After finding out Thomas had to leave Madison, Wisconsin, two months before graduation and move back in with his mom, he was lost.
All of his job leads fell silent or would suggest touching base “once this is over” — a vague plan for his future. After his 5th week of feeling no closer to a career, he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.
One morning, in what felt like a fever dream, it popped into his head to make extremely soft clothing for people. Thomas’ concept centered around the idea that many people, like himself, were sitting at home and in need of comfort. He started his journey with a simple Google search, “how to start a clothing line?”. After reading almost every article there was, it seemed that his only option was to pay someone a lot of money and have them do everything for him. Instead, Thomas decided to take on the entire operation himself one piece at a time. He deconstructed every facet of what he needed to start and compartmentalized it all into design, marketing, and operations.
After teaching himself Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and Shopify, he started to build buzz around his fleece-lined sweatpants and long-sleeve “Quincy” (an homage to his late grandmother). Before Quell even had a product, Thomas garnered over 1.5K followers on Instagram through graphic designs relating to the products. He kept his plans quiet to his family and friends for fear that they would think he was going stir-crazy (which of course he likely was).
After 4 months of collaborating with an overseas factory through 3 sample runs, Thomas finally had a design that was soft and sleek enough. Launching the product presented a whole new set of boundaries, which included dancing around Instagram and Facebook’s tricky online shopping qualifications. After creating a website and running a low-budget photo shoot, it was time to go live. Between his bedroom looking like a warehouse and the constant fires running a company brings, Thomas has found a new passion that brings him fulfillment.
