Joe Johnson, founder of Obvious Shirts, shared his inspiring journey from software sales to building a standout apparel brand. From the viral success of his first Jake Arrieta T-shirt to the creative designs like ‘Kyle Schwarber crushes baseballs,’ Joe emphasized the importance of quality and attention to detail in setting Obvious Shirts apart.
He also gave a special shoutout to John LaRoy’s printing team at Apparel Redefined for meeting last-minute demands from professional teams. Their partnership is a testament to the power of collaboration, precision, and staying true to your brand vision.
Key Highlights
• Joe Johnson’s Origin Story and the Birth of Obvious Shirts 3:27
• The Transition from Software Sales to Entrepreneurship 6:59
• The Importance of Quality and Attention to Detail 14:01
• The Creative Process and Sources of Inspiration 23:28
• The Impact of Obvious Shirts on the Cubs Community 29:21
• The Future of Obvious Shirts and Final Thoughts 32:56
Presentation Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:02
Hey, John, LeRoy, dude, how are you? Man, what’s happening?
John LaRoy 00:05
What’s up? Curt, how are you Oh, my
Curt Anderson 00:07
God, if I was any better, I you know what you might be called, 911, man, it might get pretty trusty here. So this is such an honor, such a privilege, to have Joe Johnson here today. From Obvious Shirts, Joe, how are you? Dude,
Joe Johnson 00:21
doing great. Busy day. Appreciate you guys being flexible with me. Another day in the life of an apparel brand as you never know what each day brings, and chaos is right around the corner.
Curt Anderson 00:32
Well, why? Since we’re going there, why don’t you share, just share a little bit. What was the chaos if you want, if you’re comfortable sharing that you put what fire did you put out today?
Joe Johnson 00:40
Well, a couple, and John’s super familiar with this, so bless his heart for putting up with putting up with us. We work with a lot of teams, a lot of organizations, professional organizations, and, you know, I don’t know their inner workings, but it seems, in my experience, that they kind of decide last minute that they’re going to pull the trigger on getting some T shirts made, or whatever it is they want for whatever event. Like we have Troy Tigers playing a playoff game tomorrow, like Comerica, and we have the red stars on the verge of the playoffs they might be in already. So today, today’s lucky Tuesday for us, because we had both of them kind of hit us at once, saying, hey, we need shirts, and we need them, like, ASAP. So what I do is I scramble to get our work done and send mock ups and get their approvals, and, you know, wait to hear back what they what they want, which the designs they go with. And then it’s a matter of, like this morning, finding blanks, tracking them down, getting a driver to go pick them up from the manufacturer and take them to John. John’s got a three hour window to print 144 shirts, and it has to. It just has to get done in time. So everybody’s scrambling on both ends. We’re here making some in the background, John’s printing them, and it just falls into my lap on a daily basis. I never know what’s coming next.
John LaRoy 02:08
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s fun, it’s exhausting. You know, where you get that reputation of you always get it done. You know, it’s just, it’s like, unattainable, like, end like, every time you always come through is almost gives people a crutch sometimes, like, Hey, I could wait to the last minute, and I know Joe will get it done
Joe Johnson 02:30
100% and yeah, and I don’t even thank John enough for his efforts. And like, so teams come to me with what, what John just said, is exactly true. They know that they probably have time, because they’ll know that. They know that we’ll find a way to get it done, and the only way that I get it done is if John gets it done for me. Like it starts with the parallel redefining. It starts with him. I’m just like the I have the network to them and hopefully build good rapport with them, so that they continue to use us as a business partner. But, yeah, John, I don’t thank you enough for always coming through, because just like the teams know that, oh, Joe will get it done, I think I’m kind of now in the mindset of, you know what I’m going to call John. He’ll get it done, and he does. But thank you.
John LaRoy 03:16
I appreciate that, man, but it’s my team. It’s Jeff, it’s Brian, it’s Nick, it’s Jamie. You know, they, they do a phenomenal job. But, you know, it’s, it’s easy to complain about, but it’s also nice to be in that conversation and and feel like the go to guy for so many you know, originally starting with one club, and now it’s expanded, not just in baseball. You know, you’re, you’re a guy in multiple different sports, and that just doesn’t happen overnight. That’s consistency over time creates momentum, and that’s what you got. You gotta keep it going
03:51
absolutely. Well, Joe, do do us
Curt Anderson 03:54
a favor, man, you have a phenomenal origin story. So if I have this correctly, you were selling software, if I’m not mistaken, and so you’re just a little bit of a Cubs fan, as I understand. And so there was a there was a pitcher who, who I guess was pretty good, you decided to put together a t shirt. And just, can you tell? Like, how did obvious shirts come to life?
