Quill

5 Pound Apparel

Friday, April 22, 2011 By Olivia Trinca

W ith 5 Pound Apparel, all it took was a leap of faith to open a store that would unexpectedly triple in size within a few months. Bryan Simpson, along with co-owners Matt Simpson and Andrew Bordelon, knew the importance of reaching out and making a difference. The only question was how they would do so. “[GT screen Printing] is how it originally started,” Simpson said. “We started the company in April of last year. We knew that we wanted to do something that gave back, so we started a screen printing company before we really had a vision for the store. We actually had no idea how to screen print, which was probably our biggest hurdle. So we basically taught ourselves how to screen print. We partnered with NepalNUTrition, who would give one treatment for each shirt we sold screen printing. Over the course of six months we grew pretty quickly, and in the meantime we had formulated the idea for 5 Pound Apparel because we could sell a shirt for $20 and we realized we could donate 5 pounds of nutritional peanut butter to Nepal.” NepalNUTrition is a project founded by Mark Arnoldy, a friend of Simpson’s. It’s mission is to provide nutritional peanut butter as treatment for malnourished children in Nepal through partnerships with organizations worldwide. Through this partnership, 5 Pound Apparel has succeeded in donating more than 1000 pounds of treatment since its opening in December of 2010. As far as profit, “We don’t make traditional profit margins as some retail stores do,” Simpson said. Because 5 Pound Apparel donates 50 percent of its brand’s profits, the marketing budget is low. Simpson and his partners have relied on free press and word of mouth, which has spread the news like wildfire. As far as inspiration, Simpson accredits many influences to his success. “Basically, Toms shoes is a huge inspiration, and then when I was a freshman at Drury, the co-founder of Kiva came to speak to us,” Simpson said. “So that was a big inspiration. She was just an awesome speaker and told us about how she was doing all these crazy good things while still making a full-time living. Sort of a combination of the two, and then my friend who started the charity we donate the food to.” Balancing college with a full-time business sounds nearly impossible, but Simpson stresses its tangibility. “It’s not that hard,” Simpson said. “I’ve got a lot going on between this and college, but I think once college is done I’ll have to find something new to do.” 5 Pound Apparel has made huge strides and is continuing to network and grow. “The next phase of our business is an e-commerce site for our brand,” Simpson said. The next big step is trying to find our stuff in other retailers and start wholesaling our stuff to anyone we can. We want to try to get our stuff into a Buckle or Pac Sun.” Although being seen can pose a struggle with so many retailers around, Simpson believes his store is, “Something unique and different and I think that’s something downtown kind of needs and craves.”