The Spark Behind the ‘Here for Good’ Movement
Sloan Coleman discusses her idea to generate revenue during the coronavirus pandemic.
The idea for the “Here for Good” initiative was simple: Save St. Louis businesses one T-shirt at a time.
Podcast chapters
3:11 How successful the Here for Good campaign has been
4:30 How Here for Good spread across the country
5:30 The long-term effect of the campaign
Sloan Coleman, co-owner of print shop Tiny Little Monster, created an online store featuring logoed T-shirts for individual small businesses that choose to participate. Customers purchase a tee for $20, half of which goes directly to the business, the other half goes toward T-shirt production, packaging and to pay Tiny Little Monster’s staff.
Sloan Coleman, co-owner of Tiny Little Monster in St. Louis
“We were watching our sales number drop to nothing, and in speaking with some of our most reliable customers realized that we’re all in the same boat,” Coleman says. “Fear, closures and social-distancing habits are slashing small business earnings to the bone. Something had to happen. We print T-shirts so we came up with this idea to sell T-shirts on behalf of local small businesses as a way to generate a different source of revenue for them.”
Within five days of opening the store locally, more than 40 business owners submitted T-shirt designs. Soon after, thousands of dollars in T-shirt sales and donations were delivered directly to small businesses.
Coleman’s idea sparked a movement in the screen-printing world, which has been as hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic as the rest of the business community. Tiny Little Monster encouraged other shops to copy its Here for Good model, and shops across the country have had success doing just that.
“We’re just trying to do our part,” Coleman says. “We’re trying to make sure that small shops are around forever – or Here for Good.”
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