Joe Johnson 04:15
Yeah. So, being in sales, the company that I worked for, we had a quota, and our compensation was based on reaching our quota. It doesn’t. It didn’t matter when you got your sales number, you would get paid out by by monthly. Every two weeks you would get paid out on your quota if you finished it on December 31, of the year, or if you finished it, like I tried to do, June 30. So in sales, I’ve, oh, my dad was a salesman. I think I just kind of got the sales gene. I you’ll learn I can ramble and talk to anybody. I can talk to drywall. I can talk. To a tree I can make friends with anything. So sales was kind of like where I excelled. And so my goal every year, and I was a season ticket holder, my goal was to get my quota met as quick as possible, because then I didn’t have my manager or my VP breathing on my throat or giving me any pressure on, you know, where your numbers at, I would get, I would reach my quota, and by the end of June was my goal. And I would use all of July, August and September to go to cubs games with my free will. And some years I’ve made it. Some years I didn’t night games. I was at all the night games regardless. But when I would go to games, I noticed that my guy, Jake wasn’t he was still on the rise, and when we got him from Baltimore, he wasn’t a household name, so they didn’t have a Jake area to Jersey. They didn’t have they didn’t have any Jake area to T shirts. And he was kind of like, my guy, which is a whole nother story. It goes back to when I played travel ball and got to have his locker at TCU, and that’s where he went, TCU, so I kind of followed his career. And when the Cubs got him, I’m like, This is my guy. I’m going to make this this is going to be my dude. And so dude. And so in 2015 fast forward a few years. 2015 we got him in 2013 fast forward to 2015 he literally came down from an alien spacecraft because he was unlike anything else in baseball. He was, I mean, his stats are, might never be duplicated. And he was just pitching out of this, out of this world. So I thought it’d be funny, because I’m dry and my sense of humor is dry and I’m sarcastic. I thought it’d be funny to understate how good he was. And so I had my buddy who worked right next to me in the cubicle downtown Chicago, who sold concert venue, kind of like Live Nation. He did concert T shirts in college as a side hustle. He had all his connections to printers in Florida, and he’s like, I can make you a shirt. And I just said, I just wanted to say, J curator is good at baseball because he’s not good. He is next level out of this world. Un duplicatable, if that’s even a word. So I thought by understating it would be really funny, and I wore it to his next start. Got the shirt in about two weeks, wore to his next start. He went to pool. Nine innings, struck out, 11, gave up only three hits, and in the third inning, I went to get a beer, and I got stopped everywhere. It took me like 25 minutes to get there and back, and I took people’s contact info, business cards, whatever, and I just told them I printed it for myself and I wanted a super comfortable shirt. So we tried, like, the originally, we tried like, eight different blanks, and I didn’t love it. So then I went, like, real deep, did a deep dive and try like, over 40 different royal blanks, and I finally found the one I liked. Had him print 100 of those for me, put it on Facebook just to friends and family. Said, I have these. They’re for sale, 20 bucks a pop. And I sold all of them in like, six or seven minutes. And so then I put it in order for 400 sold those in like a day and a half. And then it just that all the rest of 2015 through the wild card, we fell short in the playoffs. But then I just kept coming up with more ideas while, you know, watching games and thinking about what can be, what are the obvious things that need to be said that are going to get reactions out of people? And fast forward to today. Well, I
Curt Anderson 08:17
absolutely love that. Kyle Schwaber, you know, crushes baseballs. And then here’s a true story that was number two, you’re gonna you’re both. You guys gonna love this. I was out to dinner with my wife. We were we had some friends. We’re at Niagara Falls on the Canada side. I’m sitting at dinner at a steakhouse. I stand up, I turn around. A guy has a t shirt that says the greatest game ever played was on a Wednesday in Cleveland. I go, Dude, where’d you get that shirt? I go, did you get it from obvious shirts? He said, Of course I did. And so this was just about a month ago, John, I
John LaRoy 08:46
don’t even know if I told you that one, did I Yeah, no, no, but yeah, everywhere, yeah. I
Curt Anderson 08:49
didn’t want to creep the guy. I was going to take a picture, but no, I couldn’t wait to meet you to tell you that. So this is literally just a month ago in another country. You’re cool. Your fans are wearing your shirts proud. I’m going to pull up your website. Do me a favor again. I know we’re a little tight on time. I would love, love, love to hear your aggressive sales guy go from that transition from like, man, you’re, you’re crushing it in software sales, to entrepreneurship like, just walk us through like, that transition, if you could.
