Eric Auckerman was a former California dot-commer who fell in love with a woman from Kaua'i four years ago and planned to get married last June, then buy some sort of small business on the Garden Isle.

The marriage didn't work out. Auckerman's fiancee ended up going back to California. But the business, after a rough start, is doing well.

Auckerman started a T-shirt business — the newly named AnyImageOnaT.com — on Kaua'i that since August has been reproducing New Yorker magazine covers and cartoons for customers around the world.

"I was going to purchase a business, buy a house, get married and work part-time," said Auckerman, 45. "That did not happen. She went back to Berkeley and I ended up working 60 hours per week."

Auckerman didn't realize that his new company was already competing with at least five other screen-printing businesses on Kaua'i. "I probably could have done a whole lot more market research," he said.

So Auckerman set out to find a niche in the market.

"With startup companies, I've always been a niche player," he said. "My philosophy is: Deliver on what you claim to do and there will be room for you. Now our tag line is, 'You think it, we ink it.'"

Auckerman imported a Mainland-based technology that replaces the old, eight-color, heat-transfer technique that leaves T-shirt artwork feeling like plastic and often makes the wearer hot.

Instead, AnyImageOnaT.com can replicate any color, then weaves them all into the fabric, rather than on it.

The technique — and Auckerman's offer to produce and ship orders himself — got the attention of the New Yorker magazine, which now uses AnyImageOnaT.com to produce T-shirts bearing New Yorker covers and New Yorker cartoons.

Justin Vuono, production director for the Cartoon Bank, a division of the New Yorker magazine, immediately saw the potential in the samples that Auckerman sent him.

More than 4,500 orders later, Vuono said the only customer complaints have been about incorrect shirt sizes or mixed-up cartoon or cover orders — not the quality of the reproductions.

"It's the New Yorker," Vuono said. "We have to maintain a certain quality. The old heat-transfer technique kind of looks cheap. We liked how the printing was right in the fabric, as if it was part of the fabric. Our sales have definitely increased since we switched to Eric's process, maybe 100 percent in less than a year."

Vuono occasionally gets asked why the New Yorker's custom-order T-shirt business relies on a company based in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But the difference in time zones actually helps speed production and shipments because the orders are sent via the Internet to AnyImageOnaT.com at the end of the workday in New York — in plenty of time for Auckland and his partner, Jay Armstrong, to produce each T-shirt and ship it that day through the U.S. Postal Service.

Individual shirts cost $19.99, which Auckerman sends in flat-rate envelopes that cost the customer another $4.05. Using flat-rate boxes, Auckerman can send two shirts for $6.05 — or three to seven shirts for a total of $8.10.

Vuono and Auckerman are now talking about expanding to include women's T-shirts and possibly include vintage art from Vogue, Vanity Fair, Gourmet and House & Garden magazines.

"People have asked me, 'Wow, you're using a vendor in Hawai'i?' " Vuono said. "You know, it didn't strike me as a problem. Once we switched to Eric's process, it's been great."

Auckerman is also working on producing custom-order T-shirts of pets and their owners for the Kaua'i Humane Society, said Dr. Becky Rhoades, the organization's executive director.

A few months ago, the Humane Society received a shipment of T-shirts that were intended for AnyImageOnaT.com and called Auckerman about the mix-up.

He showed up at the Humane Society wearing a custom T-shirt bearing the image of a friend's dog.

"We said, 'Where did you get that shirt?'" Rhoades said. "It was really high quality. The image is in the shirt, rather than that sticky stuff that's on the outside."

Rhoades hopes Auckerman produces a brochure of possible T-shirts that she can offer in the Humane Society's waiting room so people can buy T-shirts bearing pictures of their animals.

"We want people to show how much we love our pets," Rhoades said.

Auckerman has also offered to donate any proceeds to the Humane Society.

"The shirts are cool because they're so nicely done," Rhoades said. "And he's a good guy."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.