It’s probably safe to say Zack Sblendorio thinks about ink more than a lot of people.
Sblendorio is chief operating officer of SeaSide Silk Screening, a Wilmington-headquartered family-owned business. His father, Mark Sblendorio, is the company’s CEO.
“We’re the largest apparel decorator and distributor east of I-95, and we decorate and distribute about 20,000 to 30,000 items per week at peak,” Zack Sblendorio said. “We do screen printing, embroidery, DTF (direct-to-film) application and sewing.”
SeaSide Silk Screening handles a variety of jobs for local customers and beyond, from T-shirts for local events to safety jackets that need a company’s logo to embroidery for a resort’s uniforms.
These days, during a time when additional tariffs are on the table, Zack Sblendorio is keeping an eye on the ink SeaSide Silk Screening needs. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, it became difficult for companies like SeaSide Silk Screening to find white ink.
For that particular worldwide event, the industry adapted. In 2025, it’s adapting to tariffs and upcoming tariffs.
“Now we’re seeing shortages because people are buying ahead of the curve of what they’re afraid of,” Zack Sblendorio said of ink in February.
President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most imports from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on Chinese imports on Feb. 1, but the president announced a 30-day pause on the Mexico and Canada tariffs on Feb. 2. That pause was set to end as of March 4 (as of press time).
As a result, those in the same industry as SeaSide Silk Screening are forecasting a 10% increase in the cost of ink around April or May and an increase in the cost of fuel for transporting 55-gallon drums of ink.
For the most part, though, Zack Sblendorio said he expects to see some benefits from the increases.
“I think it’s going to be a time where regional manufacturing has a greater demand, and I’m excited about that.” - Zack Sblendorio, chief operating officer of SeaSide Silk Screening
While no one knows exactly what the outcome of new and expanded tariffs and tariff negotiations might be, “we really believe there’s going to be a large amount of domestic demand for onshore short runs – short runs are 24 to 1,000 pieces of any medium of a decoration,” Zack Sblendorio said. “Pre-tariffs, in the last couple years, that type of core work that we work on really went overseas a lot, to India and China, and it came back into the country without tariffs.”
He said those short-run customers seem to be coming back to U.S. companies.
“We’re already seeing the phone ring off the hook, email demand, customers requesting, ‘Hey, my connections aren’t working like they used to. Can you help me?’... ‘Yes, we can, absolutely.’ And then we bring that client on and help them get their product out the door and in the hands of their customers through web feeds, Shopify, order fulfillment, things of that nature,” Zack Sblendorio said.
SeaSide Silk Screening had about 30 employees at its facility at 114 Portwatch Way near the Port of Wilmington as of Feb. 19. That number was expected to increase to 45 later in the spring, Zack Sblendorio said.
“It’s a very seasonal business. The wintertime is slow, but in the nicer weather, the warmer it gets, the busier we get, so we’re right at the end of our kind of slower season,” he said Feb. 19. “We’ve got five autos (automatic screen-printing presses), and right now, we’re running three of those five, only eight of the 24 hours per day. So as demand increases, we very much increase that load on that equipment.”
When Mark Sblendorio started SeaSide Silk Screening, he ran the company out of his garage. Today, the firm has a 20,000-square-foot facility.
“And we’ve got dreams to continue to grow,” Zack Sblendorio said. “We’ve been passionate about it since Day 1.”
He said it helps that his company’s customers are also passionate about their businesses and organizations.
“You do those shirts for this little league, or you do those shirts for the Wilmington Fire Department, or you do those shirts from the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department,” Zack Sblendorio said. “You have these connections in the community, and it’s really something special.”
See other stories on Manufacturing:
Putting the Pieces in Place
What’s Next for Tariffs
Apparel Business Presses for Growth
