Tea master Shekar suddenly feels self-conscious. He’s just slipped on a brand-new T-shirt that bears a phrase from Avvaiyar’s Aathichoodi — ‘Aram seya virumbu’ — and sets out to tip some tea dust into a kettle. He’s the first person to receive a free T-shirt from Angi Clothing, as part of the team’s ‘Aram seya virumbu’ campaign. “We launched it two days ago,” says B. Raghavendar, who, along with D. Kumar, founded Angi in 2012.
The campaign aims to acknowledge everyday people who are of help to us in some way or the other. “One can buy a T-shirt from us for Re.1 and gift it to say, their newspaper boy, house help, or an auto driver and send us a picture to put up on our Facebook page,” he adds. “Everyone likes a good T-shirt, don’t they?”
Raghav and Kumar’s idea of a good T-shirt is that which “conveys something” about the wearer. What’s he like? Where is she from? What’s going on in their minds? To them, a T-shirt is a medium that can be used to tell a story. And Angi prefers to talk through Indian, specifically Tamil, folk art motifs.
“Many of us wear Bob Marley and Che Guevara T-shirts, with no idea who they are. We thought why not use images of people such as Periyar, Thiruvalluvar and Bharathiyar whom we are familiar with,” says Raghav. T-shirts with Tamil prints were just emerging at the time, and Raghav and Kumar caught the wave but decided to give the idea a twist. Their Thiruvalluvar is fiery; their Bharathiyar, tough.
“It all began with a casual conversation,” says Kumar. The 27-year-olds are friends from school. While Raghav is an electrical engineer, Kumar studied computer science. T. Nagar, the clothing hotspot of the city, has been their hangout all their lives. “I live here and have always been surrounded by textile shops,” says Raghav. “Perhaps that rubbed off on me,” he laughs.
With nothing but a vague idea of what they wanted, the two of them set out to find an artist. “It took us several months to get them to work on our concept,” says Kumar. Raghav wonders if they were taken seriously during their initial days. “We were in our early 20s then, walking from one artist to another. They probably considered us too dreamy to work with,” he says. Their Eureka moment came in the form of Periyasamy, a senior artist based in Thanjavur, who hand-painted ship names during his younger days.
“We conveyed our idea to him as best as we could and he sketched it on paper,” remembers Kumar. Soon, Angi’s characters took shape, one by one. Then began their arduous journeys to Tirupur. Much to their dismay, Raghav and Kumar discovered that most companies took on printing orders only in bulk. “We met with problems faced by any start-up. We wanted a small quantity, since we were just testing the waters,” says Raghav. Finally, they found a way to screen-print their designs on T-shirts. “Once we had the end product in hand, all I wanted was to sell just one; make five hundred rupees,” he smiles.
The duo sells their T-shirts online and has also opened a store recently in T. Nagar. They agree that they have a long way to go. “Everything we did was based on trial and error,” says Raghav. “Initially, we sold our products at exhibitions. At our first-ever sale, we barely sold anything. But from the next one onwards, we learned the tricks of the trade. From displaying the T-shirts attractively to promoting ourselves and talking to the customer, we learned everything the hard way,” he adds. “The journey was not easy,” feels Raghav. “But given a chance, I would do it all over again.”
