He does it all for the kids so they don’t have to experience the same struggles he did. Malik Lynch founded Fresh Prints of Green Bay to help future generations dress stylishly and provide a path to succeed in life.
Fresh Prints of Green Bay is a clothing brand and custom printer paired with local schools along with selling Lynch’s own designs. He started the business in 2020 just two months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but its origins go back to when Lynch worked as a student learning advocate for the Green Bay School District.
When Lynch was a student learning advocate, he noticed students coming to school with expensive, overpriced shirts from the local mall. He asked them the price of the shirts and was taken aback by how much the kids were paying for the shirts, despite being from a lower income area in Green Bay.
Lynch knew that he could provide the same stylish and high-quality goods for his students well below the prices students were paying, and decided to take action.
“I always knew that was just way too much, and I always knew that they were being overpriced. I worked in a lower income area in Green Bay here and I know my kids couldn’t afford that,” Lynch said. “So I just really started making shirts just for the kids so they didn’t have to buy expensive ones from the mall.”
The kids loved the shirts, and teachers at the schools started taking notice. Lynch knew he found something that could help his community out, and ran with it.
As his following grew, along with praise from schools, he went on to launch his own business. Coworkers approached him to make custom shirts for the school to continue providing lower income schools with affordable, quality shirts.
“It might be a librarian who’s in charge of the book club. So she tells me ‘Hey, can you open up the school store for us,’ so that’s how the school stores fell in your line,” Lynch said.
While his passion is for helping children, he’s always wanted to be his own boss and had an interest in fashion growing up in New York. He didn’t have any previous experience with clothing design, but he knew that he could find an avenue to help his community and capture his early childhood inspiration.
“Everybody want to be a boss,” Lynch said. “I just wanted to be able to make my own decisions and I knew I had something to offer for the city and offer my kids specifically. I can make affordable quality garments — like I do now.”
As the business has progressed, so has Lynch’s vision for it. He frequently expands the store’s offerings with new designs and partnerships with new schools. He alsofulfills custom orders. He aims to start his own physical storefront soon.
His fashion line is called F.R.E.S.H. which stands for Fashion That Represents Every Successful Hustler. His brand features hoodies, shirts and hats as of now, but with his eyes on expansion, those offerings could scale up. Lynch is currently eyeballing custom dyed shoes but doesn’t have the manpower behind him at the moment.
Despite the focus on his store, Lynch always aims to work for the kids of the community. He hopes one day to be able to inspire children who want to learn how to make clothing, start a fashion line or learn how to run their own business one day.
“What I do, my stuff is for the youth. I want to make sure that these kids can have a better future than what they have right now — a better future than what we had,” Lynch said. “One of my goals would be to help a kid start a clothing brand or maybe teach a kid that’s interested in getting into this business because I knew nothing about when I got into it.”
Fresh Prints of Green Bay currently has an online store at https://freshprintsgb.com/. There is availability to shop at Lynch’s office at 1211 Bellevue St. Suite B08 in Green Bay, but most items can be found online.
