Mass Appeal: Promoting community since 1972

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

October 5, 2026

GREEN BAY – Co-owner Matt Vanden Avond said a cold call on an expired real estate listing brought him and his wife/fellow co-owner, Becky, to the doorstep of Mass Appeal in Green Bay.

Located at 1566 Lineville Road, Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal has been locally owned and operated for more than 50 years, providing customers with custom-designed promotional apparel and products.

“Mass Appeal has been around since 1972,” he said. “My wife and I bought it in June of ’23, so we’ve [owned] it for just about three and a half years.”

After he and Becky purchased the business, Vanden Avond said they got to work to not only maintain its reputation but build upon it.

“We had no background in the apparel industry,” he said.

Though their time at the helm has been short compared to Mass Appeal’s tenure in business, Vanden Avond said they consider it a tall order assuming ownership of the local manufacturer.

“The prior owners [were also a husband-and-wife team],” he said. “The husband owned it and later got married. His wife came along, and she ran production and he did sales.”

Adopting a similar strategy as its previous owners, Vanden Avond said he and Becky now tag-team the primary administrative functions of the business supported by a team of roughly 13 employees.

“My wife kind of runs the business/production, almost all of it, and I do [community relations] and sales,” he said.

Capitalizing on Becky’s family history in the printing industry and his logistics background as a Navy Reservist, Vanden Avond said when he discovered the previous owners were looking to sell Mass Appeal, they saw an opportunity.

“We thought we could do it because her dad printed on paper all of his life, and the process is very similar all the way until you get to the T-shirt,” he said. “So, she said, ‘I can do that,’ and I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”

New opportunities

Prior to discovering Mass Appeal, Vanden Avond said he was working in real estate and Becky, a former nurse, was a stay-at-home mother for their three sons.

“So, we went from my wife [being] a stay-at-home mom, at the time…, and me working out of our basement as a real estate agent, to having 13 employees,” he said.

Part of his work in real estate, Vanden Avond said, included prospecting expired listings.

“If your [property] doesn’t sell, it expires off the MLS, and I call you the next day and see if I can help you sell,” he said. “With [the current] market, there aren’t many expired residential listings anymore, but commercial buildings are… not as hot.”

One day, while prospecting, Vanden Avond said he found Mass Appeal’s building and contacted the owner to help sell the property.

“I called him to see if I could help him sell his building, and he said, ‘Well, actually, I’m selling the business as well, so you should stop up,’” he said. “The kids were in school at the time, so my wife was kind of looking for something to do as well…, and [the owner said], ‘Your wife could run that, and you could do this.’”

So, Vanden Avond said he went home and asked Becky two questions: “Could you do this?” and “Do you want to do this?”

“And that’s how we got here,” he said.

Though he “loves real estate,” Vanden Avond said he and Becky are happy in their new ownership positions at Mass Appeal, giving them both a new professional opportunity to chase.

“Being a real estate agent can be challenging because it’s a lot of sales and a lot of asking people who don’t want to sell their house if they want to sell their house,” he said. “Where going in and asking someone if they want their logo on some apparel is a much easier sell and much nicer to ask than some of those other questions. So, it’s been a fun transition.”

Smaller company, accessible careers

After assuming ownership of Mass Appeal, Vanden Avond said he reignited the business’s relationship with the Greater Green Bay Chamber – participating in Manufacturing Month with the organization this October.

“The business has been involved [with the chamber] for… [more than] 50 years,” he said. “[The former owner] had been a member at some point [before it lapsed], but I thought it was a beneficial thing to take a look at.”

Because Mass Appeal is “relatively small” compared to other area manufacturers, Vanden Avond said community involvement is especially important to the business’s growth.

“It’s very interesting,” he said. “I bring people in [and] give them a tour [because] I had never screen printed before in my life before this, but many of the young people have.”

Born and raised in Green Bay, Vanden Avond said there’s potential for him and Becky to partner with local schools that already offer screen printing or similar programs.

“Bay Port [High School] is just down the road from us, and they have screen printing [as] part of their art department,” he said. “There is a path to exposure of what we do here within the area, so that’s kind of fun.”

Being “a local company that wants to help the community,” Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal focuses on providing an affordable solution for the area’s promotional apparel and product needs.

