The concept started in a coffee shop a block away from their school. The first run of 65 shirts sold out in under an hour, next to a table of Girl Scouts selling cookies outside the cafeteria. Less than two weeks later, more than a thousand requests poured in for a t-shirt that began as a high school class assignment.
Greta Zorn, Alex White and Taya Christianson found that, without meaning to, they had a startup on their hands. The three are seniors at Seattle's Northwest School, and they created the punky t-shirt at the center of this story.
It displays a line drawing of a uterus, shrouded in foliage, and a statement that reads: “not a political object.” Soon a parent’s living room transformed into a a hand-package-and-ship production space for the operation now known as “Uterish.” All proceeds from the 20-dollar t-shirt are donated to Planned Parenthood.
As the school year comes to a close, orders for the shirt are approaching 2,000. But as summer approaches, these Seattle teens are preparing for college, which could mean heading down different paths.
Sound Effect host Gabriel Spitzer caught up with Zorn to talk about the success and future of their accidental, philanthropic startup.
