CHAD MALLAM • The Battalion

Students find alternative ways to make money through entrepreneurship

By: by Kevin Burns

Posted: 9/5/01

The number of available workers has increased dramatically with the coming of Fall 2001, and competition for jobs is fierce.

This means there will be new faces scooping up half-eaten pickles at the movie theater, new smiles serving burgers and many disheartened faces of the unemployed seeking jobs within a system of campus-job bureaucracy. Students can be seen filling out job applications and loan forms until their fingers bleed.

However, there are other options. Ryan Ewing, a senior marketing major, and Josh Dayberry, a freshman computer engineering major, have found another method of earning extra cash flow — entrepreneurship.

Ewing is the owner, operator, manager and janitor of Northgate Vintage, while Dayberry personally launched www.SKERBLIP.com this fall.

Ewing’s business is tucked away above Campus Photo on Northgate and specializes in vintage T-shirts. Ewing started the business in a kiosk in the mall last year, but said eventually he started doing more online business and needed a bigger place to ship from. His customers range from college students looking to get away from today’s khaki and tees fashion trends to Japanese teenagers looking for a little American chic in their wardrobes.

“They are all T-shirts ranging from old YMCA tees, track tees, to band tees, to specialized sports shirts,” Ewing said. “I try to focus on everything from the ’70s and ’80s. It’s very rare that anything will sell that was made in the ‘90s.”

Ewing said his parents are very supportive of his business.

“My mom is involved — she is key to finding the shirts. She has a great eye and is definitely an integral part of the whole process,” Ewing said.

While he admits students are purchasing clothes his mom picked out, the complete process of finding and selling T-shirts is more complex than a two-person operation.

“Clothes are brought from all over the U.S. and some from outside,” Ewing said. “I have distributors that work with me from New York, France and elsewhere, who separate the shirts for me and after that, my mom sifts through those.”

Ewing estimates that his mom goes through 100,000 shirts each month.

“I don’t know what the story is behind the popularity, but there does seem a recent craze for them,” Ewing said. “I can remember ever since I was little, people always hanging on to favorite, old shirts. I think there’s something people like when they can hang onto something that’s older — maybe it takes them to a place in their past. Perhaps it’s just something that’s comfortable that allows them to feel more at ease to be themselves. Sometimes that is the case with these shirts. It’s a mixture of a lot of things, but definitely, I think, nostalgia is a major part.”

Ewing said he is not sure what the future holds for him or his business.

“That’s up in the air,” he said. “I hope maybe to keep pursuing retail or to become an entrepreneur in some form, to see how far this can take me — definitely venturing out on my own somehow. I have really enjoyed the idea of working for myself and setting my own hours … I don’t really know what’s in store, but that’s in God’s hands.”

Dayberry, who designs dynamic, or changeable, Website graphics, joins Ewing’s rank as a new businessman. The graphics, which are customized to automatically update themselves on the Website, are the substance of his entrepreneurship venture, Skerblip.

“I’d say the dynamic aspect of our Web pages is definitely good for the person who is purchasing the Web page,” Dayberry said. “The reason they bought it is because they don’t know how to [design graphics]. So if they ever want to change it, they have to buy again. But ours, being dynamic, are easier to change … so they can update it everyday — not knowing a thing about Web pages.”

Questioned on his motives to start his own business, Dayberry said, “I’ve been working with Web pages for four or five years. I worked for another company designing Web pages similar to the ones we make.”

Dayberry said he had a particular reason for leaving his previous job and starting his new business.

“Well, my former boss tried to take advantage of my youth,” he said. “I’ve read in the newspaper where people do exactly what I do, with maybe more experience, and get paid $90,000 a year. I got paid $6.50 an hour, which is a little different. You can look at that and say, ‘that’s an isolated incident,’ but I’ve seen $20 to $40 to $50 an hour for what I do.”

Dayberry said that students interested in starting their own businesses should be aware that it does take time and money. Dayberry offered his advice for potential entrepreneurs:

“I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound cliché, [but] I’ll say this: I didn’t have a problem with it because there is little investment, and there isn’t investment until you actually have clients. And once you have clients, you have money. So it’s been kind of easy for me since I didn’t have to worry about losing anything, and I can take on as many jobs as I want.”