Joe Johnson 09:18
That was a crazy that was a very, hectic years 20 2016 to 2017 so the Kyle shore brosher, that was a lot of, this is luck. So I don’t have, I’m not going to say any words of wisdom that, you know people are going to be able to, like, take and go, go out and do it like a lot of it’s luck. I think I found the right type of brand, the right type of message at the right time. Obviously, nobody could have predicted the cubs to win in 2016 so I had a lot of things going good for me. The Kyle Schwarber was my second shirt, and that that shirt. So I was on Etsy. First I was just on Facebook, and then I was on Etsy, and I had two shirts. JK, riotta and Kyle Schwarber. Yeah. Uh, the greatest game shirt that you mentioned. That’s our all time number one. Um, that’s a fun story behind that, and I can go a little bit past four. So if we, if we have time for a grade, if not, no big deal. But to answer your question, um, when the Kyle, when I came out with Kyle, some fan in New York City bought it and wore it to Citi Field at the beginning, it was like the first month of 2016 and a guy wore it Kyle Schwarber hit one of his I think it’s like his second or third furthest home run in his career, 481, 483, feet. And the cameraman there was, there was nobody in the upper deck at City field, and there was one guy in my red Kyle Schwarber shirt. And I made it red because I already had a blue shirt, and I was raised in a huge IU, Indiana, who’s your family, so Kyle won’t tie you. So I’m like, I’m gonna make it red for IU and for Kyle. So this, this red shirt sticks out like a sore thumb on all blue seats in the upper deck that’s sparse and doesn’t have many people. And in the cameraman finds the shirt goes right on him. I mean, center chest takes up the screen, and Len Casper and JD go, like, that’s going to be a very popular shirt. And I guess the, I don’t want to call it the genius behind it, but why it works really good is that when you see my shirts, which is just like mainly words, the the shirt sells itself, because many people saw that, and they go to Google and they type in Kyle schwarbers good at baseball shirt, and guess what? Boom, not even a paid ad in mine’s number one because of keyword search. So that night, when I saw that happen, I was like, You know what? I’m going to, like, figure out how to make this product, like, continue selling. Like, I had stock of, like, 12, something really minimal. And I was like, I found the box. Check this box if you wanted to sell, you know, regardless of stock levels. And I clicked that, went to bed, woke up in 440 shirts. Later, I sold 440 of those overnight because Reddit picked it up mlb.com the little video clip was kind of going viral online. And so after that, and I’m doing a really good job of really talking your ear off with this long winded answer, but after that, shirt blew up, then I was like, Okay, I’m gonna, like, actually think this out and think what I need to do and the day. So I was going to nine to five coming home and filling, stuffing shirts and envelopes from six to midnight. And that was my life for a year and a half, some obviously, some days more than others, but only had two shirts. I told myself, when I when I’m spending more time doing the shirt stuff, and I never thought it would ever get to that point, but when, when I was spending more time doing shirt things that I was in my day to day, then I was like, I might just take a leap of faith and go all in on the shirt idea.
Curt Anderson 12:47
I absolutely love it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull this up. And when you, you know, it’s fascinating, where the job almost became an interference, right? Like it became a distraction. So, you know, and it was, it sounds gradual, like, Hey, this is a fun little thing. It’s a hobby. I can brag to my buddies, my Kyle sound like crazy, but did you like, did you, do you remember that point where, like, you know what? Like, I think I’m on to something like, I think I could, I could leave my job, take that leap of faith and go into entrepreneurship. Like, do you? Was there a single moment? Aha, moment, yeah, yeah.
