The name Gollagul, named after a tower, has habitually replaced the name of the area known as Hayahulet Mazoria, which is located on Haile Gebresilassie Avenue.

On the second floor of the tower, which is located on the corner of a roundabout, Endale Tesemma, 28, was busy printing T-shirts that were ordered by both his regular and new customers for Epiphany, which will be celebrated for the first time after it was registered by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Endale manages Arma Advertising & Printing, which is more engaged in printing various designs on T-shirts these days due to the high demand for the product during public and religious holidays. Most T-shirts are sold on Mesqel, Adwa and Epiphany holidays.

Most days Arma is occupied in graphic design for making stickers, billboards, yearbooks, posters and banners.

Since establishing the business in 2018, Endale prints different decorations on T-shirts for Epiphany, carrying on for the third time this year. The holiday is one of the colourful festivals celebrated by followers of Christianity all over the country to commemorate the baptism of Jesus Christ.

Hundreds of thousands of believers attend the festivities on the eve and the actual day. They dress in simple flowing white cotton robes, and these days many wear holiday-specific printed T-shirts.

The demand for T-shirts during this holiday is growing from year to year, says Endale.

Previously, the company used to print T-shirts without receiving orders and attempt to sell them in the market. However, this year most of the market is from orders by young people who come in groups from nearby areas, such as Haya Hulet, Urael and Kazanchis, and made down payments for more than 2,000 printed T-shirts, according to Endale.

Arma and other printing houses have designed different artistic images and traditional patterns on the T-shirts that attract the youth.

As Endale explains, he sources the blank T-shirts from small and micro-enterprises at Megenagna and retail shops at Merkato for 45 Br to 50 Br a shirt. The T-shirts that Endale mostly relies on are made of nylon, which is relatively low-cost for manufacturing and printing purposes compared with cotton.

The price of a T-shirt is 200 Br, but if the order is above two hundred shirts, it goes as low as 120 Br. But this is a holiday discount. Most of the time, when there is no holiday to celebrate, they are sold wholesale for 250 Br, according to the young businessperson.

According to Endale, his printing workshop has made more than 5,500 T-shirts in this month for Epiphany, and he expects to print a lot more judging from the interest people have shown on Facebook, the platform Arma uses to promote its products.

Arma also prepares T-shirts for different events. Even last week it printed more than 4,500 T-shirts for Jano Road Race held in Gonder.

The instrument used for printing is known as a heat press machine, which works through sublimation.

Sublimation is a digital printing process to produce images on sublimation transfer paper with sublimation ink. The sublimation paper is then placed into a heat press with the T-shirt and is exposed to high temperatures. This is when the ink is transferred from the paper to the T-shirt.

Arma also prints on cotton t-shirts, which are sold wholesale for 150 Br and if the quantity is more than 100, they cost 80 Br. However, the sublimation machine cannot print on cotton. A cheaper method known as screen printing is used to print on cotton.

As Endale explains, one of the mechanisms that helps him get more customers is putting grills that advertise his business around trees in the green areas of the capital's highway medians.

The company has placed the grills on the streets of Torhailoch, Megenagna, Mesqel Square and Haya Hulet.

Yohannes Kenea is a 28-year-old youngster living in Gofa Mazoria, which is also known as Mauritius Street, and runs a business that fixes vehicle air injection systems.

He voluntarily organises and collects money from the residents of his compound and close friends to prepare Epiphany holiday T-shirts. This is the sixth time that they are preparing T-shirts for the holiday.

“I greatly value the Epiphany holiday,” says Yohannes.

After agreeing with his friends to have similar costumes for the holiday, they went to a printing shop and ordered 100 T-shirts, each costing 75 Br, and sold them for 120 Br.