About Us

Righteous Origin Story

Back in 1989, Aly and Rick Salz got a business license so they could buy T-shirts at wholesale prices. Back then, they had lots of friends who needed shirts for their youth groups, summer camps, and mission trips. They started as middlemen, taking orders, procuring garments, and taking them to local printers.

It has been 32 years since they got that first business license. That was also the week they got engaged.

Rick and Aly began building a custom screen-printed t-shirt business. Those were the days before widespread computer use or the internet. Invoices were all written by hand in little carbon copy books. Stencils were made with great rolls of Rubylith hand-cut with Exacto blades. Film had to be shot and reshot by a local blueprint shop to get reverse or knock-out images. One job required the precise placement of thousands of dots by hand on film separations.

Moving to Oregon in the early 90’s, they set up shop in the Portland area. Recognizing that business was moving to the web, they added e-commerce and fulfillment services to their offerings. In addition, both founders had early-career restaurant experience. That exposure to hard work and reward reinforced the work ethic and service attitude that’s hardwired into the company even today.

Over time, Righteous evolved from using homemade equipment, to factory-made manual presses, to screen-print machines, to embroidery machines and numerous other advanced technologies. They moved from their garage to larger and larger manufacturing spaces and finally to their own building.

Today, Righteous provides full-service, in-house management and support, including product selection, design, imprinting, e-commerce stores and pop-up shops, warehousing, fulfillment, and shipping. The company’s end-to-end branded merchandise programs support growing businesses, franchise communities, and multi-location outlets in diverse industries nationwide.

Our goals are to help our team and our clients realize they’re capable of more than they thought possible, to inspire our team to truly put others first, and to make a positive difference in the businesses we support. When we help others succeed we, too, realize success.

The past 30 years have been one crazy, lovely, exciting adventure. Here’s to many more years of working alongside our amazing team members and serving our awesome customers.