Joe Johnson 13:19
There was a single moment. It was the day after the Kyle shirt exploded. I got a letter from the Major League Baseball Players Association, and they said, like we saw this shirt, just to let you know, like you’re they gave me the whole spiel about you have two players, if you, if you do anything else, like, we are going to come after you, because you can’t do that. Like, technically, you can’t use the, the name, image, likeness of the player. And so they’re like, they told me to take it down. Like they said, like, we would recommend you just taking it down. And I, I said, How can I like, I want, I’d rather just get a license. And they’re like, it doesn’t work like that. You know, you have to have year, like a few, few years of business history, you have to have a business plan. You have to send us marketing materials. And I said, Well, I don’t have any of that, but I do have about 20 designs that I’ve kind of just worked on that I never went with because I was either waiting for the right time or the right player to have, you know, a breakout. So I sent them, like a PowerPoint, of just 20 strict designs that day, and the very next day, they’re like, Hey, we, you know, we send things around internally. We really like this concept. This is very unique. We haven’t seen anything like this. And they gave me a contract, a three year contract, literally three days later on the spot. And so then when I got that, then I was like, Okay, I need to, like, seriously consider, like, putting all my time and energy into it, and if it’s, if I don’t do it, now, I’m never going to do it, it’s incredible.
Curt Anderson 14:49
Dude, that is such an amazing story. John, your thoughts on this? Well,
John LaRoy 14:53
one thing I just wrote down, you know, and he said he got lucky. I mean, there’s, there’s an element of that, but that, I would say. If you’re putting percentages on it, it’s less than 10% because when I met Joe a couple years after he got started, the meticulous attention to detail was on display, like, within seconds. Because, I mean, I’m going into his house, I told
Joe Johnson 15:14
you, God, I told you, you are I am not going to be like, I sorry. I’m gonna let you finish, but I have a great John Leroy story after he’s done.
John LaRoy 15:22
And you know, I was just blown away the meticulous attention to detail back that like going to his house, going to his basement, and his entire basement is converted into essentially a stock room, and every SKU, every style, meticulously folded and honestly beautiful, like it for someone that is ADHD and and seeing that organization, it was incredible. And just watching him grow and help us honestly, like, you know, we we decorate a lot for a lot of companies all over the country, and especially in the collegiate athletic ranks, and the attention to detail is more about hey, get it there on time because it’s for a game or for an event or time like this. But this is one of our first real forays into building a brand for someone that is actually directly involved in the brand. It’s not seven steps removed, where it’s someone’s concept, and then there’s a PR firm, and everyone’s kind of like loosely affiliated with it, like, this is his brand, this is his life. And literally inspects every shirt before it goes out. Because one of the things too, that Joe hasn’t really talked about is like, what one of the things, and I want to put words in your mouth, but that makes you so happy is that you run into fans and customers and clients that have been wearing your shirt Since 2016 2017 and they say it still fits great, the prints great. And you know, those type of unwarranted, unsolicited testimonials, more than just the designs, quality of the shirt, really helps sell the brand without any type of marketing. So just seeing like how, and not just Joe you know now his his fiance, is what you know, and everyone else in his in his honest team, embodies that meticulous attention to detail and everything they do, customer communication, social media, posting. It’s really it’s a business class in itself on how to build a brand. And they’ve done a phenomenal job. So, yeah, yeah, generally, there’s
Joe Johnson 17:29
a glare. That’s my basement. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, I think, I think, yeah, John nailed it. I think, like for listeners, out their attention to detail is the one it’s like, the one thing that I like. I don’t think I have anything unique other than being a passionate fan, but their attention to detail is what I’ve learned and experienced in this and seen, not even in T shirts, but like in entrepreneurship and being your own boss, like I’m not, I’m not good at business. I knew that very early on. I’m not a I’m not I’m a good sales guy. I’m a good marketing guy. I’m not good at business. But the one skill set that I do have, that I think you need to have in this is the attention to detail and the consistency that is the skill that I’ve, that I’ve like. I’ve found it very rare in people, and the people that have it, I can see why they’re at where they’re at, and I and the funny story is, you know, John. John was introduced through a guy I went to high school with and played high school basketball with, Dan Boris. Shout out, Dan Boris, and John, like he courted me. He he almost like he dated me. He would ask me if, if we were, if business was a relationship. He was asking me out all the time. And I was, like, playing hard to get because I kind of had a good thing with my term printer. And what I finally is like, John, I’ll take a call. But like, the first thing I told John is, like, you’re not going to like like. You’re not like you. Think this is a good thing. Like you. You’re not going to like me when it’s all said and done, because I’m so specific, and I my attention to detail is going to drive you nuts, and things need to be consistent. And I look over everything. My fiance, who was just looking at the time like, you won’t talk about attention to detail, she might have a at a higher degree than I did at the time, but I told him, like, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. And I know I’m not. I know I’m not the easiest partner that John has, but it’s fun, and he’s, I think John would say that my standard of like Excellence, which is not perfection, but it’s like things need to get done, and they need to get done right, and the same mistake cannot happen twice, like, I think John would attest to that that’s brought his that’s kind of like taking he was already at a very high level. But if anything, it took him up. It did take him up a notch, and that 100% that’s why this relationship is mutually beneficial. Because he did a lot for me, even when it means, like, stop worrying so much, slow down. We got this, like, put your trust in us, like you can, you can let go of your baby and it’s in good hands. Like, so I it’s been mutually beneficial both ways.
