About Us

When I first opened a custom t-shirt printing shop in a mall in San Francisco in 2011, I bought the wrong blank products, the wrong quantities, the wrong sizes, the wrong colors. I also bought the wrong printer, the wrong heat press, the wrong print papers, the wrong software and I tried to sell the wrong designs all in addition to not having sufficient training.

For 3 years, I had to go through figuring out and learning what works and what doesn’t and the above mistakes turned out to be the greatest (T-shirt) business school I ever had. What helped progressing quickly, is being in the mall right in front of customers, listening to what they need.

Here are the takeaways of my mall business:

One third of my t-shirt sales were sports related.
The second third was for matching t-shirts for couples, teams and families.
People buy sneakers “First” and then come to match it with a great shirt afterword. The rule is to start with the sneaker first if you are looking forward to a great looking matching outfit.

KICKSEA's designing process is entirely based on the matching sneakers rule and that's why our motto at KICKSEA is "Starting From The Bottom."

Now, in 2015, when I look back, I see punch of dots that were created during the learning process of what works and what doesn’t. KICKSEA is the result of connecting (or discounting) those dots. I now understand what Steve Jobs meant when he said the following quote:

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”