Meet Ronak & Keyur, Founders of This Is It Collection!

How many of you have had a brilliant idea and failed to execute it; only to see someone else breathe life to a similar idea and have a major come up? *Slowly raises hand.*  Well, thank goodness not everyone falls victim to procrastination.  Meet twenty-something Ohio natives, Ronak and Keyur, founders of This Is It Collection.  All Sports Everything recently had a chance to speak with these emerging t-shirt designers and learned how they smartly discovered a way to leverage social media, and slowly turn their passion and love of the Cincinnati Bengals into profit!  


All Sports Everything:  Introduce yourselves. Share how the two of you met, and how This is It was born. 
 
Ronak:  Keyur and I shared mutual friends and they introduced us in undergrad.  Keyur attended the University of Cincinnati and I attended Ohio State.  I eventually moved on to Grad School and received my Master’s Degree from the University of Dayton in June 2010.  My 9-5 job was becoming very mundane and I knew I wanted something a little more.  Once I completed grad school I knew that I had the security of education underneath me so I decided I wanted to start something of my own.  I’ve always been pretty passionate about apparel, I shop at thrift stores and try to keep up with trends, etc. so, it just kind of made sense.  At the time, Keyur was kind of in the same boat, so we linked up and started brainstorming different ideas.  You know apparel, a chai stand etc, so that’s kind of how it came about.

All Sports Everything:  That’s great.  Keyur, do you have anything you’d like to add?  Is this your full-time job now? 
 
Keyur:  I was a dreamer and thought it could be my full-time thing but I don’t think it’s there yet.  Initially, I took a leave of absence from my job to focus on this.  Like Ronak said, we linked up and were brainstorming and throwing out all of these different ideas.  We were trying to make money off of our hobbies and passions, basically.  Apparel...chai was another one and I’m a huge Bengals fan so we connected on this and kicked it off!  At the time, I was on a leave of absence from my job so I could fully commit time to This Is It, but at the end of October I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to return to my job and balance the two, or just focus on this.  But, this still wasn’t stable enough, so I’ve gone back to work. I do my 9-5 and focus on This Is It at night and on the weekends. 

ASE:  When did you guys officially launch This Is It?

K:  Mid-August.  It's been about six months.
 
ASE:  How did you come up with the name This Is It?  I immediately thought of Michael Jackson.  Was he the inspiration?

K:  Although we're huge fans of Michael Jackson, it really didn't have anything to do with him. One day we were racking our brains at Starbucks trying to come up with a bunch of ideas for designs and our company name.  And then we decided we needed to break for lunch, so we went to this Mexican joint and it just kind of came out of nowhere and I think Ronak just mentioned, This Is It.  And we both kind of looked at each other like This Is It! That’s It!! 
R:  It was kind of a moment for us.

ASE:  What made the t-shirt line rise to the top of the list of all the other ideas you brainstormed?

R:  I’ve also worked with photoshop and have always been interested in design.  I didn’t go to school because at the time my parents were like this is probably not the way to go. So, I always did it on the side.  I also DJ on the side so I was always making fliers and promotion materials in photoshop, indesign, and illustrator so I mentioned that to Keyur and he suggested we should do something in design so that’s how that idea came about.   
K:  For me it was a little different.  That’s why we make such a strong team because we both have different reasons for wanting to do this.  I’m a huge Bengals fan and we have a lot of fair weather fans and it was just idealistic in thinking.  I wanted to create some merchandise that our fans could get excited about, wear, and support our team, so I was into the t-shirt line for that reason.

ASE:  This Is It has received a lot of press with the T.O. and Ochocinco Batman and Robin themed t-shirts, in a short six months.  It was even featured on ESPN First Take.  How did all of this happen so quickly?  

T.O. meeting Ronak and Keyur for the first time.

 R:  It was around August when we finished the first t-shirt without anyone’s approval or knowledge. T.O. and Ochocinco didn't even know anything about it.  Once the design was finished, we posted it on our twitter page and we sent it over to T.O., not expecting him to respond because he has over 700,000 followers, but we sent it over to him and we received a tweet back from him saying, "Holy fresh t-shirts! Can you send me a couple of those to the Bengals facility and include one for Robin too?" So, we flipped out at that point and said oh man, this could be something!  We ended up going to Georgetown, Kentucky where they have training camp and we decided we were just going to go straight to the source and brought the t-shirts directly to T.O.  We arrived at the front gate, introduced ourselves and told them we were there to give T.O some t-shirts.  They looked at us like we were crazy.  But long story short, we ended up getting into the facility and the team's PR rep came out and asked why we were there.  We showed her the tweet and told her the same thing.  She said ok and told us he was busy but we could leave them with her.  We told her that we preferred to personally deliver them and she said we could hang around until practice was over and try to get his attention then.  We said ok and waited.  We were in the stands, front row.  There were like 400 people behind us.  Practice ended and T.O. came out.  Keyur lifted up the t-shirt and yelled, yo T.O. we got your shirts man!  T.O. turned around in the stands, looked up and asked if we had one for him.  We were like yeah dude, we have a bag full!  He told us to come down closer.  So, we jumped the fence, went down to the field, and left behind 400 jealous fans wondering how we were getting down there.  So we met him and he said the t-shirts were fresh.  And that was it.  He didn’t have too much time. That was like our 30 seconds with him, if that long.  We told him we had so many other designs and he said yeah, yeah, yeah, just tweet me, just tweet me!  That was the initial contact so throughout the next few months we kept trying to reach out to the right people. We finally got our package into his assistant's hands and we setup a meeting with her.

