Russell Slayton spent years in Pittsburgh working as a sports agent — representing basketball and game players — while running his own print-on-demand shop. He helped athletes and influencers build merchandise lines, websites, and brand identity from the ground up.

What he kept running into: the tools available for custom manufacturing were too limited, too slow, and too disconnected from the people placing the orders. Catalog vendors. Offshore brokers. No flexibility, no accountability, no partner who owned the outcome.

The answer came through a collaboration with Jia Zhang — a Cornell University statistics graduate Russell met while Jia was studying in the U.S. Jia had grown up understanding Chinese manufacturing from the inside. Together, they built what neither could build alone: a company that gives American businesses direct access to that manufacturing capability, with a U.S. team owning every relationship and every outcome.

Murry Ave is named after a street in Pittsburgh. It was built to go a lot further.