www.p21.co.uk

John is the man with the plan and the ability to steer the good ship P21. As well as working with the team of designers, he is hands-on at every stage of the process and works the machines in the print workshop. P21 is no ordinary clothing company. It is a fully integrated business - it controls everything right through from concept to completed product delivered to shops and to your door via its webshop. And it all happens in an industrial unit which houses a dye lab, a sampling room, design areas and a state-of-the art print room. Think of it is a screenprinting factory with an ideas lab attached.

As you walk around you can feel the buzz of productivity, hear the competing sound systems of the various departments and witness the work happening. Upstairs, the designs are drawn, down stairs they are screenprinted and packed. At P21, screenprinting techniques are constantly being developed.

"We started P21 handprinting on a table" beams John. "It was kind of at the tail end of rave culture in this country, but in Germany it was just going absolutely mad, consequently we picked up on a massive boom in the German market place and we were working 24-7 pumping out designs, Paul's designs, on a hand machine. There were three teams of us and we just worked 24 hours a day to satisfy the demand from the Germans."

Prototype 21 T-shirts, sweats and hoodies were cult clobber from the off. John fronted the business and designer Paul generated the graphics which fused music, tech and techno. As John explains: "We both had a mutual sort of love of Japanese graphics and technology and the graphic look just emerged out of that. It just suited what the Germans wanted at the time because they were all into headbanging techno. They were all stomping away there in Germany and they were into our all mad, computer-generated images and fluorescent colours."

The early success helped finance setting-up the current premises. After consolidating production, the business took a new direction. Prototype 21 became the company umbrella name and a new brand, Terratag, was born. Pure Evil and Hospital Radio followed - accompanied by their designers.

"P21 is, in effect, like a mother company, which developed and fed all of its little children. They are still being fed by the mother, but they are on all fours and at least they're up there."

While the business isn't a collective John doesn't rule out turning it into one, but stresses that "collectives only work if a business is successful and we've only recently stabilised. There were a tough couple of years."

Each designer at P21 owns a stake in their own brand and the atmosphere and ethos seem to make it easy for people to share their ideas here. You can see everything - the whole operation happening around you. There is a transparency about being able to walk around and see everyone from the printworks floor to the management in an open space together. Because everything happens under one roof, everyone is aware of every stage of production.

John learned screen-printing on the job. He has never had any formal training. "I had no artistic education, I am proud to say!" He still works the carousels regularly. For him, the job of printing is a real passion.

"I love it. I love the whole printing process of seeing a design transferred from paper to screen and then printed and the whole gamut of activities that goes on in that process. It is still like a bit of magic seeing a design go on a screen and pushing the ink through the screen to see it physically go on...I wouldn't be without the ink behind my fingernails, it wouldn't be me."

Sampling for the new ranges are in full swing and the most recent brand to join P21 is Subsurface, an Essex-based T-shirt outfit. The sampling for the Subsurface range has been particularly challenging because they're determined to break some T-shirt barriers.

"If you look at Subsurface and the collaboration there, we're looking at taking the T-shirt to an area it has never been before. It terms of artwork-wise, print-wise and the quality of the garment. We are using the world's best quality cotton, the designs are just unbelievably thought-out and complex. We've spent three weeks now printing about six shirts. You've got to get it right. They are going to be expensive. And the guy who is printing those shirts couldn't even print a year ago. He was taught here and he is probably one of the best printers I have ever encountered. It's amazing what he's doing."

P21 sees the web playing an intrinsic part of its future. There are plans to develop the online shop and dedicate more customer service and mail order facilities. John is fired-up by the possibilities of the P21 web community. "You become more like an artisan unit, like the village blacksmiths in the past except your are in the global village."

Digital imaging is an expanding area and there is every chance that some of the brands could develop full-on clothing ranges, although John does love a T-shirt.

"I see the business moving forward in a way that more and more of our products become more and more individualist and specialised. The T-shirt is a blank canvas and we create art to put on that.. it can be produced on a mass scale or it can be treated as a very artistic medium. It stands there with etching or with printing or whatever else you want to call an artistic medium. What we do becomes more valued as art."

Meet Terratag