Trade Shows & Me

I first fell in love with letterpress in a typography class. My instructor was a printer and would make all of the students letterpress flashcards of the typefaces we needed to know by heart. A couple of years later, I had a day job as a graphic designer for a retail branding firm designing everything from logos and websites to packaging and signage. But at night, I was printing on a 1912 Golding Pearl platen press in my basement.

For six years, Dahlia Press was a side hustle. Named after the flowers growing in my front yard, I spent my evenings printing wedding invitations and custom stationery. To say that I knew exactly what Dahlia Press would eventually become wouldn’t be entirely correct. I grew my business very slowly and carefully, trying not to grow too fast to where I couldn’t sustain my full-time job (which I loved), and not so slow that it wasn’t gaining momentum. Eventually, with hard work and late nights, Dahlia Press grew to a size where I could no longer sustain both jobs. Knowing Dahlia Press needed my full attention, I left my day job to focus on it entirely. It was at this time that we expanded our offerings to include a line of letterpress greetings for the retail and wholesale market.

Shortly after we started our wholesale line and prepared to debut at the National Stationery Show, we outgrew the basement area. We were lucky enough to find an amazing brick and mortar space in Seattle’s Portage Bay neighborhood, where we have worked for the past 5 years. Our bright, sun-filled studio houses our three letterpress printing presses, a small retail area with a meeting counter for consultations with custom clients, work desks and a stock/shipping room in the back.

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