Southern Shirt Company founder Bryan Webb reveals how he leveraged University resources in the creation of his budding business.

Just 10 minutes south of campus sits a small brown office building complete with dark-green accents, bright green shrubbery and a roof that looks more like a bluff than a slope. Passing by, it might register as a doctor’s office or a real estate brokerage, but that’s not what lies there.

Between Hargrove and Palisades is the headquarters of a young, but fast-growing business: The Southern Shirt Company. The maroon polos, pink sweatshirts and aqua-green swim trunks that fill the room are the bread and butter of the young company, whose earnings have skyrocketed from $400,000 in 2010 to $5 million in 2013 and more than $10 million dollars last year.

Bryan Webb, a UA alumnus who graduated in 2010, founded the Southern Shirt Company during his freshman year at the University.

“If I wanted something, or if I wanted to do something, I didn’t want to rely on anybody or ask my parents for money or anything,” Webb said “I remember in kindergarten, during naptime, I would bring in toy soldiers – I knew which ones that people wanted the most, and I’d trade them for quarters so I could get extra popcorn at lunch.”

That desire and drive to find new hustles would eventually lead Webb to bigger things. The Southern Shirt Company was founded out of a desire to find some spending money and an unsatisfactory experience with an established apparel corporation while he was ordering shirts for a fraternity party.

“There was someone else that was [making T-shirts],” Webb said. “I wasn’t happy with the way they handled things, so I went, ‘Hey, I think I can do this myself.’ For me, when someone doesn’t do something the right way, or treat me the right way, but has something I want, then I’ll figure out some way that I can just do it myself.”

Webb immediately began to design shirts, taking advantage of University resources in his new pursuits. 

“I went to the D&R Lab at Alabama and taught myself graphic design,” Webb said. “I still remember using an old-school mouse with the little scrolly wheels … I just started out making simple designs, found [a] local screen printer and went, ‘Hey man, give me some good prices, and I’ll grow with you.’”

The catalyst for Southern Shirt was Webb’s founding of Greekfest, an annual festival hosted on campus that sported musicians as big as hip-hop legends Bone Thugs-n-Harmony in 2010 and Nelly in 2012. Sponsored by Costa Del Mar, Webb founded Greekfest with the intent of growing the Southern Shirt Company.

“Eventually I was like, ‘I need an event that I can sponsor and make all the T-shirts for,’ so I reached out to Costa Del Mar,” Webb said. “The first Greekfest was actually not on campus. There were too many rules and regulations to deal with, so we ended up renting an old horse showing arena in Northport, and I pulled together a couple fraternities … We had Eric Church, before he was big, and the Marshall Tucker Band [as our two acts].”

The event proved to be a hit. As Webb tells it, busloads of people were taken from fraternity row to Northport. The University would eventually step in and aid in orchestrating Greekfest. 

Eventually the Costa Greekfest was moved to the fall as a way to kickoff the school year, before being nixed by the Interfraternity Council after the last show in 2015.

In addition to eventually developing relationships with Comfort Colors founder Barry Choulinard and Vice President Kevin Camisa, Webb also utilized office hours on campus and various labs and technologies in the development of his business.

The pool of resources that today’s students can pull from has grown exponentially, as James Johnson, a second-year MBA student, noted.

“Mr. Webb would not have been here and been able to experience some of the resources that are available to every student now, some of those being the data analytics lab that opened in spring of 2018 over in Bidgood,” Johnson said. “[As a result of a] big donation by Ms. Marillyn Hewson, we’ve been able to open up a whole new analytics specialization … If you’ve never been, I encourage you to check it out.”

Michael Pearce, director of strategic engagement for the UA library system, knows that the resources available to students from all colleges are wide-ranging.

“We’ve got a lot of different stuff that’s available to students,” Pearce said. “We’ve talked about database products and Scout. We’ve talked about the fact that we loan equipment. We’ve talked about the fact that we have audio, video and print production capabilities. We’ve talked about the whisper booths.”

A resource for some students could, one day, be Bryan Webb. Cognizant of the advantages and opportunities allotted to him from his experiences at the University, Webb is now looking for students who are interested in a potential internship opportunity, as well as talents who would be interested in modeling for future catalogues. Looking back on his time in school fondly, Webb wants to provide similar opportunities to students with motivation and drive.

“I want to reach back out to some of the professors and things that I worked with,” Webb said. “And on a side note, I think a lot of the things I did made school more interesting and made me want to learn more and do things.”