About Righteous

Righteous specializes in providing multi-unit concepts with uniform programs, in-store merchandising, custom online stores and promotional items. With over 25 years of experience tailoring programs and executing fulfillment we help organizations increase brand exposure, identify with fans and reduce costs.

What Makes Us Different

Trust

As devoted life-long learners, we are always looking to find new ways of providing value to our customers. At the end of the day we are asking our clients to trust us with their brand – and we take that very seriously.

Experience

For over 25 years, Righteous has worked with brands customizing their apparel and promotional items. We apply our deep experience to create unique programs, making lasting impressions for our client’s brand.

Partners

Our goal is to be so customer-centric that we are recognized as a vital partner to our customers’ success. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for the talented staff that brings a partnership mentality to every client interaction.

We Believe:

  1. We believe there’s more to your story than just your logo.
  2. We believe uniforms should allow individual employee expression.
  3. We believe in creative solutions to your problems, even the ones you didn’t know we could do something about.
  4. We believe in the storytelling magic of our 53 custom apparel decorations.
  5. We believe in on-time orders or we pay your shipping.
  6. We believe in easy for you, even if it’s hard for us.
  7. We believe putting on your uniform should excite your team.
  8. We believe that makes you more money.
  9. We believe your money sitting on a shelf serves no one.
  10. We believe in designing, making, storing, and shipping it, right before you need it.
  11. We believe in challenging deeply held and erroneous assumptions.
  12. We believe that your employees already know the answer.
  13. We believe that not asking “why?” leads to boring, sub-optimal results..
  14. We believe in owning our mistakes, no matter what it costs us.
  15. We believe in the righteous way, not the cheap way.

About Us

You could call it accidental entrepreneurship, at least at the beginning. What began in 1989 as a simple means to purchase blank T-shirts at wholesale pricing, quickly turned into a full-time career for two former advertising professionals. Rick and Aly Salz met in college and blended their expertise to create a Pasadena, CA-based business that provided custom screen-printed T-shirts for colleagues and friends. Within a few months, the business had outgrown their hobby hours and became their full-time job.

They moved to Oregon in the early 90’s and set up shop in the Portland area. Recognizing that business was moving to the Information Superhighway (yes, the web was called that at one time), they added e-commerce sites and fulfillment, with a special emphasis on serving the restaurant industry. Both founders have early career restaurant experience and that exposure to hard work and reward helped provide the work ethic and service attitude that is hard-wired into the company. In 2006 a second location was opened in Kansas City to better serve our numerous franchise customers located all over the US.

Righteous is a Veteran and Woman Owned Enterprise.

Our Story

Back in 1989, Rick couldn’t stand it anymore. Paying for other’s mistakes. Product didn’t arrive on time, was the wrong color, had the wrong imprint. His job was to sell advertising and promotions to local companies on behalf of a large national corporation. But he had to keep apologizing, rather than help them solve their problems.

The week we got engaged, he said “what if we got a business license and did this ourselves?”

We had no money.

No investors.

A half-done undergrad education.

He was a veteran.

I was in college recruiting..

We had no business being in business.

We just thought we could make successful promotions and happy employee uniforms if we managed all the aspects.

A year and a half later, we still weren’t making it. So, we quit our jobs, screen printed shirts in our garage – an actual sweat shop – with our dining room table as the makeshift printing press. Eventually we made customers smile over and over.  We did everything ourselves until we could hire people better than us. It wasn’t as easy as we thought. Hey, we were first-time entrepreneurs, and we got better and figured it out. Most of the time.

Once, we printed a ton of T-shirts incorrectly and sent them to our customer, a fast-growing national chain. Actually, it was about five tons of T-shirts. The client got them and called. They weren’t really bad; they had the right colors, right logo, right print; but, not up to our standards and the client was right to call us on it.

We reprinted the order, recycled the bad ones, and apologized to the client. The year was 2008 and that one mistake cost us over $50,000. And nearly closed our doors.  We like to eat. What we don’t like to eat is bad product. But, it’s what we’ll do, with no argument whatsoever, if what we provide is wrong, for any reason.

Our little dining room table turned printing press is still at work in our main shop today. It reminds us to find creative solutions to the problems that hold you back, even the ones you don’t know you can do something about.  We promise to make it easy for you to be great at your business, even if it’s hard for us.  That’s the Righteous way, not the cheap way.

P.S. A few weeks later we heard that our client, the purchasing VP had asked his team what we had done about the problem. When told, he said that he wasn’t surprised. He knew we would stand behind our work and make it right. He gave us the biggest compliment anyone can by telling us in person that he trusted us.