Hawaii-born Clyde Caminos and his Virginia-based KA Grafix Custom Printing & Designs LLC won the first-place 2011 Impressions Award in the direct-to-garment apparel decoration category for his "Legends" design, seen here.

A first-place Impressions Award in any category is "considered the most prestigious award in the apparel decorating industry," Caminos said.

Here’s the thing: His startup business was only 7 months old at the time of the January award announcement.

The win was "overwhelming," Caminos said.

Decorated apparel is a $46 billion industry, according to award originator Impressions magazine, a trade publication.

Other categories included silk-screening, plastisol and sublimation, but Caminos chose the direct-to-garment method for "Legends" because it would best replicate the original design’s wispy, translucent vapor trails.

"It’s really hard to capture," he said, but his DTG (direct-to-garment) system successfully rendered the design element. "That’s what made it so unique," he said.

The magazine and its website are seen internationally, and feedback on the "Legends" design has come from "around the world, as far north as Russia and as far east as Thailand and the Philippines," he said.

"It was my first time entering. I’m a new, startup, veteran-owned business, so I just entered to gauge where we are," he said. While confident his design would at least win runner-up recognition, "I was overwhelmed we had beaten some of the major players" in the industry.

Born in Wahiawa, with an Army father whose career moved the family to the mainland, Caminos’ company name is informed by his local origins.

The KA in KA Grafix is taken from Hawaiian, in which ka can mean "the." However, in rendering and talking about the company name on the mainland, he capitalizes both the K and A and says "K-A Grafix," because that way he doesn’t get the funny looks he would by saying "Ka Grafix."

With family still in Wahiawa, Waianae, Whitmore Village and Pearl City, Caminos was home most recently a couple of years back, for a funeral. His late father was among 14 siblings.

Caminos’ work retains a presence in Hawaii, as he creates custom graphic designs for rash guards for surfers, paddlers and stand-up paddlers, as well as for mixed martial arts fight guards, according to his interview with Impressions magazine.

Because there is no such thing as a former Marine, Caminos calls himself a "prior-service Marine" (1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton) who wrote his business plan using infantry operations orders as a guideline "because I could understand the concept" that way, he said.

That caused a chuckle at the Veterans Affairs office at which he’d sought assistance.

Caminos gets help with his business from friends, both prior-service Marines, whom he calls "associates," and he has just hired Michail Mamaschew, a graphic artist, as his first full-time employee.

On the Net:
» www.kagrafix.com
» impressionsmag.com