Lifting the Printing Industry with Personal Passion
Jed Seifert’s personal journey inspires much of what he does in the printing industry, and that passion will now encompass a role on the Kornit Konnections board
Jed Seifert and the team at Stakes Manufacturing are a force to be reckoned with. Not only is Stakes a wildly successful print-on-demand (POD) business that is a poster-child for other digital decorators everywhere, but if you know Jed, you know his personal passion is working with and hiring those with disabilities.
Jed and business partner Vince Bartozzi have known each other since the fresh young age of five. The two have been inseparable since then, launching Stakes together in 2019. As Jed puts it, “I guess you would say I fell backwards into the print industry, and Vince pulled me in from behind.”
And the rest is history, as the kids say. From a suit-and-tie job to T-shirts and jeans, and now a role on the Kornit Konnections board, Jed is everywhere you turn.
But to really understand Jed and the pivotal impact he’s had on the industry, you need to understand his personal passions, as well.
Family, Friends, and the Makings of Success
Jed’s brother, Darren Seifert, has Fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition that causes intellectual disability, behavioral and learning challenges, and has various physical characteristics. And yet, Darren thrives — he has a job, an apartment, and is financially independent. Darren is who inspires Jed.
Stakes Manufacturing employs quite a few people with disabilities. Those with autism, Asperger’s, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and other disabilities have found great success working in the business. It’s a model that is so successful, with such high ROI, that Jed has brought it to the printing industry at large.
Working together with Vince and several other industry insiders, Jed is working toward publishing a book titled, “INKclusivity: Company Benefits of Disability Inclusion & How-to Implementation Guide.” It serves as a guidebook to other print shops interested in implementing similar programs.
But Jed also points to another source of motivation: Vince. “People often say, ‘Hey, don’t go into business with your best friend; don’t ruin your relationship;’ even my parents tried to talk me out of it,” says Jed. “I don’t know what it would be like to not be in business with my best friend. He’s not just my best friend — he’s family, so there is an unmatched level of trust in each other and support for each other. His family is at my house for Thanksgiving, and mine is at his for Christmas.”
That doesn’t mean it has been all sunshine and rainbows. “In our first business, we had a 1,500-sq.-ft. place, [and] 500 was production, 500 of it was office, and 500 of it was a makeshift apartment that Vince and my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, shared,” Jed explains. “And there were some brutal times where couches got flipped and people wanted to punch each other. We never punched each other, but we had to go through learning how to be business partners, which is far more complicated than being friends.”
A Real Business Model with Huge ROI
Beyond the personal inspiration and passion, there’s a very successful POD business model behind Jed. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the apparel decorating industry saw a massive shift that happened almost overnight, and now, POD and custom apparel is all the rage.
Stakes started out as a POD-style business before the COVID era propelled it into mainstream. “Our business started off as what I would call traditional print-on-demand, which is direct-to-consumer, individual e-commerce, order fulfillment,” Jed says. And after the whole world went through a shutdown and reopening, Stakes saw an opportunity. “We saw an opportunity to evolve our business and service a market that we felt was not being serviced properly, which is wholesale,” he explains. “We started doing a lot of quick turn, low-minimum wholesale for retail replenishment, bands out on tour, inventory for distribution centers, events, promo, and direct-to-consumer fulfillment.”
Jed attributes the team at Kornit Digital for helping Stakes find success throughout the years. He notes the company has been a “strategic partner” of Stakes for close to 12 years. “We've been along this ride with Kornit through multiple evolutions of their equipment, the technology, the quality. And we've worked with them closely, even on the innovation side, because our team is pretty awesome at what we do, too.”
That strategic partnership has not only led to a lucrative business model, but it’s also led to some long-standing relationships. And now all that is coming to a culmination with the Kornit Konnections event.
The Power of Industry Support
The Kornit Konnections event has been held a few times over the past several years, most recently taking place in Miami April 27-29, 2025. With a spotlight on education and innovation, the event aims to bring together industry names to focus on shaping the future of on-demand, sustainable textile manufacturing, according to the company.
Part of how they structure the event is by leveraging a steering committee, which Jed is now a part of. “I joined the Kornit Konnections board and took on the role of leading the Social Impact Committee because I deeply believe in its mission to unite the entire print-on-demand ecosystem of brands, manufacturers, influencers, tech partners, and demand generators,” Jed says. “Kornit Konnections has already provided a powerful platform for championing our mission of disability inclusion in the print industry, including supporting our forthcoming INKclusivity guidebook. … My vision for the Social Impact Committee goes beyond inclusion. It’s about spotlighting companies making meaningful impacts locally and globally, inspiring others to use their businesses as vehicles for positive change, and uniting the industry to support these efforts collectively.”
And as the industry continues to transform, Jed — alongside his fellow Konnections board members, the team at Kornit, and his crew at Stakes — will be here to support others. “Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and robotics will make production, quality control, and fulfillment almost entirely automated, powered by both current technologies and innovations yet to come,” Jed believes of the next five years. “We’ll also see continued industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. … Due to these major drivers of change in just the last few years, the industry is reinventing itself in real time.”
And as it continues to change, Jed hopes to keep inspiring and uplifting others. “With the Social Impact Committee, this is also bigger than just print,” he believes. “We talk a lot about disability inclusion, and I get a lot of stage time and a lot of interviews, but there are organizations throughout this industry that are doing incredible things that have nothing to do with inclusion. … The impact we’ve created together with the support of [Apparelist], Kornit Konnections, and PRINTING United Alliance has been truly incredible and has created real change while also getting people involved that never would have been. We want to keep building momentum for the betterment of both our industry and community.”