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History

New Buffalo Shirt Factory began humbly as a small cut & sew business on Washington Street in Buffalo, NY by Sam & Belle Weiss, grandparents of present owner, Jon Weiss. AMCO Monogram and Embroidery was opened right before the start of World War II to employ the family early in 1940. As the business successfully served the local community, Jon’s parents Stanley & Sylvia who took over after the first generation’s retirement in 1974 and added custom jacket manufacturing, along with retail space. With new operations came a new name, ‘Buffalo Shirt Factory’ and they moved to 1176 Main Street, Buffalo. When the young Jon started working at the age of thirteen, he introduced the newest element of apparel decoration - silkscreen printing to his generation's latest trend. After spending a number of years honing his skills as a manual screen printer, Jon purchased the company's first M&R automatic press in 1988. Just as it was when Bob Dylan went electric, everything changed....  "Buffalo Shirt Factory" became "New Buffalo Shirt Factory" and began the growth opportunity for the family business from the third generation. Finally Jon was able to use his self-taught talents in perfecting multi-color printing process to deliver the larger order quantities that the mass-market demanded.

Enter Dave Gardner. With his industry-changing artistic vision and separation techniques, the duo was poised to change the apparel decoration business forever with their now famous “New Buffalo style". Throughout the 1990’s NBSF became tough competition in the textile screen-printing business, winning numerous national and international industry awards and accolades. As Jon and Dave continued to push the envelope in art design & print, with their stringent work ethics, NBSF began the relationship in national sports licensed apparel. After relocating to Clarence, New York in 1995, NBSF finally had the production facility to deliver their high-volume, high-quality apparel to the worldwide marketplace.  In the late 90’s Jon embraced the opportunity to work with some of the leading music merchandisers, and began the shift to deliver that same "New Buffalo style" for some of the greatest musicians of our time, including The Rolling Stones, Kiss, Garth Brooks, Barbara Streisand and Madonna.

In 2007, New Buffalo began looking at new ways to increase the production capacity and offer product to new markets. In May 2008, we unveiled the New Buffalo Lab in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is a purpose built R&D facility for working on new printing techniques and production processes. In January 2009, New Buffalo opened the most advanced screen print production facility on Earth in Honduras, Central America. As 2010 unfolds, we have married our lab and production facility in Honduras under one roof to speed the process from R&D to production, guaranteeing our customers the efficiency getting their goods to market.
As New Buffalo enters the 21st century, we have continued to build upon the founding work that Jon Weiss and Dave Gardner painstakingly developed and refined throughout the years. With an eye toward new advances in ink technology,  technique printing, and environmentally friendly manufacturing, the New Buffalo family continues to deliver the quality and production expertise that apparel brands and retailers demand. Throughout the next century, New Buffalo will strive continually to be at the forefront of screen-printing and apparel decoration. As we develop the next generation of screen printing innovators, you can rest assured that the “History of New Buffalo” still has not seen its most exciting chapters.