. As they recruit new team members and streamline workflows to become the fastest, most reliable print provider in the valley, their compass remains pointed toward the community that raised them. Even as their automated machinery prints thousands of garments a day, they remain the same two cousins who decided that 120-degree garage heat was a fair price to pay for building something of their own.