 "Photo: Christina Deparis")
The driving force for this company is simple: Love less to love more.
Love materialistic and empty pursuits in life less in an attempt to love more meaningful projects. Loveless Apparel is not just a T-shirt company. They are a for-profit clothing apparel business dedicated to raising money and awareness for nonprofit organizations.
“The fact that we actually care about the community sets us apart,” said UCF finance major and Loveless employee James White.
The idea of Loveless started two years ago when UCF alumni Chris Phillips, 33, and Aaron Harden, 24, decided they wanted to start a clothing company. The two men would meet in restaurants across from UCF once a week for an entire year, with each meeting lasting two or three hours.
“We planned what we were going to do to live out our vision,” Phillips said.
They spent about a year writing their business plan and mission statement, drawing basic designs and visiting potential vendors.
“I walked into stores all over the country and asked a lot of questions and took a lot of notes,” Phillips said.
In an effort to fulfill their mission of loving less to love more, they work with nonprofits that help the homeless, orphaned children, HIV-positive South Africans and lower-income people who can’t afford the therapy. The funding helps provide counseling and additional resources they need.
“We’re not Prius-driving- tree-huggers,” Phillips said, “But I’m one of those guys that lives a life of purpose.”
The company partners with six nonprofits including Children of the Nations, Thrive Africa, Home Sweet Homeless, The Love Alliance, Save the Children and Renewing Hearts.
“Letting the professionals handle the apparel lifted the burden off of us so we could focus on helping kids,” said Children of the Nation’s employee Pam Wright.
The organization works with approximately 20,000 impoverished kids throughout the world.
Loveless helps the organization by designing and distributing all of their apparel and designing, hosting and managing their online apparel store. Loveless donates 40 percent of all profit from the online store to the organization. They also offer the organization wholesale pricing when purchasing corporate apparel.
“It’s been fabulous to work with them,” Wright said. “They brought a lot of creativity to the table.”
Creativity is an important piece of the puzzle for the company, Phillips said.
“We wanted to build an apparel company that had really good art and design.” Phillips said. “There are a lot of apparel brands that pull clip art out of a book anyone can buy.”
The online store sells 42 pieces of clothing for men and women including shirts and hats that range in price from $9.95 to $21.95. The screen-printed images include birds, crosses, planes, guns, bullets, the peace sign and the Statue of Liberty. The text is usually scattered or layered and almost always includes the word love.
“We would rather say we love peace, so we may design a shirt with a peace symbol made out of bullets,” Phillips said.
Loveless’ main goal for 2009 is to raise brand awareness. They are attending the Surf Expo as an exhibitor from August 20 to 22 in Orlando. Loveless will be among 2,400 booths of potential competitors, customers and investors.
“Growing up in Orlando, it is all about the Surf Expo,” White said. “It is a dream to go.”
After the Surf Expo, Loveless will travel to California for the Action Sports Retailer show in San Diego and the Magic Tradeshow in Las Vegas to build more brand awareness.
“Our whole goal is to go global,” White said.
Loveless is offering a 15 percent discount to UCF students on any of their apparel by using the discount code “UCF” at www.lovelessapparel.com.
3 comments
Reminds Me Of My Business! Now The Real Question Will If They Can Handle The Growth? :O)