BustedTees Success Story
http://www.bustedtees.com/
Who: Ricky Van Veen, 26; Josh Abramson, 26; Zach Klein, 25; and Jacob Lodwick, 26
What: T-shirts with humorous, tongue-in-cheek sayings aimed at twentysomethings
Year Started: 2004
Startup Costs: $4,000 self-funded
Wearable Wit: What began as a fun side business for Ricky Van Veen, Josh Abramson, Zach Klein and Jacob Lodwick is now a successful company that has people wearing the friends' jokes. The team sat down in March 2004 to sketch out 10 shirt designs with the goal of selling the shirts on CollegeHumor.com to fund the then-fledging site. The funny T-shirts were an instant hit with the CollegeHumor fan base.
Tees with 'Tude:BustedTee's shirts range from the topical--"Leave Lindsay A-Lohan"--to the old-school, with inside jokes only their targeted age demographic would understand. A picture of a Nintendo cartridge that says "Blow Me," for example, is only funny for those who owned a Nintendo and remember having to blow the dust out of the cartridges to make them work.
"Culturally speaking, our humor is very on point with our age demographic, which is 18 to 28," says Josh Mohrer, director of retail.
That sort of focused marketing is what makes BustedTees so successful--not to mention they're just plain funny.
Graduation: BustedTees now sells about 1,000 shirts a day and can be found in retail chains like Urban Outfitters. But it was the acquisition by IAC last year that really pushed the small side venture into a bona fide company.
The interactive conglomerate acquired a controlling share of Connected Ventures, the four-company group started by Van Veen and Abramson that includes CollegeHumor, BustedTees, video-sharing site Vimeo and a second T-shirt business called Defunker.
"Despite being owned by this big company, we've really retained our personality in a big way," says Mohrer. "This company has always been run by and for 20-year-olds, and to change that would be a mistake."
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Who: Ricky Van Veen, 26; Josh Abramson, 26; Zach Klein, 25; and Jacob Lodwick, 26
What: T-shirts with humorous, tongue-in-cheek sayings aimed at twentysomethings
Year Started: 2004
Startup Costs: $4,000 self-funded
Wearable Wit: What began as a fun side business for Ricky Van Veen, Josh Abramson, Zach Klein and Jacob Lodwick is now a successful company that has people wearing the friends' jokes. The team sat down in March 2004 to sketch out 10 shirt designs with the goal of selling the shirts on CollegeHumor.com to fund the then-fledging site. The funny T-shirts were an instant hit with the CollegeHumor fan base.
Tees with 'Tude:BustedTee's shirts range from the topical--"Leave Lindsay A-Lohan"--to the old-school, with inside jokes only their targeted age demographic would understand. A picture of a Nintendo cartridge that says "Blow Me," for example, is only funny for those who owned a Nintendo and remember having to blow the dust out of the cartridges to make them work.
"Culturally speaking, our humor is very on point with our age demographic, which is 18 to 28," says Josh Mohrer, director of retail.
That sort of focused marketing is what makes BustedTees so successful--not to mention they're just plain funny.
Graduation: BustedTees now sells about 1,000 shirts a day and can be found in retail chains like Urban Outfitters. But it was the acquisition by IAC last year that really pushed the small side venture into a bona fide company.
The interactive conglomerate acquired a controlling share of Connected Ventures, the four-company group started by Van Veen and Abramson that includes CollegeHumor, BustedTees, video-sharing site Vimeo and a second T-shirt business called Defunker.
"Despite being owned by this big company, we've really retained our personality in a big way," says Mohrer. "This company has always been run by and for 20-year-olds, and to change that would be a mistake."
The T-Shirt Book
How to Print T-Shirts for Fun and Profit!
World's Most Profitable Blog Post
How TasteBook.Com Makes Money On Customized Cookbooks.
5 Reasons Why There Should Not Be Such Thing As ‘Starving Writer’
posted by UncommonBusiness at 4:07 AM
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