John LaRoy 20:13
I appreciate that, but you’re totally right, and we’ve said that internally a bunch, where you have the Joe Johnson level of quality inspection, right? Like, that’s the cream of the crop, and that is what is expected on every order, you know, and when everyone’s watching, you know, not when, hey, we’ll let this one go through. Like, Hey, would Joe Johnson take that? No, that’s not going out type thing. But, yeah, it’s been an awesome relationship, and just thrilled and really appreciated be a part of it, and seeing you guys continue to grow, but like, the attention to detail too, like in the design, because some of the stuff is so meticulously small and minute in a simple part of the game or a simple conversation, that’s what makes it so unique and funny and really, like, polarizing, you know, like, it’s, you see all the vitriol from the St Louis fans and the Milwaukee fans, oh yeah,
Joe Johnson 21:09
people going,
John LaRoy 21:10
it does, man, it’s awesome. So, you know, so,
Curt Anderson 21:14
speaking of, let’s go there. So can you guys see my screen? Okay, yeah, alright. So here’s, first off, here’s a shirt that we’re talking about. This is a famous shirt. And again, I’m sitting in Niagara Falls, and I recognize this shirt immediately. So Joe just and again, I know we want to be respectful of time. One thing that I love. I was just bragging about you earlier. And John, you and I just talked about this last week on our live stream. Last week, you were talking about, like, best business advice, Joe, I feel i very i appreciate your humility. You’re very modest, humble. But what I love about your business model is we always talk about, how do you niche down even, like, niche down till it hurts. And I was just bragging about you to another client earlier today, you guys have just laser focused, not just Chicago sports what you’re showing on your website, but like, Northside right, like you’re caught with bears, like you’re just laser focused. Share a little bit on like, why has that been so? Why have you been so hyper focused on this niche and how? What’s that done for your business?
Joe Johnson 22:14
Yeah, great question. I think the reason I wanted to differentiate myself the apparel game, the online e Commerce Industry is extremely competitive because the barriers to entry are so easy, like they’re so the bars so low, they’re easy. You can anybody right now. Could go to printful.com or go to Shopify and connect a drop shipping app and put up their own design and let somebody else, like, you could have your own t shirt business in a matter of an hour or two. The barriers to entry are so low. So if you’re going to compete in this space, which there’s 10s of 1000s of apparel brands like online, like, how do you differentiate? So when I was starting this whole thing, I said, I need to differentiate. I need to stand out. I need to be unique. But the you want to you mentioned earlier, like, when did you know, or what did you do? Like, when you realized you were onto something? I thought this whole concept, and a lot of it came from my marketing background, in sales background, but I was like, I wonder if I can make a whole brand out of like words on shirts, that would be the advertising for me, meaning I would not to pay any agency. I would not have to run ads. I would not have to do Facebook pixel. What if the shirts because they get reactions out of people when you walk down the street and you see somebody wearing it. That’s why a lot of our shirts are if you know, you know, like it’s designed and tailored for the fan that has been a fan for a long time and knows the minor details as well as the macro details of a ball club. That, if done correctly, I thought it would get people talking, and then they’d say, where did you get that obvious shirts.com? And then I’d have more people out there wearing them. And just over time, and by still moving sales and always kind of like pushing the snowball down the hill, it would eventually be this engine of marketing, moving billboards by people wearing them. And that’s why, like the first year, I probably gave away 300 to 400 shirts, just because I knew if they were out in the wild it would get chatter going. And after, like, a year, year and a half, it did start taking off, and it did work. And that’s when my company started hockey sticking was, I mean, obviously, again, luck is a part of it, because the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 but when the World Series, I had Jake Ariana is good at baseball. Kyle Schwarber crushes baseball. Steve Bartman suffered for our sins, and St Louis was boring. I had four shirts when it comes to World Series champs, so that put me that that motivated me enough to be like there’s so much more. Could do. And then I went, you know, ballistic in 20 off season, 2016 to 2017 right?
