RetroDuck.com - Vintage T-Shirt Information
The shirts you see with the "vintage" stamp are literal iron-on transfers from the 60s, 70s, and 80s acquired years ago.
Living
in Mayo Hall at Michigan State University, our founder, Sean Maday,
borrowed $1,800 from his grandparents at 12% interest to start an
online t-shirt iron-on business.
That was enough cabbage to purchase four big boxes of 20-year-old iron-ons and an
ancient heat press from a guy who had them stored in a garage in Jersey. After the
enormous shipping cost of getting all of that to Michigan, the loan
money was gone.
That heat press later caught on fire.
Maday had no idea what to call the business and consequently no domain
name to host the site from. Sean was forced to compromise on the
creative impasse that was preventing the launch of the business. He began pairing
adjectives with animal names in the hopes of finding something that
worked.
After two days of this, with the financial concerns
manifesting into serious stress, and final exams fast approaching, Sean
stopped caring. Tossing the word
"retro" against the first animal that popped into his mind and quickly
registering the domain, RetroDuck.com was born in January, 2003.
Bill
Pollock, a longtime family friend of the Maday's, placed the first
order on January 21, 2003. He purchased a shirt with caricatures of
each of the Beatles. Sean
never charged his credit card because he was unsure of the transfer's
quality and how long it would last.
Bill still wears the shirt to this day.
On January 22, a gentleman from New York City by the name of Nathaniel
Hawkins placed the first paying order with his Visa: $25.50 for a Diana
Ross t-shirt.
Later that year, thousands and thousands of iron-ons were acquired from a warehouse in New York.
We're still sorting those out.
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