The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals. Sign up today!
Glow all out this weekend, thanks to Denver-based LazerShirts’, er, illuminating T-shirt (it lights up under U.V. lights). Coated in a special glow formula, the T-shirts, which retail for $20-$30, react to a U.V. pen that allows you to sketch any freehand temporary design you want.
The company is only six months old, but co-founder Bryan Gardner says LazerShirts is growing fast. Now, in order to keep up that pace, the pair is counting on a campaign they launched through Kickstarter.com—an online fundraising site to help bankroll creative ideas—to raise some cash.
The concept for LazerShirts was born after Gardner, a public accountant by day, and a graphic designer friend, Micah Lindenberger, were dabbling with a glow ink formula. The idea was to use the ink on designs for Lindenberger and another friend Matt Taylor’s urban indie T-shirt company, Devicious, but Gardner says the duo knew they had something big enough to be its own venture after watching how people reacted to their samples. “People were immediately attracted to the shirts, going crazy over them,” he says. “That kind of reaction was motivation alone for us to keep developing the idea.”
With just 10 days left in the Kickstarter campaign, LazerShirts still needs about $870 to reach its pledge goal of $7,000. And while we think the glow-in-the-dark factor has been done, and re-done (and done again), we dig this new, more-grown-up concept, which is what the company hopes will appeal to shoppers. “We wanted to create a clothing design that appealed to everyone, not just the rave scene crowd,” Gardner says.
Bonus: If you think you want a LazerShirt of your very own, pledge $20 (or more) to the company and get a shirt and pen.