Curt Anderson 25:05
Well, you guys are probably too young for an old guy. This is probably one of my all time favorite shirts, right here, Mr. Sweetness, right? John, do you know, you know his favorite, his one of his famous quotes, you know, one of my favorite quotes of all time? Ever die easy? Never Die easy. Thank you very much, Joe. I pre, you want you won the
Joe Johnson 25:23
sorry, I know that was to John. I’m sorry. No worries. That’s one
Curt Anderson 25:26
of my favorite lines. So, alright, anything that you want to point out I just, I, you know, and I’m a raving baseball fan, but I’m, you know, I’m not a Chicago guy. I love the snarkiness I get most of your jokes. I think this is absolutely brilliant. Where do you come up with all the innovation, the creativity, where, like, where’s that come from?
Joe Johnson 25:46
Um, I hope both teams lose. Like, that’s like, a lot of it’s just watching games like, I don’t, I don’t know, like, what, what’s crazy is that, like, it really comes I mean, most of my back in the day, when I was doing this solo, I would work from like, 11pm to two o’clock AM, and I found that time, for whatever reason, was like, my most creative. And that’s where I would just literally put notes in my phone app, like, this would be funny, or this, I’m going to try this out. And I had a really good group chat of like, friends from high school that like that know me and that they know this is how I am, and in like real life, that I use them as a soundboard and send them shirts that I liked, and they would kind of give me feedback. But most of the ideas come like either maybe during a Cubs game, I would say, just as many that came during the cups. And some of the shirts write themselves. Some of it’s like an announcer or a quote or a baseball player says something like those, like, write themselves. But a lot of the times it would Jill, it’ll just come to me and I’ll write it down, or it’ll pop into my head and, like, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve literally, like, woke up, got out of bed, grabbed my laptop and went into another room and just made it to made the shirt so that I wouldn’t forget it in the morning. So and, and I don’t, I can’t take all the credit. I do a lot of the designs, but a lot of designs are fan suggestions. A lot of them are in house. The, you know, the co workers of mine that have had some really, really good ideas. So like that one, the professor emeritus. That was Melissa over here. She just texted me out of the blue, like after Kyle’s last game. And that’s like genius, because you know a professor, I think it’s Emeritus, emorist Emeritus, whatever it means like you’re solidified, you are grandfathered in, you are you know your your job is secure, but we use it as, like, Kyle legacy is secure. So yeah, a lot of the others, like, yeah, the whole, the whole idea of the company came to me when I was watching, I remember vividly, I was watching Pearl Harbor at like midnight, and I’m like, I’m just gonna, I turned, I turned off the movie, and, like, wrote this, like, concept that down. And last thing I’ll say is the greatest game shirt I can. Just think it’s a fun story. I was converting my DVDs on my Mac with a program that, like, made it digital, and I wasn’t distributing it was just for my own I put it in my hard drive so that I could take movies with me in a on a horrible hard drive to because I was flying a lot on airplanes. And one of the DVDs I converted, it was actually I was home the day before, and I went to my mom’s house and grabbed all my DVDs from like, childhood. I’m like, I’m going to convert these. And I put them on a hard drive, and I watched the greatest game ever played, the golf movie was Shyla buff. And back then, when you converted a DVD, you had had to convert in real time, meaning the movie had to play. So I was like, you know, I’m just going to watch this movie because I haven’t seen in a while. And the like, the last line the movie says, like, and on that Sunday in Brookline, Massachusetts, the greatest golf the greatest match, or the greatest game was ever played. And I was like, Well, shit, the greatest baseball game ever played was on a Wednesday in Cleveland, and within a Saturday in Brookline, but it was a Wednesday, and then that again, I made that shirt. I put it on the website at like, 11:55pm that night. And the rest is, yeah, the rest is
Curt Anderson 29:13
history. So, alright, this is phenomenal. I again, I’m keeping you over. I want to wind down. I know you’re super busy. Just, you know, shipping shirts all over the place, John, anything that you want to chime in before we close out.
