Student Entrepreneur Creates, Operates T-Shirt Business

Psychology major Lachman created his business, Sharp Shirter, in September 2006 after turning a daydream idea into a T-shirt design. This month, he’s releasing the 21st design to the T-shirt collection.

But even on campus, Lachman’s life is absorbed with the business. Being a full-time student and part-time entrepreneur has become a grueling routine.

Lachman’s tee line-up evolved from a couple of run-of the-mill word shirts like “No Double Dips”, to a variety of graphic based designs such as “The Paper Plane Tree” which displays a tree with paper planes growing on its branches, flying around, and crumpling up on the ground like leaves (pictured at right). Among the other out-of-the-box designs an exploding fire hydrant, a gorilla riding an ostrich to victory, a computer mouse munching on nails (pictured below), a dancing bear with a tape player stuck on its head and person standing in a bucket at the bottom of a wishing well.

Through a grueling cold-calling routine, Lachman got his tees to make national headlines. In October 2006, the Washington Post ran a photo of the design “Transphoner” and mentioned Lachman’s new site. America’s Top Model TV show contestant wore “The Plane Tree” tee on MTV, and fabsugar.com suggested the Sharp Shirter “Mosquito” design as an inexpensive and “cool guy gift idea.” The business also was mentioned as a “Clothing Site of the Day” by Indigo Clothing and the design “Electrobug’ was featured on tshirtisland.com.

“I do wear my tees quite a bit on campus,” he says. “Every now and then I get a comment from someone that doesn’t know I made the tee. When they hear that the tee comes from my company, they usually want a free one. Unfortunately, I’m not big enough to be handing them out yet, but we’ll see where I am next year.”