Project571 finds niche making organic logo wear for colleges

Jennifer Youssef / The Detroit News

Combining their passion for the environment, college sports and fashion, Michael Wheeler and Nathan Dean have launched an organic collegiate clothing company named Project571.

The company’s products include T-shirts, sweatshirts, baby clothes and youth wear emblazoned with college logos such as Western Michigan University’s Bronco and Michigan State University’s Spartan.

Pairing environmentally friendly clothing with college and university names and logos seemed like an appropriate match to the business partners, who established the company last year. Michigan State was the first university to jump on board with the idea and grant Project571 a license to use its logo. Western Michigan University and Northwestern Michigan University followed suit.

With students returning to campuses and collegiate football about to kick off, the partners are hoping for brisk business from the 20 colleges and universities across the country with which they have licenses. They’ve created 15 new designs for MSU alone and made hooded sweatshirts — popular with college students — prominent on their Web site.

“We consider our universities to be the leader in green education and thought bringing eco-friendly products into the collegiate market would be a perfect union,” Wheeler said. “Project571 is proud to give students, fans and alumni the option to support the environment while supporting their favorite university.”

The online retail business is a spinoff from Wheeler’s Web site Green571, a not-for-profit site he launched the year before to educate people about environmental issues. 571 stands for 5 oceans, 7 continents, 1 planet. Users can sign up to receive a free daily newsletter telling them how they can reduce their carbon footprint.

The company’s administrative work is done in Chicago, but Wheeler, 33, and Dean, 32, who both have ties to Michigan — Dean is a Kalamazoo native and Wheeler has a summer home in New Buffalo — wanted to keep some of the work in the state. The T-shirts, sweatshirts and baby and toddler garments are printed in New Buffalo, where Wheeler works from his house, while Dean works from their Chicago office.

“I would say we’re a Michigan company,” said Dean, who still has family in the state. “The administrative work is in Chicago, but the core of the business is in Michigan.”

All the company’s products are organic or made of a combination of organic and recycled material, Wheeler said. The clothing is mostly made of organic cotton, which is grown without toxic chemicals, and some recycled polyester, which is usually made from recycled plastic bottles.

The eco-friendly fabric is more durable and of a higher quality than conventional materials, Wheeler said. It’s more expensive to buy wholesale, but Wheeler said the extra expense is worth it, and the T-shirts and sweatshirts are priced comparably to those sold at college bookstores.

“We put a great deal of effort into selling comfortable yet fashionable eco-friendly apparel,” he said. “Will it solve global warming? No. But every little bit helps.”

The apparel is in a few boutiques in the Chicago area like Grasshopper 510, an eco-friendly gift shop, and some college bookstores, but most of the sales are made over the Web site, Wheeler said. Infant and toddler apparel is $20, T-shirts are $23 and sweatshirts are $45.

Grasshopper 510 has been carrying the university-logoed baby onesies for about a month, and sales of the organic baby wear have been good so far, said owner Jean Taylor. The onesies attract many recent and not-so-recent college graduates starting families who wouldn’t normally shop there, she said.

“They have the potential to bring in new kinds of customers,” Taylor said.

The company — which employs four workers — is trying to get the products in college bookstores all across the country and in some boutiques in urban areas.

“Detroit is definitely an area we’d like to focus on in the future,” Wheeler said.

The company is on pace to earn around $100,000 in revenues this year, and it’s seen “steady growth” every month, Wheeler said. He doesn’t believe the economy has affected sales much, as the Web site has seen steady growth not only in sales, but also traffic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under Organic Collegiate Apparel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.