Everyone we meet always wants to know how Random Shirts got started. Well, maybe not everyone, but at least 5 or 6 people have asked, so I thought I would share the Random Story with you! I understand that most people don’t have the attention span to read a story, so if you get bored, please feel freeto go buy some shirts at any time.

THE INSPIRATION:
Shaun and I were avid thrift store shoppers back in the day causing us to hit up every Goodwill and Thrift Store that Plano, TX had to offer each and every Saturday afternoon.  As we fingered through each and every shirt on the long metal rack, we would endure the lingering mothball aroma for the rush we received upon discovering the perfect tee shirt.  My thrift store shirt collection rose to such a staggering number that my clothes rack actually broke and fell in my closet one afternoon.  Such is the price we paid for thrift store fashion.  AH, the price.  What a wonderful thing.  What drove us to those high-class establishments week after week was the fact that we could get a unique vintage shirt at a great low price. Little did we know, what we learned from these thrift store trips would eventually change our lives forever.

THE IDEA:
Shaun and I both moved to College Station, TX where I attended Texas A&M and Shaun went to get his photography degree at Sam Houston State University.  The thing you should probably also know is that it took Shaun and I a combined 15.5 years to get our undergrads.  We weren’t stupid, as you might be thinking right now… we just took the “road less traveled”. (that quote is from a famous poem by Robert Frost in case you finished school too fast and missed that! See, my 8 years paid off!)  Since we were too old to join a “cool fraternity” we decided to start our own secret society that would consist of myself, Shaun, and a buddy named Paul.  Every club has to have a tee shirt, so we all sat around Shaun’s room and designed the original baby blue “Save The Jonah” shirt which would be given only to club members.  We had about 40 or so of the shirts made just in case people thought they were cool and wanted to join our club. All our friends absolutely loved the Jonah Shirt and we quickly sold out. We re-ordered more and quickly sold out again.  Just for the fun of it, we decided to design a couple more shirts, thus creating the “Roar”, “My Bad-Eve”, and the “Best Friends” designs.  Those were also a hit!  The shirts were all very random so one day, just for the fun of it I checked to see if www.randomshirts.com was available.  To my surprise, It was!  I bought it right then and there.  That night I couldn’t sleep because my brain was just spinning with all kinds of ideas.  The next morning I asked Shaun if he would be the Vice-President of a company that didn’t even exist yet.  He said yes, and we went to work. 

The original goal of Random Shirts was to sell thrift store shirts online.  We went and bought several hundred dollars worth of thrift store shirts, took pictures of them, and posted them on RandomShirts.com.  We quickly found that it took way too much time and energy to go out and buy the shirts and post them on our website, so it was then that we decided to start creating our own original designs.  All 4 of the shirts we had previously made were popular with our friends so we decided to keep coming up with random and funny tee shirts.

THE LAUNCH:
Shaun began to design the RandomShirts.com website, his first website ever, while I went and got our bank accounts set up etc. We decided that $10 Tees had a nice ring to it so we went with that price. We had to find a way to store the small inventory we had, so we went to Wal-Mart and purchased a bunch of egg crates that I stacked up to the ceiling in my bedroom.  When the new shirts would come in, we would fill the crates according to size.

We had our official launch on September 1st, 2003. We would carry the orders by hand to USPS to have them shipped out once a week.  I had a huge map on my wall of all 50 states and I’d put a star on each state that generated a sale. It was really fun to watch it grow.

THE PURPOSE:
Shaun and I were both involved in helping out with the youth at our local church and had worked a couple summers at a youth camp called Sky Ranch.  We both found so much joy in giving to others that we decided from the beginning that we would use part of our company to help other people.  Our mission is very simple…

“To impact the world through business by generating money for those in need.”

Yes, Random Shirts is our job and we have a salary that we pay ourselves, but we do dedicate a part of each shirt sold to various groups in need.  It has been fun to watch Random Shirts help a friend adopt a baby from China (welcomehomelily.com), help a church plant in California (www.paradoxla.com), and our friend from earlier, Paul, with his internship at Grace Bible Church in College Station, TX.

Random Shirts would not be possible without people like you and that is why we are committing to keep our prices at very affordable prices so you can get as much Randomness as you want!

RandomShirts Is:
Aaron Cave   &   Shaun Menary