The staff of Susquehanna Valley Sportswear in Hughesville welcome customers to visit their new location at the former historic Haag Store on 33 N. Main Street in Hughesville. Left to right: Ed Rogers, Seth Trump, Kyle Daugherty, Kari Hack and Joe Foresman.

HUGHESVILLE – An expansion and a growing customer base has allowed a local business that once started as a home based operation, to move into the old Haag general store located at 33 North Main Street in downtown Hughesville. Owners Kyle Daugherty and Ed Rogers said that they grew out of their former location at 67 North Main Street.

They knew the building was for sale and decided that the historic building that also housed a hardware store would suit their needs perfectly. There is plenty of square footage, apartments on the second floor and space to lease on the other side of the building.

The retail portion of their business is based in the front of the building and the graphics and pre-press work is done in the back. The additional space is a plus for the state of the art technology used to provide screen printing, embroidery, and engraving.

“People think we just do sportswear, but we do so much more,” said Daugherty who started the business in 2004 from his house. A native and graduate of Hughesville High School he began his career in pre-press work and selling sportswear at another large company. He took his knowledge and expertise and soon expanded from his basement and garage to behind Joe Barlett’s stained glass shop on the corner of Main and Race Streets. He said with his contacts from previous jobs, he was able to grow the business as a larger in-house company.

After a year or so, Daugherty moved again to 66 N. Main Street where Ed Rogers joined him in partnership and soon after, they hired additional staff so they could market towards logo design and embroidery printing for school athletic teams and business organizations.

PHOTO BY BARB BARRETT/The Luminary In one of the back rooms at Susquehanna Valley Sportswear, Seth Trump is working on a logo t-shirt design for Central Columbia School District.

“We do about 50/50,” replied Daugherty. “The artwork is generated on the computers,” said Rogers. “I eliminated the middle man,” Rogers said referring to the sales rep. “Practically everything is done in-house,” he added. “We would rather pay our employees.”

Susquehanna Sportswear has 7 full time employees and two to three part time employees for seasonal and custom work. Their embroidery machines are capable of doing 1,000 stitches per minute and pre-programmed digitally from the computer.

Rogers and Daugherty purchased the 10,000 square foot building just two months ago. Closing date was August 21. “We kept the original flooring, tile and ceiling,” said Daugherty. “Many locals told us ‘Thank goodness you kept the floor.’ We were running out of two buildings for awhile to stay functional.”

Outside they want to keep the original historical store Haag sign on the side of the building and hopefully restore it to its original look. “We have future plans to reface the whole building as funds become available,” they said.

The business performs a wide array of printing services such as signs, banners and billboards. Rogers said, “There are over 850,000 printing products on our website, even a toaster oven to put a name or logo on it.”

Ed Rogers, Co-owner of Susquehanna Valley Sportswear, shows how products are custom generated through computerized state of the art embroidery machines.

A grand opening is in the works for this month.