- In fact, people with disabilities
make up the highest minority group on the planet.
People don't know that.
I think it's over a billion people have a disability
in the world.
Yet, they're not always part of the conversation
when it comes to groups that need to be advocated for.
So, mainly because, you know, finding a voice
is challenging for many.
And so we like to try and be part of that voice,
but we still say we aren't people with autism.
Nothing about us without us.
We really wanna make sure that their voice is heard,
and they have a chance to express what their desires
and wants are.
But it's a group that really deserves an opportunity
and can prove themselves.
And I think we've shown that here.
(machine roaring)
- [Narrator] How do you challenge the status quo
in a world where everything seems to have been done?
In our "Behind the Blank" series,
we sit down with entrepreneurs, creatives,
and pioneers to hear their story
on how they're being different.
How a t-shirt is just a platform for so much more.
This is "Behind the Blank."
(upbeat music)
- My name is Patrick Bardsley, co-founder
and CEO of Spectrum Designs Foundation.
- And my name is Tim Howe.
I'm the chief operating officer
at Spectrum Designs Foundation.
- So Spectrum Designs really is a business
with a social mission.
It's an enterprise,
a custom apparel printing business that has a mission
of creating jobs for people on the autism spectrum.
And that's a group that faces
80% unemployment rate nationally.
So when you start to think
about how we can create those jobs,
the apparel industry was one that made a ton of sense.
We also started five years ago, Spectrum Bakes
and Spectrum Suds.
Same mission of creating jobs,
but in a granola kind of edible, delectable arrangements,
and a laundry business that employs people
on the autism spectrum as well.
- A lot of businesses cater specifically
to those college educated people on the spectrum.
And that was just absolutely not what we wanted to do.
We wanted to open our doors to people who
all they can maybe do, or like the peak
of their performance might just be folding a t-shirt,
and to us that's okay.
Like if there's a job in the building that can be done
by somebody with a diagnosis,
then it is done by somebody with a diagnosis.
And we just say that everybody who maybe
couldn't find a home somewhere else,
or was just stacking shelves,
or their skills were just being completely underutilized,
they can come to Spectrum and flourish.
And all of the guys have just become great friends.
And you see a mixture of neurodiverse individuals, right?
In the beginning, we were like, okay,
so who is on the spectrum?
And who isn't on the spectrum?
And how does that work?
And over the course of the years,
it's a credit to Patrick's leadership,
and it's just disappeared.
And now it doesn't matter anymore.
It's just a fantastic way
of integrating people with and without diagnoses.
- Yeah. And some of the employees
have got apartments together.
Some have moved, like, they've moved into houses together
with their other families.
And that's not something we ever planned for.
A big thing that the parents and the family members worry
about is the employment and the social.
And so to be able to try and help
with both of those things, is yeah, it's magic.
(inspiring music)
- So we have a lot of customers that,
for an organization of our size,
we have no right to have.
When we reach out to a company,
we're not coming cap in hand and saying,
we have this social mission.
Look, there's these people with autism
and they're struggling to find jobs.
And we don't do that at all.
We come in business focused.
We always can get there on price.
We always can get there on time.
And we always get there on quality.
Those are the three main things
that businesses really look for,
but it's been challenging, or it was challenging
in the beginning to convince people of that.
They hear about the social mission and go, okay,
I'm gonna pay more to work with you guys.
Or I'm gonna sacrifice quality to be able to do this.
As we've grown, we've been able to prove that more and more,
that those things don't necessarily go hand in hand.
A big turning point for us was when
the company Betches, LLC started working with us,
and they started Shop Betches,
and we've been with them hand in hand
since they first started selling products online.
And they really challenged us to produce
at a volume that we'd never worked at before.
To work through fulfillment, and polybagging,
and barcoding, and all of that stuff that
you have to think about for retail.
Like every product has to be exactly the same
and exactly perfect.
- A hundred percent of the proceeds go back directly
into the mission.
So there's no shareholders,
there's no kind of dividends, right?
All the money goes back into the pockets
and to the mission of the employees and what we're doing
to allow for expansion and growth.
The nice thing about being a nonprofit
is you can get donations,
you can get equipment grants,
which has helped us expand more quickly.
But, you know, if you're a private business
you can get angel investors.
So, you know, we kind of, whatever we give up there,
we gain there.
So that's really how it's worked.
We get really excited when we get a big new customer,
a big new account, because it's not just about the dollars.
It's about the hours of productive work
that we can provide now.
And as Tim said, every new customer,
every new account, just allows us to open our doors
that much wider to this underserved,
and undervalued, and underestimated group.
(inspiring music)
- The biggest thing has always been struggling
with people's preconceived notions
of what having a diagnosis means.
And saying, "Okay, well, are my shirt's gonna be smeared?"
Right?
"Is the artwork gonna be the right color?"
"Are you guys gonna be able to get all of this right?"
And in the beginning, that was a massive challenge.
And it was almost, it felt insurmountable in the early days
because it would be every other conversation that we had.
As we've got bigger,
and we've had some people really absolutely
adopt the mission and become these like evangelists
for what we're doing.
They really get what we're trying to achieve,
and they get why it works the way that it does,
and start telling everybody that,
what an amazing job we do.
That's been the catalyst.
