UBJ | 07.22.201616 | JUMPSTART | COMPANIES BLAZING A TRAIL IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

“Jack Be Nimble,” “Johnny Utah,” “Buddha Bang,” “Le Tour de Dino” and

“Dill With It.” Just a few examples of the T-shirts designed and printed by Greenville clothing label Beautiful Demise. The brand has flown relative-ly under the radar locally since its in-ception – but an encounter with an NBA championship team is changing everything.

Founders Scott Arnold and Kyle Greathouse met while attending Western Carolina University. Great-house, who played basketball for the university, was unsure of his next step following graduation. Arnold proposed

the two start a company, and in 2010, they opened a custom T-shirt printing shop on West Antrim Drive.

Although that business performed well, in February 2012, Arnold and Greathouse decided to concentrate solely on the private Beautiful Demise label, which would give them more creative freedom.

“As fun as it is working for yourself, it’s much cooler to have people buy your ideas,” Greathouse says.

The duo’s ideas have steadily evolved into Beautiful Demise’s four collections: Jurassic, Gurken, Atrium and Big Bang. The designs are inspired by a combi-nation of slightly obscure pop-culture references and imaginative concepts generated in-house. “Jack Be Nimble” depicts a cartoon jackrabbit jumping

rope, while the “Johnny Utah” is a cartoon rendering of Keanu Reeves’ character in the 1991 cult classic movie “Point Break.”

“It starts a conversation, no matter what,” Greathouse says. “People like it when what they wear starts a conver-sation, and they like it when people talk to them [about it].”

The price is rightOnline, the T-shirts start at $31, a

price point that may raise some eye-brows, but it reflects the careful detail that goes into producing each one.

“It’s not easy to buy a 30-some-thing-dollar T-shirt, but when you do buy it, you know why it’s [that price],” says Greathouse. “You can sell $10 shirts, and it’d probably be easier to

start off selling a lot, or you can pick top materials and top quality.”

Beautiful Demise’s designs are all printed in-house on tri-blend T-shirts manufactured in the U.S. Tri-blend fabric is a combination of cotton, polyester and rayon — materials that give the feel of a soft T-shirt that has been washed dozens of times, explains Greathouse. The more the T-shirt is washed, the more comfortable it becomes, and putting the T-shirt in the washer or dryer doesn’t make it shrink or change shape.

Each Beautiful Demise design also consists of a high number of ink colors, which is “rare in the T-shirt game,” says Greathouse. “Most T-shirt brands aren’t out there making their own T-shirts, so a lot of T-shirts are simple

EMILY PIETRAS | ASSOCIATE EDITORepietras@communityjournals.com

Shirts getting realThanks to NBA champs the Cleveland Cavaliers, Greenville T-shirt makers Beautiful Demise are in center court

07.22.2016 | upstatebusinessjournal.com COMPANIES BLAZING A TRAIL IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP | JUMPSTART | 17

with one color, because it’s cheaper for a printer to make, thus making it cheaper for a brand to buy. We have multiple designs that have up to eight colors, and only a few are one-color prints.”

“We spend a good amount of time in making each and every T-shirt, because it matters to us,” he says. “Every single T-shirt is printed, packaged, inspected and shipped by [us].”

Alternative marketingIf you visit the Beautiful Demise

website, one omission immediately stands out: Greathouse and Arnold are nowhere to be found — they’re not even named on the company’s “About” page, which has no back-ground about the brand’s story. Instead, you’ll find a brief video of “Neil Pencils, T-shirt enthusiast” going through his collection of Beautiful Demise products. Great-house calls him the “official spokes-person for the brand.”

“Neil Pencils” is a fictitious charac-ter played by Chris Mast, an actor in Los Angeles. Mast and Greathouse grew up together in Ohio. “Neil” can

be found throughout the website, sporting the brand’s apparel in short videos and on their Lookbook page.

Positioning “Neil” as the central — and lone — face of Beautiful Demise is intentional. “They’re T-shirts; we don’t

need to take them too seriously,” Greathouse says. “With a lot of brands, when you first look at them, they’re telling you what you’re looking at and what it stands for. We leave it up to your interpretation.”

The brand has developed a steady following on the West Coast; Beautiful Demise actually sells more T-shirts in California than they do in South Car-olina.

“Just not many people in Greenville know about [Beautiful Demise],” says Greathouse. “But we’ve kind of created our own little spot. It’s exciting that we’ve been able to reach this small audience.”

“Jumpshot Jesus” has risen

Greathouse and Arnold regularly work with two artists to make design concepts come to life. One of these artists, Jason Kuczek, lives in North Carolina, and he’s responsible for the illustration of the extremely popular “Jumpshot Jesus” design.

