Whats up everyone? Thanks for checking out ColoradoCool Apparel!!! Truly appreciate every site visit we get! My name is John, I founded ColoradoCool and with ALOT of help from some amazing friends/family members of mine, have seen it develop into what you see today! I'd love to tell you about how it went down!
As I started my professional design career working as a production artist at Zephyr Hats (Loveland, CO), I realized three things fairly quickly. First, at a lower level position I was not going to get to be as creative as I would have liked to be. Second, working full time as a designer in an area I thought was really cool I was getting much, much better at my craft compared to my half assed approach I had taken in college. Third, going home and kickin back PBRs everyday after work like I did in college was not going to lead to the career I dreamed of having as a designer.
So, I began spending a lot of my free time coming up with my own t-shirt and hat designs, just trying to get better as a designer and having fun being creative. My designs seemed to have a common element in that they were all related to Colorado in some way, I had grown up in Colorado and so much of my art over the years included mountains and were associated with the outdoor activities that living in Colorado includes.
Before long my new endeavor had become much more focused, I had come up with the name "ColoradoCool" and created a logo to go along with it. I wasn't actually planning to create a company, but it was fun to have a direction and concept to build on everyday. As some designs hit their fourth, fifth, sixth revisions and became more polished, I started realizing there might be something here! There are already a lot of great Colorado Apparel companies out there, but my Colorado themed designs were different because I wasn't basing it all around the Colorado flag. I wanted to challenge myself to think more outside the box regarding what I felt made Colorado and the people here so special. Living with two climbers (my good friends Mikey and Emily) it was no coincidence I found myself designing shirts like "The Ascent".
This brand is not about me and what I love about Colorado, its about everyone in the world who loves Colorado and the Colorado lifestyle. And while I love the flag and the state it represents, I also didn't love how whenever I would wear a basic Colorado flag shirt on a college campus or downtown somewhere, I would see ten other people with basically the same shirt. That is why we didn't use the Colorado flag in our designs at all the first few years, I wanted ColoradoCool to be unique and stand out among the other Colorado apparel brands. We do recognize how epic the Colorado Flag is however, it is so associated with state pride that we have began working it into some designs, but in our own unique, creative ways.
Its been amazing to see how the brand has grown, and not just because of the time I've put in, but because of other people. My roommates Mikey, Emily and my brother Steve were huge in helping me get the brand going and I'm not sure I would have gotten it up and running without them. After about a year of running ColoradoCool Apparel, I began dating my girlfriend Erika....and to be honest she is the reason most of you have even heard of ColoradoCool. She has taken our social media/overall marketing presence to a whole new level and the brand would be nothing close to what it is now without her contributions. She hasn't done it alone however, our many IG brand ambassadors are out there all over Colorado and the whole world reppin the gear, getting photos, giving us feedback, living that Colorado Lifestyle! This is what I want the brand to be all about, people who relate to the designs and the lifestyle we are promoting reppin the gear and giving ColoradoCool meaning. Without that we don't really have much of anything, so thank you to everyone who reps our brand, we truly appreciate it! As things grow we absolutely promise we will be looking to give back to the Colorado community, whether its putting money and time into environmental preservation or hookin the less fortunate up with some gear, we will absolutely be in involved in those sorts of things moving forward as the resources become available.
Hope to see you all out and about enjoying everything this great state has to offer!!!
Cheers!
John