John LaRoy 29:26
No, just blown away by the creativity. Because, again, like, you know, writer’s block, whatever you want to call it, but just keep putting out awesome stuff. And you know, you say, like, what is it? The highest form of flattery is imitation, right? And like Joe says, too, this is not a hard industry to get into. And even on my side, too. You know, there’s a lot, it’s a garage based industry. And you walk around Wrigley, I haven’t been up there in a while, but, you know, everyone’s selling shirts, and you could tell the knockouts, right? You know this industry, we know what we’re looking for. We know. But there’s a lot out there that are trying to imitate the greatness and the creativity, but it is really cool traveling all over the country and seeing, I mean, the Cubs for years, you know, the WGN effect. Everyone’s a Cubs fan. They want to throw out there to lovable losers type stuff, but the Cubs have a sweet spot, and a lot of teams and a lot of City’s heart, and then just this apparel that’s easy to wear. It fits well. It’s clever. It’s different than just, you know, your team’s logo on a shirt. It’s really cool. And selfishly, for my guys and my girls here in the shop, when we say, like, Hey, you’re creating memories, not just t shirts. Well, now there’s actually legs behind it, right? Because you walk around anywhere and you’re like, hey, I made that shirt. I made that shirt. I made that shirt. And it’s not just a Cubs logo on a shirt. It’s an actual time stamped event that happened that you can remember what was going on, when that event happened, or when that thing was said, and it brings you back in time. And that’s that’s the power of Joe’s shirts as well.
Joe Johnson 31:03
And I will just say one thing, the fact that, and this is the feather and John and ARS had, is that my shirts are probably the easiest shirt to copy. They I cannot imagine an easier shirt than what we have to rip off. So when you asked earlier about, like, why quality and why customer service and why, like, the best materials, the best ink systems, the best wear and tear like, the reason why that’s so critical and so important to me is because when you buy a knockoff, and you and you buy the real thing, like, you know, instantaneous, like, what the differences are, it might look the same. I mean, it doesn’t, because we do small, little, minute details in the artwork. But, like, you’ll know right away what a knockoff is, because they don’t pay attention to the quality in the ink system and how it lays. I mean, the first two months, three months, John, I was like, No, it’s not there yet. Like, you gotta, you gotta press it. You gotta roll, you gotta heat, roll it. And John was awesome. He was buying these. He was buying equipment. He was trying different ink systems. He was trying different heads. He was like, he was a great partner. So thank you. And you know, the fact that they’re super easy to rip off the makes it even more vital that quality and materials are top notch.
John LaRoy 32:23
I appreciate that. Thanks for pushing us. Yeah, Joe, thank
Curt Anderson 32:27
you, man. So alright, we’ll wind down, Joe. We wish you your team continued massive, massive success, regardless of how the Cubs do on the field. We know that you’re absolutely crushing it consistently and just again, huge admiration. Shout out to you. One more thought, John, I don’t know if I shared this with you. I was on a call with a client. They were in Manhattan, and they had a bunch of cubs of you know, paraphernalia behind them, and of course, they knew obvious shirts. And so Joe, you’ve made a great impact on the Cubs community. You’re a tremendous inspiration. And we just thank you. We applaud you, commend you. Keep firing in all cylinders. And so guys, we’re Jen, we’re going to wrap up, man. I don’t know how we’re going to top this one, but this was, this was good one. So right, yeah, alright, we’re going to wind down Joe for having me. Thank you, brother. We appreciate you. Hang out with us one second. We’re going to close out, catch everybody next.