A new business from Kellogg School of Management students is looking to combine style with charity.
Sleevecandy, the brainchild of four Kellogg graduate students, offers a wide selection of T-shirts for men between the ages of 18 and 24. The website launched in early June and hopes to give its target audience a unique shopping experience, said Hanif Perry, a recent
Kellogg graduate and one of the website’s founders.
“There are three different kinds of shopping experience for our audience,” Perry said. “There are places like KMart, Walmart or Target, but their shirts aren’t as cool. Then there are places like Busted Tees, Urban Outfitters and Threadless, but these shirts aren’t unique. Then there are places like the Salvation Army, which offer-one-of-a-kind, unique T-shirts that have this accidental irony – something the original creator of the shirt didn’t intend.”
But shopping at thrift stores and secondhand shops like the Salvation Army isn’t always a great experience, Perry said.
“They’re dirty, (and) it’s often hard to find the size, color and style you like,” he said. “Sometimes it takes up to four or five places before you can find a shirt.”
Sleevecandy offers the same unique selection from thrift stores but in a more efficient and convenient way, Perry said.
But the unique shopping experience isn’t the only thing the site offers. Thirty percent of each sale goes back to the Salvation Army.
“We want to target people who value authenticity and being unique,” Perry said. “But we also want to make them feel good about their purchase because it helps the homeless.”
Sleevecandy first began as a class project. One of the founders, Reed Hushka, developed the idea from his own passion for shopping for T-shirts at thrift stores. He entered it in the NU Venture Challenge, a University-wide entrepreneurship competition in which students build a business idea from scratch. Hushka won second place last year.
After winning, Hushka got in touch with his friend Andrew Fazekas to help him develop the idea further for a Kellogg class. After the idea got praises from colleagues, the pair approached Perry and another friend, Kavin Arumugham, to transform the idea to reality.
“We all had a lot of complementary skill sets based on our professional experience that made for a good team,” Perry said. “We share a passion for work that nonprofits do.”
By January of this year, they decided they were going to pursue the business. The four then competed in a few contests to help raise money to begin the website. Most recently, they participated in the Kellogg Cup, a contest open to Kellogg students that awards those with the best business ideas with cash prizes. Sleevecandy was among the four finalists.
For the past few months, the four focused on creating the website and spreading the word. They handed out flyers at festivals and concerts around Evanston and Chicago and utilized social media to get the word out.
In May, the group struck a deal with the Salvation Army. A colleague who had connections within the organization passed the news of the group’s idea along to the Chicago-area supervisors, who saw a great opportunity for a partnership, Perry said.
Sleevecandy offers more than 1,000 T-shirts on its website, with prices ranging from $16 to $52. Though the T-shirts are from thrift stores, their quality is guaranteed.
“Our primary focus is providing customers with best possible T-shirt that they feel happy about and having that social aspect of giving back significant portions of each sale to the nonprofit Salvation Army,” Perry said.