The gray T-shirt displays a robed cartoon Jesus figure, clad in sandals and hair flowing, pulling up for a

fadeaway shot. The lighthearted design has become a game-changer for Beau-tiful Demise. Within the last year, the T-shirt’s been spotted on former NBA player Ray Allen and J.R. Smith and

Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The company sent the T-shirt to Ray

Allen (via a team director of player personnel) when he was playing for the Miami Heat. The choice was deliberate: “We thought, ‘We’ve got to get ‘Jump-shot Jesus’ to ‘Jesus Shuttlesworth,’” said Greathouse.

Ray Allen played a high school basketball star named Jesus Shut-

tlesworth in the 1998 movie “He Got Game” alongside Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. The moniker followed Allen, one of the best three-point and free throw shooters in NBA history,

onto the court. Although the shirt was sent in 2013,

Allen wasn’t seen wearing it publicly until two years later, when John Cali-pari, head coach of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, posted a photo with Allen onto his Twitter account.

Soon after the image appeared on Twitter, USA Today’s “For the Win” posted a brief article with a headline declaring that Ray Allen was wearing “the greatest T-shirt ever.”

That’s when the design first began to catch on. Fast-forward to June 2016, when the Cavaliers faced the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals. Greathouse and Arnold used their previous approach to get some “Jump-shot Jesus” T-shirts into the hands of current Cavaliers players.

This time, it really paid off. In early June, Cavaliers small

forward Richard Jefferson showed shooting guard J.R. Smith wearing the “Jumpshot Jesus” T-shirt in a Snapchat video. “‘Jumpshot Jesus’ — that’s your new nickname!” Jefferson said to Smith, who later posted an Instagram photo of himself wearing the T-shirt in a group photo with teammates.

It garnered enough attention that WKYC, a news station in Cleveland, posted an article directing people who wanted to buy the shirt to the Beautiful Demise website.

Following the NBA Finals, Kyrie Irving was also spotted wearing the now-famous T-shirt in the Bahamas.

The catchy, hard-to-forget moniker of “Jumpshot Jesus” has helped in-crease Beautiful Demise’s visibility — and sales. “All you have to do is search ‘Jumpshot Jesus,’ and there’s only one

Actor Chris Mast as Beautiful Demise spokesman “Neil Pencils.”

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place to get the shirt,” says Greathouse. Since Ray Allen was first spotted

wearing the T-shirt a year ago, Beau-tiful Demise has shipped orders to 11 different countries. The Cavaliers’ championship victory has led to a surge in sales over the past month.

Making the connectionOther than selling their apparel

online and at their showroom on West Antrim Drive, Beautiful Demise has a relationship with The Vault, a retro sports apparel store with locations in downtown Greenville and Charleston. The store mainly carries licensed NBA, NFL, MLB and college apparel, but “then there’s a section that makes you think, ‘That’s different,’ and that’s our section,” explains Greathouse.

Beautiful Demise’s “Tiger Tee” and “Titus Elephant” T-shirts are popular sellers at The Vault because of the presumed connection to the mascots for Clemson University and the Uni-versity of Alabama. However, Great-house says neither T-shirt has an in-tentional association.

“Our tiger T-shirt has nothing to do with Clemson, but because we’re in this area, that’s the interpretation,” he says.

The next stepsGreathouse and Arnold will soon

travel to Surf Expo in Orlando, Fla., to showcase their products to store owners and retailers from all over the world. These types of events open up potential opportunities for their brand to catch on virtually anywhere.

“It’s possible our brand could hit in Japan before it ever becomes big in the U.S., which would be fine. However it happens, it happens,” Greathouse says.

The success of “Jumpshot Jesus” will

allow Greathouse and Arnold to work again with Kuczek on some future designs. One in the works is a foot-ball-themed “Juke Jesus” T-shirt.

“We’re definitely looking for growth, but our main focus is the quality. And that’ll never change,” Greathouse says. “We enjoy what is happening with Beautiful Demise, and with patience we will continue to carve our niche in the game.”

BEAUTIFUL DEMISE

Founded: February 2012

Products: 80+ products available for sale online

Price tag: $31+ for T-shirts; $10 for socks

In stores: Beautiful Demise — 215 W. Antrim Drive, Greenville, The Vault — 213 N. Main St., Greenville

Online: beautifuldemise.com

THE RISE OF THE T-SHIRT • More than $20 billion is spent a year on T-shirts in the U.S. • “Push for perfection” has led to higher costs for consumers. Labels like Beautiful Demise are focusing

on producing T-shirts made from top materials and with top construction. • Rising cotton prices have also affected the cost of T-shirts. • T-shirts were first worn by men in the Navy more than a century ago and then became a “workplace

staple” among blue-collar workers. • Hollywood icons Marlon Brando and James Dean popularized the garment, and the popularity of

T-shirts has continued to increase. • Today, T-shirts are the most purchased men’s clothing item. Each American owns about 15 T-shirts.• The online original-design T-shirt sales industry is expected to expand until 2019, due to the ease

and accessibility of both the internet and e-commerce as well as the increase of disposable income among consumers.Sources: Wall Street Journal, NPD Group, IBISWorld, Cotton Inc.