WORKIN' 4 A LIVING

Craig Giuntoli: A Wild Child on the Press

By Roger Yale
For Weekly Surge

Craig Giuntoli might need to keep a combat tank in his driveway to keep the boys away. He is the proud father of twin daughters, 16, and another daughter who is nine. A trip to the mall seems more like work than work, but Giuntoli says he can't tell us when he last made that trip. Weekly Surge wasn't sure how he scored that coup, but we thought it better not to spoil a good thing. He did say, however, that there's a lot of estrogen in his household.

Giuntoli, 38, has been living on the Grand Strand for six years, having made the move from the Charleston area. He attended Summerville High School. He and wife Cassie Giuntoli own and operate Wild Child Custom Screenprinting and Embroidery just outside of Surfside Beach, in the same plaza with Old Time Pottery.

"We do screen-printing, embroidery and promotional items," he says, adding that he has been in this particular line of work for nearly 25 years. When pressed about how he got into this business, his reply was classic: "Somebody told me that I could put whatever I wanted to on a t-shirt, and I said, 'cool.'"

One of Giuntoli's final projects in high school was to design and print a t-shirt. "We're talking the old school way, but I did it I got an A-plus on it." He unwittingly parlayed this into a job.

"Right out of high school, I was standing in a convenience store looking at the want ads. A lady said something like, 'it's kind of tough to find a job these days.' I said, 'yes, ma'am.' She asked me if I ever did any screen-printing, and I mentioned my high school project. She said, 'follow me,' and that was it. I've been doing it ever since."

Giuntoli's business is by nature a deadline-based enterprise. When one calls Wild Child looking for Craig, he is usually "on press," and cannot easily leave that post.

"The day goes fast," he says, "but we usually have fun. If you love what you do and do it well, you'll never have to work a day of your life. There has never been a day that I've gotten out of bed and said, 'I don't want to go to work today.'"

Giuntoli and his crew may be called on to work well into the night. "Normal business hours are from nine to five, but Cassie and I both are here from seven in the morning to six or seven at night. Bike Week projects can keep us here until two in the morning."

What is screen-printing?

"Basically, it's a design imprinted on a t-shirt with Plastisol inks. It then goes through what people call a "pizza oven" (an oven with a metal conveyor). It gets cured at 310 degrees and it's on, man - wearable from that point. As long as you hit that cure rate, you're good."

Wild Child does a lot of corporate work - thousands of shirts at a time - down to much smaller orders, like "the guy who just started a local business who can't afford to go to some of these larger places." Giuntoli cites the fact that, as a smaller company, he can work with smaller minimum orders, and this goes to the growth of the company.

The Giuntolis started their company in Surfside Beach four years ago, in a space smaller than Wild Child's current showroom. "Other people made fun of us with flashy radio ads, saying 'don't get your shirts from a dusty old warehouse.'" He broke into a Cheshire grin when adding, "I don't have a dusty old warehouse anymore."

True enough, the digs for Wild Child Promotions look and smell new - with a showroom in front, displaying promotional items, bags, signs - and t-shirts from the Wild Child Apparel line. Our favorites were the Furkinghoff t-shirts. There is plenty of room to work in back, with presses and ovens and a corrugated metal counter in back resembling bar, which is Giuntoli office space. Cassie Giuntoli's office is on the opposite side off the showroom. Craig Giuntoli says the place smells like money and surfboard wax.

On the name Wild Child: "My father's a preacher," he said, leaving it at that.

Giuntoli has been surfing for as long as he can remember, and his family surfs with him. His employees surf with him. There were a half-dozen surfboards leaning against one wall of his shop, and Giuntoli says someone told him that his shop looked like a surf shop threw up in it.

"If it's high tide and the waves are rocking and rolling - which they never are here - I'll close down the shop and go surfing."

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