Designer opens shop in historic Chinatown

March 6, 2006 - Zak King knows he's bucking a trend - and taking a chance.

But the 23-year-old entrepreneur wants to do his part to revive Marysville's historic Chinatown and downtown.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the Bok Kai Festival this weekend, King celebrated the grand opening of King Clothing, his new screenprinting business in a 90-year-old building at 107 C St.

“I'm only 23, so hopefully I've got a lot of years left to put in,” he said Sunday.

It's not often a new business opens in Chinatown, a blighted and largely abandoned section of downtown with only a smattering of local commerce.

It's even less common for anyone to move into the neighborhood as a full-time resident.

King is doing both, and his move harkens back to a day when many people in Chinatown lived in the buildings where they ran their family businesses.

But it's not the first time the Marysville native has taken a risk.

When his high school friends were going to college, King got a well-paying job as a computer specialist for the local school district. At 19, he bought his first home.

“All my buddies were going to college, and here I am, 19, I've got a good job and own a house and I'm like, ‘What's next, marriage?'” he said with a laugh.

Not quite. Instead, King sold his home, quit his job and moved to Anchorage, Alaska, for a change of pace. He quickly landed a job at Stellar Designs, a large sportswear company, and later became a full-time printer while getting his associates degree.

The experience built his confidence. He later moved back home and started his own printing business out of his mom's garage, making T-shirts and sweaters for local companies such as Future Fitness Inc., Union Lumber Co. and Yuba-Sutter Disposal Inc.

“That's the beauty of a small town: word of mouth,” he said of his growing business. “That's my bread and butter.”

In December, King purchased the two-story, 2,000-square-foot brick building for $160,000 from an artist that had lived there for years. Although the building is still structurally sound, the inside was an absolute wreck, he said, and it took two months to restore the ground floor.

The back room is his workshop. He and a friend from Hallwood work on designs, and King burns them onto stencil-like screens. Each painted color on a shirt's design takes one screen. Machines dry the paint onto the shirts at 320 degrees.

It can take hours at a time to make one shirt, but King is good at multitasking. He always turns orders around in 10 business days or less, he said. A recent order was for 70 shirts.

In the store, however, hangs his true passion: his own clothing line. On shirts and sweatshirts are colorful designs not unlike what you'd see at your local skate and surf shop.

His most popular design: “Home grown in  (there's a picture of a tractor) the Ville (as in Marysville).”

Below that slogan: “Representing Nor-Cal's finest since birth.”

“The clothing line, that's the dream,” he said. Most shirts go for about $15, sweatshirts for $30.

Appeal-Democrat reporter Daniel Thigpen can be reached at 749-4713. You may e-mail him at dthigpen@appeal-democrat.com.