It all started with tacos.
I walked into the break room and saw Eric sitting there wearing this nice jacket. I walked up to him trying to keep my composure. I pointed to his jacket and finally said in Eddie Murphy’s “Coming To America” voice…
“This is beautiful. What is that…velvet?” I laughed.
Eric bursts out laughing, ‘Oh…you got jokes, huh?”
A few movie quotes and handful of jokes later, we parted ways and went back to our desks. A few hours later, he poked his head into my office door.
“What are you doing for lunch?” asked Eric.
“Dunno”, I replied.
“How about we go grab some tacos,” suggested Eric.
“I’m down,” I replied.
And that’s how this whole adventure started…
As we were munching over some tacos, he asked me my thoughts about starting an online T-Shirt company.
“An online t-shirt company?” I asked, “Isn’t there like a ton of those already?”
“Yeah but you’ve seen their stuff…” said Eric as he let the sentence drift into an unspoken conclusion.
I understood the conclusion. I have seen these t-shirts and there were a few things that bothered me:
- Although the concept of other companies were pretty clever and funny, some (not all) t-shirt designs sucked.
- And because they were always available online, it was possible to see multiple people wearing the same shirt in the same place.
“Come on man,” continued Eric, “with your design skills and marketing skill…you telling me you can’t do a better job than what they are doing?”
“Hell yeah,” I thought.
“Hell yeah,” I said.
“So are you down,” he asked.
“I’m down,” I replied, “Just need to see if Reggie is down.”
Reggie is my business partner & the tech ninja of Beryllium Media.
I called Reggie and shared the idea with him.
“I don’t see why not,” Reggie said, “And didn’t we already discuss that idea a while back?”
He was right. I remember doing the leg work on the concept some time ago so I looked through my notes and there it was. I tweaked a few things and talked more about it to Reggie and Eric.
So after some brainstorming with both of them, we developed this concept for our online t-shirt business:
- We will design t-shirts that are stylish.
- We will design t-shirts that are interesting.
- We will only provide a design collection for only 90 days (To avoid the flood of the same shirts being worn by everyone and their mama.)
After that was settled, we had to solve two more questions:
- What would be our first collection?
- What would be the company’s name?
As you can tell from the title, we came up with the name Limited Tees. Based on the concept we decided on, it was perhaps the perfect name. The collection, however, would be more difficult.
Or at least I thought.
I was thinking about my conversations with both Reggie, Eric, and many others I encounter throughout my life. One thing I noticed that we all have a love for quotes. The “What is that…velvet” quote was also used in the unlikeliest of places… by 64 years young Florida country boy whom I worked with at a car auction. One cold day in Tampa, he walked up to this car dealer, rubbed his jacket and said those immortal words. I was in earshot of the whole exchange and I literally LOL’d! Everyone was looking at me like I was crazy but I didn’t care. That joke truly came out of nowhere and I DEFINITELY did not expect him to say it. Of course, I met up with him and talked about our favorite movies and quotes. The friendship deepened after that.
(Oh yeah…shoutout to Greg Fish for the joke and the inspiration for one of the pieces in the collection!)
And there it was. We just used the quotes we were always saying to one another.
I can’t say that I was the first one to think of the concept. After a thorough search online, I’ve seen others do the same thing but I’m not gonna lie…I was not impressed with their designs. Just as Eric challenged me over some tacos…why not make a better shirt?
So I got to work.
With that inspiration, the first collection was born…The Almost Friday Collection.
I won’t lie…I had fun creating the designs and the many more in the upcoming collections.
From that exchange to this website, what you see in the store, and everything else coming is the result.
So with that being said, I want to thank Eric Lee, Reggie Belfort, and everyone else for the birth of Limited Tees. We will do our best to provide you with the interesting and stylish t-shirts.
-H.D.
