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Jon Kruse<br />
My name is Jonathan Kruse. I’m 26 and I have owned my own clothing company<br />
called Mediocre Clothing for a little over two years. I also run the<br />
website howtostartaclothingcompany.com.<br />
I graduated from California State University Northridge in 2007. It was right in<br />
the beginning of the recession before they were even calling it a recession and<br />
there weren’t many jobs out there for designers. I ended<br />
up getting a job at a place that did movie posters in Hollywood.<br />
All I did was clean images and any other work<br />
other designers didn’t want to do. Even though it was<br />
what I worked so hard in school to do, I didn’t want to be<br />
in a 9 to 5 job commuting 2 hours every day to Hollywood.<br />
Getting Out of Hollywood<br />
I told myself this was the only time in my life that I would<br />
be able to start my own business and I went for it. It was<br />
rough in the beginning because I had no idea what I<br />
was doing. I had some friends in the business and they<br />
helped me out so much in the beginning and I wouldn’t<br />
have been able to do it without them. I’ve stuck with it<br />
and made plenty of mistakes but I’ve learned from it and<br />
I am going to keep on pushing forward.<br />
My Breakthrough Moment<br />
I’ve had a couple. The first was being in a newspaper article<br />
in England where they talked about my “shark week”<br />
shirt. Next was doing amazing at Renegade SF selling<br />
almost $3,000 of shirts in 2 days. I was published in a<br />
Computer Arts Magazine writing an article about e-commerce<br />
design. Finally I am getting published in a book<br />
called Torso that is coming out in September 2010.<br />
Also it’s cool to have Jeff Finley ask me to write this.<br />
He has been someone I’ve always looked up to in the<br />
design community.<br />
THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley<br />
My Inspirations<br />
Jon Kruse is a designer and brand owner who writes about<br />
the business of running a clothing company.<br />
Banksy changed my life. I remember being in design class bored about dealing<br />
with just the aesthetics of design and his work opened my eyes. Soon after<br />
I was wheat pasting my own clever things all around school. I ended up going<br />
from graduating with honors to barely passing some of my classes the last<br />
semester because I was so consumed with work outside of school. In the end<br />
what I did outside of school with wheat pasting is a lot closer to my job now<br />
than school was.<br />
How Ideas Can Set You Apart<br />
The first shirt design I did was from this crappy hand<br />
drawn flyer I did. It said, “Missing Turtle. Answers to Michaelangelo.<br />
His favorite food is pizza, but he hates anchovies.<br />
He has an orange blindfold cut out for the eyes.<br />
Keep an eye out at the clubs and bars because he’s a<br />
party dude. Be careful because he has nun-chucks. His<br />
owner really misses him. Call splinter at 555-4372”<br />
For this design, I really liked the subtlety of it. People<br />
could walk by and glance over it but only those that<br />
stopped to read it and were fans of TMNT would get it.<br />
You need to make people think to get the joke, you can’t<br />
spell it out for them or it’s <strong>not</strong> funny.<br />
Self Promotion Tips<br />
This isn’t unique but I make friends with blog owners and<br />
have them get the word out for me. Each of these people<br />
gets thousands of visitors to their t-shirt blogs every<br />
month and by just sending them an email about a new<br />
shirt or sale I can spread the word quickly.<br />
If I Could Do Things Differently<br />
The thing I wish I had done from the start was run my<br />
clothing company as more of a business. In the begin-<br />
Case Studies & Interviews 116
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