The industry itself has been so welcoming to us.
We thought that maybe it would be hostile,
and that we would come into it.
And we're trying to do something completely different
from everybody else, but also,
in a way doing the same thing as everybody else.
- Yeah.
- But they've been so welcoming.
Like the local associations have been so welcoming.
BELLA+CANVAS have been so supportive.
The FAM training was an incredible thing.
Actually, all of our staff did the FAM training
during the pandemic, right?
We had to close down and everyone was stuck at home,
but we were like, we need to keep everybody building skill.
Well, we need to keep everybody paid.
That was our first priority.
But we have to keep everybody training
and learning, doing skills.
And there's only so many lift with your legs
and not with your back trainings you can do.
So having something dynamic like the FAM training to,
and then Fam 2.0 was incredible and so useful.
(upbeat music)
- Well, what we try and offer our customers
is a good, better, best.
And BELLA+CANVAS is always in the best category.
I'm not just saying this.
When we have an opportunity with a new client who
wants something higher end, and they say they don't
just want a standard cut, or a standard thing,
I'm just like BELLA+CANVAS.
And I'm not, again, I'm not just plugging it.
You know, the color schemes,
the colorways, the cuts, the style, the softness
of the material.
These are things that when you're a decorator,
people often tie your ability to deliver product
to the actual, the product, not necessarily your decoration.
So people will say, "Your shirts are so soft."
I'm like, "Thank you."
But really they're not my shirts,
they're BELLA+CANVAS' shirts, right?
And so it's really important that people understand that.
And so BELLA's also a name that people recognize,
and often will get people being like,
"Well, can you get that?"
You know, and we're like, "Yeah, yeah, we can."
A lot, and that's kind of helpful.
- And knowing that BELLA are also fighting
to make the industry more environmentally friendly
and more sustainable.
That's very important to us and to our customers.
And also the innovation that BELLA+CANVAS
is constantly doing.
Like we get to offer products that nobody thought of
in colors that nobody thought of two months ago.
And we get to stay ahead of the curve.
It makes me sound really cool when people call me up
and I say, "Oh, it's mauve."
Or mauve, do they say in America?
Yeah, that's the color right now.
And then I sound super fashionable and cool.
- These are the spring colors.
- Yeah. I mean, a lot of kudos has to go to our rep, Tess,
who keeps us informed all the time.
- Yeah. Slip Tess in there.
- But I just basically, just bottle her knowledge.
- Tess Bender.
(both laughing)
- I just bottle off her knowledge and pass it off
of my own.
But it works.
- It's like closest thing to retail
in a wholesale environment, if that makes sense.
Whenever I give out something to like a new customer,
whatever, we always send them samples of BELLA.
I know they're gonna make that judgment,
especially for us, because, you know,
people are expecting sometimes something.
Oh, it's a nonprofit.
Oh, it's disability employment.
I'm like blow their minds with a 3001, you know?
(inspiring music)
So the long term goal is what?
World domination?
- World domination.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Hundred percent.
We can't say empire.
We've learned that, right?
- No, as British people, you can't say that anymore.
No, our mission is to create employment for people.
Our vision is a world that sees only ability, right?
And that's serious.
And so for us, every shirt we put out,
every product we put out, every new job we create,
helps change those old patterns of thoughts
where people can see ability and not disability.
I certainly don't wanna look back and think,
okay, we've created one or two print shops.
I would love to have created a model that was replicable,
and in a model that inspired other businesses
and people to do the same thing.
I think that's the goal is to create a sustainable business
that is true to its mission, true to what it's doing,
puts out a good product, treats people correctly.
And let's see where we go.
- I think there's another piece that, of the mission,
that is the thing that inspired me the most,
which is changing preconceptions
of people with disabilities.
And what that means, and who they are,
and what they can achieve.
If you just build something around being supportive, right?
A lot of the time people will hear
that somebody has a diagnosis
and they maybe won't get an interview, right?
Or people on the autism spectrum struggle
with sometimes the social piece
of being able to sit across from somebody,
and make eye contact, and interview in the right way.
But that's not what you are gonna be doing in the workplace.
And you should have hands on interviews
where you can just say,
hey, can you do the thing that we need done
in this environment?
And as this like nonprofit print shop, the hybrid,
we get to blaze a trail and say,
hey, look, this is how we do it.
And this is how incredible these people are.
And this is how capable they are.
And we get to kind of model that for other businesses.
And the more we do that, the more opportunities there'll be
for people with disabilities.
And it's less putting them on the sidelines,
and more bringing them out into the fore and saying,
these guys are extraordinary.
Just give 'em a chance to prove it.
They say everybody's struggling
with something that you don't know anything about.
And for us, that's just so much more clear
and so much more apparent.
We constantly are telling people that if,
so the person that you're speaking to
hasn't seen your value,
you're just speaking to the wrong person.
It doesn't mean your value isn't there.
And we've made, I guess now careers out of
showing people that they can be valuable,
and they can be productive in the right atmosphere.
- Yeah.
- And it's just, you just need to keep telling people,
and keep showing people your value
because somebody out there is gonna get it.
'Cause we did, and we found it.
And a lot of people have found their calling here
at Spectrum, as well as just us.
They just needed to be given a chance.
(inspiring music)