FAMILY-FRIENDLY FESTIVAL: The second annual Life is good Festival, held over one weekend in late September in Canton, Mass., attracted more than 10,000 people each day for family-centered music, games, crafts, and food. The event raised more than $1 million for Life is good’s kids foundation, Life is good Playmakers.
is good. I handwrote the words “Life is good” underneath John’s drawing, and then we tookthem out to the screen printer and we printed four dozen shirts. That’s kind of what we always did when- ever there was a new design. That was our little routine—we’d try something out with four dozen and see how long it would take us [to sell them] on the street. But the dif- ference with this one is thatwesold all 48 shirts in 45 minutes. We never saw anything like that. Peo- ple [have since asked us], “When did you know that you had some- thing that was commercially viable?”We knewthat day. It was like people were starving for it.
Where did you go from there? We kind of stumbled along. We opened a few retail accounts, and then the retailers started calling us [and asking,]“Whydon’t you have him ride a bike? Why don’t you havehimgetanice cream?”We just started sort of designing to order almost—as long as it was some- thing that was celebrating life, we started making it. All of a sudden it just tookoff,andin the thirdyear, we moved to an actual little ware- house. I guess the bestway to sum- marize the business side is we probablymade every mistake in the
to determine what would be our next design.We probably had about 30 different things that we put up all over the walls and wethrewour party. In the morning whenwelooked on the walls —we actually let friends write right on the walls—there were somany thingswritten around that first Jake drawing. He didn’t
“I guess the best way to summarize the business side is we probably made every mistake in the book, but the brand concept was so strongthat it really carried us.And we hired people smarter than us.”
even have a body, it was just his face.We thought,“Wow, every- body was sort of drawn to that guy, so we’ve got to do something with him.”We didn’t call him Jake at the time. It was just like a smiley guy with a beret and sunglasses. Someone had put an arrow pointing to Jake’s face and wrote, “This guy’s got life fig- ured out.” We kind of just took thosewords and distilled them into Life
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book, but the brand conceptwasso strong that it really carried us. We didn’tknowanything really about sales representation and
territories andsourcing the goods or distributionmethods or chan- nels of distributing—any of those kind of things.We serve a lot of customers that will make fun of us today because we were as clueless as you could be. But, nothing’s rocket science, so we fig- ured it out and we hired a lot of people that are smarter than us. That first day in the street wherewesoldthe shirts was pivotal
and kind of changed our lives forever. The next [pivotal] day was meeting Lindsey Beggan.We first saw her [in around 1999 or2000,whenLife isgoodwas a$3-millioncompany] inaBoston Globe story about her—an 11-year-old girl who was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, shown wearing a Life is good hat. We got to know her. It was just remarkable that she wasn’t
expected to live longer than a year, yet she had this amazing attitude and was spending her time trying to cheer up other kids at the hospital. So, long story short, Lindsey really led to our focus on helping kids overcomelife-threatening challenges, whichtoday isn’t just physical illness, but it’s violence, poverty, and anything that threatens a young child’s life. Lindsey sort of led to the fundraising efforts and trying to do something special with the organization—and actually, the Life is good Kids Foundation. The little effortswemade in the beginning have grown intomore of today’s Life is good Festival, and it’s a growing, successful