Upper Darby firm Ampro goes into overdrive to print Eagles Super Bowl T-shirts

UPPER DARBY >> As the Eagles defense was breaking up a “Hail Mary” to finish out the team’s first Super Bowl championship, employees at Ampro in Primos were starting up an overnight shift to make sure championship gear would be on the shelves by morning for Super Bowl-starved fans.

As the clock ran out on the Patriots’ final 65-second drive, the facility once again got the green light from NFL-licensed merchandise company Fanatics to start a production run, as they had two weeks ago following the NFC Championship.

“Our production team was amazing last night – they crushed it,” said Ampro CEO Stephanie Shea. “I’m sure a lot of our people wanted to go out and celebrate, but they were so devoted to get these shirts printed. I’m so proud of them.”

With the game ending at about 10:15 p.m., production was in full swing by 11 p.m., with 60 workers on hand to have a total of more than 30,000 shirts ready for 4, 6 and 9 a.m. pickup times.

“We were absolutely delighted to be part of the process,” said Shea. “The rest of the city was up all night, and we were able to work through the excitement and adrenaline.” The shift was replete with Eagles fight songs and chants, including a 5 a.m. fight song performance over the intercom by employee Dave Harlan to rally the crew and stave off fatigue.

Ampro expects orders to continue coming in through the week. From contacts in the T-shirt mill industry, they were told several million shirts had been expedited to the Philadelphia area for the first rounds of printing Super Bowl merchandise.

The Philadelphia region had long been considered by the merchandise industry to be one of the potentially hottest markets for a Super Bowl victory. “Between never having a championship and having such a strong football culture, it’s a perfect storm,” said Shea.

During the city’s last championship win, Ampro printed between 200- to 300,000 shirts for the Phillies’ 2008 World Series victory.

“Philly’s a good town in general for licensees; we do a lot of merchandise,” said Shea. Ampro handles national accounts for licensees in major league sports, sports entertainment and concert tours.

The company – founded in 1973 by Shea’s father Gary Huddell, grandfather Walt Huddell, and Geoff Traub – made its first foray into championship shirts for the Flyer’s 1975 Stanley Cup win, a time of laxer regulations on major league sports intellectual property.

“It was a very different marketplace back then,” Gary Huddell told the Times in 2010. “When we started, there wasn’t licensing per se. Anybody could print Flyers shirts.”