University of the Arts Student Creates "Walking Art Gallery" to Promote Young Artists

PHILADELPHIA (January 14, 2009) – TrickGo Clothing is not just another student-run start-up selling t-shirts. Owner Matt Trigaux, a sophomore multimedia major at The University of the Arts, has gone to great lengths to ensure that the apparel his burgeoning enterprise sells are works of art – literally.

TrickGo breaks the T-shirt start-up mold by offering student artist-designed T-shirts and TrickGo branded Ts, sweatshirts and beanies – all produced domestically in limited-edition quantities, individually numbered and custom packaged. T-shirts are produced in batches of less than 150 and rarely re-printed. Their custom ‘cut-and-sew’ sweatshirt introduced in January was released in a series of only 12 pieces. All profits from the artists' series Ts go directly to the artists. Featured for the last year in local Philadelphia boutique shops like Deep Sleep (54 N. 3rd St.) and Omoi (1608 Pine St.), TrickGo recently decided to pull its product for private distribution only in order to keep their product releases exclusive and detail oriented.

As his business grows, profit isn’t the only focus of the young entrepreneur. Trigaux’s primary goal is building community and conducting business “the right way.”

“When I came to Philadelphia,” the Darien, Conn., native said, “I was impressed with the creative community. I grew up in and around the high-end design industry and know how cut-throat it can be. I wanted to do things differently by enabling students to show off their skills in a different medium, to get their work into stores. We are in select boutiques and plan to stay exclusive. This company was started off of my top bunk-bed. This is a homegrown business, not a corporation.”

TrickGo (the name is a play on the pronunciation of Trigaux’s name) started with an ’80s picture of Mr. T in a suit and glasses “pitying the fool” who doesn’t read. On a lark, Trigaux, a freshman at the time, printed 50 shirts with this image and they were all snapped up by his friends in a week. Having tasted success, Trigaux said he “did what any sensible college student would do. I dumped my life savings into it.”

From there, in between his classes he found himself making business calls and taking meetings with banks. He pulled all-nighters researching other brands, figuring out everything from taxes to trademarks, and researching local boutiques. Trigaux has never borrowed money for the enterprise (“A big part of this is doing it myself,” Trigaux said) and continues to pour money he’s earned from other jobs into the company. He tapped his street smarts, entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge of start-ups – gained from his high school job as a videographer and designer for a local granola company, Bear Naked Granola – to start building the TrickGo brand.

He designed a logo that included a Volkswagen bus, known, he says, in creative circles to symbolize the “do it yourself” attitude TrickGo epitomizes. He put a wreath around the vehicle because he thought it was elegant, yet powerful. Logo in hand, he launched a guerilla marketing campaign by distributing 10,000 TrickGo stickers. Charting a business plan based on the dispersal of stickers may not follow the standard corporate model, but Trigaux knows his consumer. He began hosting Sticker Saturdays, in which friends showed up at a park and received a TrickGo T-shirt and 500 stickers, with their mission being to distribute every last sticker.

“I grew up snowboarding,” Trigaux said, “and kids go crazy for stickers. You can put them on anything. They’re tangible and it promotes a sense of belonging, community. By having that many stickers go out that quickly we began to see them everywhere. Slowly the stickers began to creep around campus, appearing on laptops and street signs across Philadelphia. More and more, people began to hear about my shirts and a small following began.”

Count among his followers the Philly Ad Club, which recently chose Trigaux as a “Rising Star,” as part of its College Outreach and Scholarship Program; and De Angela Duff, assistant multimedia professor at The University of the Arts, who recently awarded Trigaux the University’s Eddie Oliver Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, which is named after her grandfather. A small monetary award given to university multimedia students, the grant helps them pursue their entrepreneurial endeavors.

So, it’s now a little more than a year after the Mr. T shirt and TrickGo is set to launch its third product line in March. The line includes five artists’ series T-shirts and other Ts with names like “CMYK Riot” and “Urban Beauty.”

“With every iteration, every series, the design work gets better,” Trigaux said. “I’m as excited about this release as I’ve ever been. So much of TrickGo has been done through trial and error. I’m getting a better grasp on matters and we continue to grow a collective, a community of young, dedicated artists who want to be a part of what we’re doing.”

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