Fits that hit close to home

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2022 (1392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People started asking questions when two guys showed up to a Manitou curling bonspiel wearing the town’s outline on their sweaters.

At the time, Brooks Keen and Paul Thorleifson didn’t think much of it. They weren’t planning on spending 2016 making clothes for their inquiring neighbours.

Fast-forward through a global pandemic, more time at home and a chance to launch a business. Manitou residents are wearing the sweaters. People from Morris to The Pas are wearing the sweaters.

In less than two years, Towns Apparel — Keen and Thorleifson’s venture — has reached 236 communities, most within Manitoba’s bounds.

“The idea just kind of came about, like, ‘What if we take this (design), but with any town?’” Keen, 29, said.

Canadians can contact Towns Apparel with a request for their small community. As long as 10 or more people order, the company will produce sweaters and shirts showcasing the location’s layout in a minimalist design.

Over 175 communities have been printed, and many others are pending, having not yet met the minimum order.

Keen and Thorleifson started with Manitou, where they’d grown up blocks away from each other. Some days the best friends would play hockey or baseball; on others, they’d collect neighbours’ recycling for a profit and bike it to the local depot.

Both moved to Winnipeg at 18 and have lived together, in the city, for much of the past 10 years. While in Osborne Village, Keen drew a tattoo idea — an outline of Manitou — which Thorleifson took a liking to.

Keen ditched the tattoo. Instead, he and Thorleifson printed the design on two sweatshirts, which they wore at the 2016 curling bonspiel in their hometown.

“A bunch of people (were) asking, ‘Oh, what’s that?’” Keen said. “We knew there was a little bit of interest… (but) it kind of sat on the back burner.”

The topic of starting a business came up sporadically over the next few years. Neither potential entrepreneur had time. Keen is a project manager with a degree in environmental design; Thorleifson, 28, has been pursuing his CPA designation.

Still, the outline of Manitou loomed — it hung on their apartment wall after Keen cut it out of plywood at a job site.

“It was kind of being in that first quarantine that spurred us to really put it (all) together,” Thorleifson said.

The duo bounced ideas off each other in their Wolseley apartment while working from home. By spring of 2020, Thorleifson was opening a business bank account and Keen was creating a template and searching up aerial views of small towns.

“I was sort of like, ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s just launch it,’” Keen said. “But (Paul) was always sort of pumping the brakes, like, ‘No, we need to have things at least somewhat figured out.’”

They launched in June 2020 with clothes for Manitou, Pilot Mound, Carman and Morden. They had social media accounts and a Google Form for ordering, but no website.

“It blew up,” Keen said. “The first day or two, I think we were both just on such a high.”

Keen responded to Facebook and Instagram messages requesting certain towns be added to the order sheet; Thorleifson added the areas and watched the forms roll in.

Neither could say how many communities customers requested within the first couple days, but it felt “near 100,” Keen said.

“It’s pretty wild to me that people actually trusted us enough to place an order,” he said.

Most designs weren’t available to view online, so people were blindly picking products, Thorleifson added.

Groups from Alonsa, Carberry and Cartwright were placing orders. After the first round, Keen and Thorleifson noticed they hadn’t put a delivery method on their Google Form.

They found themselves packing Keen’s truck “to the gills” one weekend and taking a massive road trip. A social media update would inform communities when the duo would be in their town.

“I think it was well over 1,000 kilometres on Brooks’ truck (that day),” Thorleifson said.

They’d park at a central spot and community members would stop by. Some would take for neighbours; in one instance, a woman distributed to everyone. In another, strangers told Keen they knew his parents.

“(It’s) just the web of small-town Manitoba,” Thorleifson said.

Word of mouth has spread like wildfire, according to the entrepreneurs. Customers corral their peers to meet the 10-order minimum (in place because of print shop requirements).

“Sometimes I think that the number of sweaters we sell is completely divorced from the number of people in the town,” Thorleifson said. “There’s been towns where it’s barely more than an intersection… and they’ve sold way more than one sweater for every person.”

Snowflake, Man., which has maybe two major roads, has 63 shirt purchases. Baldur, Man. has around 300 residents and about 90 Towns Apparel buys.

The company has expanded to custom prints for farms, golf courses and lakes. It has shirts for Alberta and pending requests from Saskatchewan.

“If you’re proud of where you’re from, we want to help you show that pride,” Keen said.

For now, Towns Apparel remains a side hustle, though its owners say they’d consider eventually doing it full-time.

People can place orders on Towns Apparel’s website, townsapparelco.com, which has shipping options.

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca