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- March 29, 2009
By: Edward Kenney, The News Journal
Teens deliver style -- and a message
Middletown
students' clothing company offers positive T-shirt designs that their classmates
dig
By: EDWARD L. KENNEY/The News
Journal
Posted: March 29, 2009
Earlier this month, when three students at
Middletown High School made their senior-project presentation about their own
clothing-design company, Principal Donna Mitchell
took a deep breath.
"I said, 'Did you create this company as a result
of the senior project?' And they said, 'No, we created it last year," Mitchell
said. "It really stood out. It was sustainable. We knew five or 10 minutes into the presentation that this was more than
something they did for the senior project alone."
The seniors -- Andre Woodley Jr., Ronald Daughtry
and Najee Briggs -- created their Internet-based fashion company early last year
and figured they might as well use it as their
senior project.
"We thought this would be the perfect way to stay
focused and keep everything on track," said Briggs, 17, who is in charge of the
company's clothing promotion.
The Alter Ego Clothing Line, as their enterprise is
called, is not yet in full-production mode.
The partners are still high school students, after
all, and they have to concentrate on completing their senior
year.
But they have sold some promotional shirts to other
students who have worn them to school, creating walking advertisements for the
venture.
"We're getting good comments all the time," said
Woodley, 18, who serves as the company's manager. "They say, 'Oh, snap, I want
that shirt.' It's different. Not many people have
it."
"I think it's also because we made it," added
Daughtry, 17, the company's chief financial officer. "Somebody from their school
is actually coming up with clothing. They can go
back to their neighborhood with a totally new shirt. Not that many people have
it yet, so it's unique. That's our biggest gimmick."
The students formed a seven-person design team,
including themselves and a couple of former Middletown High
students.
The focus so far has been on
designs for T-shirts, although they want to branch out to other types of
clothes. The promotional shirts have sold for $15 to $20. They send their designs to a company that prints them on shirts and
ships them back.
The partners, all Christians, have focused on
creating positive designs -- images that incorporate angel wings, crosses and
birds to counteract the skulls and darker images
they see on some commercial shirts.
The students have researched their market audience,
targeting their clothing to consumers, male and female, between ages 13 and 30.
They advertise on MySpace, through fliers and a
promotional party where the shirts were shown off to guests. They have
specialized in custom-made shirts for dancers, including hip-hop and break
dancers, because that customer base likes to wear
fashions that will stand out in the crowd when they perform in
competitions.
The trio of entrepreneurs also created a YouTube
video about their company to help promote it, and they are planning a fashion
show in July.
All of them plan to go to
different out-of-state colleges, but they will keep in touch and hope to develop
their venture into a larger enterprise when the money starts rolling
in.
The
students became friends after they moved recently to the Middletown area.
Woodley moved here from North Carolina, Briggs from New York and Daughtry from
New Jersey.
"When we moved here, we realized there wasn't
that much to do in Delaware, and there wasn't anyplace to shop," Woodley said.
"What we were interested in was music,
dance and fashion."
"And money," Daughtry added.
"I've got a family to help," he said. "I just want to make
sure everybody in my family is financially stable."
Two of the students have taken business courses
at the school, including in accounting, marketing and entrepreneurship, and
Mitchell said it is heartening to see them apply
the skills they have learned in a business of their own.
They also have learned how companies must sometimes
be flexible, right on down to what they can call themselves.
"They're in the process of applying for a
copyright," Mitchell said. "Their name Alter Ego is being used for a hair-care
company, so they're refiguring that. They're looking at making the E a 3. And there are three of them, so it's kind of a relative
3. The irony is they're all doing this at the high school level. I was just
impressed by their business sense."
ON THE WEB
Go to www.myspace.com/atr_egoe for more
information about the Alter Ego Clothing Line and to see some of the company's
designs. For shirt orders, call Andre Woodley at
344-8795.
Picture #1: From left:
Middletown seniors Najee Briggs, Ronald Daughtry and Andre Woodley Jr. created
their Internet-based fashion company early last year and figured they might as well use it as their required senior project.
The partners, all Christians, have focused on creating positive designs --
images that incorporate angel wings, crosses and
birds to counteract the skulls and darker images they see on some commercial
shirts.
Photograph by: The News Journal/ROBERT
CRAIG
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