K:  Re: ESPN First Take, we thought our shirts would be a perfect fit for the show since it's a pretty comical show.  They have this one segment where they feature funny news headlines.  So, I tweeted the First Take team and suggested a funny headline to go along with a Skip Bayless t-shirt that showed him tied up with T.O. and Ochocinco saying, What Skip? Can't hear you!"  They loved it and contacted us to tell us that they'd include it on the show.  We sent them some t-shirts and they gave us a date and time to look out for the feature. Everyone on set had a good laugh about it.  It was pretty funny.  
 
ASE:  Two awesome stories!  And since then, Ochocinco’s also been supportive, right?

R:  Yeah, that one took a little more time because we had to go through Chad’s whole marketing company, but we finally got him on board about a month or so ago.

ASE:  Right.  I saw Chad tweet the Pepe t-shirt you designed for him.  Was that his idea or did you guys just decide to create that t-shirt and hope that he would respond well to it?  

R:  We follow Ochocinco's tweets on a daily basis just to see where he’s going with his brand and he's been referring to himself as Pepe a lot.  He also visited Spain not too long ago, so we thought it would be fun to create a Pepe t-shirt.  We designed it, sent it over to his marketing company and they immediately loved it.  They said it was cool, so we actually sent him a reco of what he should tweet about the t-shirt and he posted it!

ASE:  I know you guys also have a Lebron James t-shirt.  What’s the inspiration behind that design?

R:  I follow all of these athletes on twitter to see what they’re talking about, what their new nicknames are and to see if it could help our business.  I was a huge and still am a huge Cavs fan so it kind of hurt for me to do this design.  I’ve gotten a lot of heat from my friends in Ohio like dude are you seriously going to create this t-shirt?! But it comes down to our brand. So, I basically wanted to see what the Big 3 were calling themselves and Lebron referred to them as the Heatles.  From there, I thought it would be hilarious if we could incorporate the Beatles and Heatles together.  I designed the t-shirt and right now we're trying to get the attention of the players, city, and local media. 

ASE: Overall, it appears that your strategy is building upon an idea that originates with the athletes i.e. their alter egos, and developing a product that speaks to the athletes as well as their fan base.  Would you agree?  

K:  Yes.  That's essentially our business model.
 
ASE: OK, and how would you describe your marketing strategy?  It seems like twitter’s been huge but is there anything else beyond twitter and social media that you use to build awareness?

K:  Twitter is a component of our broader marketing strategy.  We have it broken up into several different channels. We do social media, google adwords, facebook ads, promotions through celebs, call outs on blogs, and we kind of got lucky with ESPN and the T Ocho show.  It’s a combo of the paid media, free social media, and grassroots.  At Bengals' home games,we just get out there during tailgating with our street team, sell our t-shirts, and take pics of fans wearing our t-shirts.  We tell them that we'll post their pic on our site and to visit the next day, so it drives traffic back to our site.  No matter what, we make sure we're everywhere the fans are!

ASE:  As entrepreneurs what has been the biggest challenge for you guys?

R:  For me personally, finances.  I actually will be starting a 9-5 so I’ll be moving to Cincinnati.  It’s tough explaining it to your parents.  You know saying hey mom, I have a Master’s Degree but I’m going to sell t-shirts now.  For me that was a huge thing.  They’re more supportive now...the ESPN feature helped, but it's still been tough financially.    
K:  For me, the key challenge has been being able to put all of the pieces together at the right time to maximize and capitalize off all of these opportunities.  For example, when we first received the RT from T.O., our site wasn't even up at the time.  So that was a huge lesson learned.  I'd say that's been the biggest challenge, but it's also been huge fun!

ASE:  What's next for This is It?  What other designs do you have in the works?

R:  The Heatles, and thinking very big, we’d love to do a Kobe shirt. We’re also trying to reach Christiano Ronaldo...
K:  Michael Vick, the Cincinnati Reds and eventually branching out into jerseys or anything else.

ASE: How can my readers get their hands on a t-shirt? 
R: They can go to our website, www.thisisitcollection.com, follow us on twitter @thisisitbrand or like us on facebook at facebook.com/thisisitcollection.

As a Knicks fan, I can't help but wonder what design they'd come up with to represent Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony.  Maybe we'll soon find out! Keyur and Ronak, good luck with the line and thanks for speaking with All Sports Everything!