“We try to sell everything at wholesale prices because we sell a lot to bars, taverns, campgrounds, [etc.],” he said. “So, they can sell [the products] again and make a profit on that.”

When comparing their prices to those of other retail brands, Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal provides customers an opportunity to purchase high-quality products that double as marketing materials.

“You can get a sweatshirt from us for about $25 that has your logo on it,” he said. “I think there’s a real opportunity [to purchase]… a regular sweatshirt you can walk around [in] with your logo on [it] for a pretty affordable price.”

Sourcing products – ranging from T-shirts and sweatshirts to pens and can koozies – from a handful of industry distributors, Vanden Avond said he assures customers Mass Appeal doesn’t just “go to Amazon and buy stuff.”

“There are two large distributors of decorating apparel… we typically use, and they’ve even created their own brands,” he said. “They kind of cut out the middleman, and they make some good stuff.”

In regard to promotional product purchasing, Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal is part of an international syndicate to help keep prices low. 

“Anything you can think of with your name on…, those different things are made all over the world,” he said. “So, we buy into a large buying syndicate where we get great pricing…, and work with the manufacturer to get it here for you.”

With screen-printed and direct-to-film (DTF) apparel making up a majority of their business, Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal offers in-house design capabilities to help customers transform their ideas into T-shirts (and more).

“[DTF] is literally a sticker that you hot press on,” he said. “It’s not new technology, and literally people do it from their house, but I think [Mass Appeal] didn’t offer that before. So, now that we’ve started to offer that service, a lot more people are using it.”

Tackling screen printing and DTF in-house, Vanden Avond said Mass Appeal also contracts with another local business to offer embroidery.

“We outsource that to someone local here, but we definitely put a hand in the design,” he said. “In the past few years…, AI has helped people become a lot more creative. So, we help people take what they’ve created with AI and make it usable to print on a shirt – because a lot of the stuff we’re creating on AI is meant for digital media and not print ink on a shirt.”

Unlike screen printing – a manual decorating method requiring individual color stenciling – Vanden Avond said the DTF method can help keep customers’ ideas true and costs reasonable, especially for lower-quantity orders.

“If you’re using seven colors, it’s seven setups for that screen print, which is [an additional] cost for every time we have to create a screen,” he said. “Then [there is a] cost for each color we have to do. So, [DTF] creates a market where there didn’t used to be.”

Regardless of what method the customer chooses, Vanden Avond said one thing they can be certain of is the dedication of Mass Appeal’s staff to delivering a high-quality end product.

“They do a lot of work making [ideas] fit to the apparel,” he said.

Respect, transparency

Though he and Becky became business owners, seemingly, by happenstance, Vanden Avond said they have enjoyed getting to know the staff they inherited and welcoming new team members.

“One of our goals was to cut down on some of the turnover,” he said. “[It] is a big deal [across industries], and when we lose someone, it’s a big deal to us.”

A career in apparel design and screen printing, Vanden Avond said, is relatively accessible at Mass Appeal.

“There is a skill to all the jobs here,” he said. “However, the skill of screen printing can be learned in a short amount of time, and you don’t need a state certificate [or] a two-year apprenticeship to do it.”

Though the graphic designers on staff face a bit more of a barrier to entry – “most of them have college degrees” – Vanden Avond said, regardless, there’s no shortage of experienced staff at Mass Appeal.

“We like certain experience on certain programs within graphic design, but we have someone who’s been here for a while, and they can teach you,” he said. “So, there are definitely skills and things we want you to know. However, we can do some on-the-job training to help get you there… That has definitely helped with some of our employment.”

Whether interacting with their staff or with customers, Vanden Avond said the goal at Mass Appeal is to treat everyone with respect and transparency.

“One of our [sayings is], ‘The right thing at the right price at the right time,’” he said. “You want the right price, so I’m trying to be upfront with people.”

As they’ve settled into their ownership, Vanden Avond said he and Becky have started to become more involved in the local school districts as well as the Green Bay Metro Fire Department through Mass Appeal – something they’re looking forward to continuing as the business grows. 

“We are branching out into different things we didn’t really do before,” he said.

For more, visit massappealwi.com.