What?: An independent t-shirt and apparel company based in Cincinnati, OH that specializes in producing clever designs on higher quality tees. We do NOT use shirts made of cardboard! Each design has a designated non-profit that we donate 10% of profits back to. Some of these include Susan G. Komen & Keep Cincinnati Beautiful. Alternative Motive has bean featured on MTV several times for our creative designs and our philanthropy. Click here to see the MTV stuff!
When?: The company was founded in March 2006 and our retail shop is open 24/7 on the web.
Who?: Not sure how to answer this one.
Where?: www.alternativemotive.com 24/7 secure website. Shop responsibly, but purchase confidently! Always free shipping on orders over $30. Shirts are also available a retail stores. See list here.
Why?: Owner, Logan Wallace, not only needed a creative outlet, he wanted to feel good about what he was doing. T-shirts were starting to become very popular as an inexpensive piece of wearable art and a way to express oneself. Getting people to realize that their is a difference in the quality and durability of shirts was and still is an uphill battle. Success in the apparel industry is not easy, but we like a challenge.
How?: Our motto, “Letting the Cotton Speak.” If it’s a great shirt, it will sell itself and the customer will fall in love, wear it everyday, and tell their friends where to buy one. Repeat.
Bonus Answer!!!
What the hell does your logo mean?!: Ahhh, the most asked question. Here is the LONG answer.
What if I told you that I don’t know? When I was a kid (5 or 6 years old) I remember getting spots from time to time in my vision and when I blinked. Kind of like when you look directly at a camera’s flash. I had completely forgot about this until my senior year in high school ( Milford High School ). It was a Saturday night at my house in the basement, when there it was! Every time I blinked, I saw that image! I immediately remembered that it was the same image from my early childhood, so I drew it (while constantly blinking)!
Since that moment and throughout college ( Xavier University ), I was constantly messing around with the image. Changing the colors and using it in within different mediums, and still not knowing what it was the image was!
Three or four years past, it came time for me to create the name of my company. I wanted something that evoked the positive qualities of my business, without being too blunt and still being clever. After a couple days, I was perplexed. There were a couple decent ideas, but nothing excited me. So, I started writing down negative word’s and names that I would not associate my business with. One that I wrote down was, ulterior motive. I looked up the definition to get a better idea of what it truly meant. That’s when it came to me. I was striving to be an alternative to the standard t-shirt and apparel company, and my intent was to have a positive impact on the world. So, to me, the world ‘alternative’ had a positive connotation, providing something different and new. If you combine it with ‘motive’, which means this:
| 1. | something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing, etc.; incentive. |
| 2. | the goal or object of a person’s actions: Her motive was revenge. |
| 3. | (in art, literature, and music) a motif. |
| 4. | causing, or tending to cause, motion. |
| 5. | pertaining to motion. |
| 6. | prompting to action. |
| 7. | constituting a motive or motives. |
–verb (used with object)
| 8. | to motivate. |
It’s a positive play on the phrase ulterior motive. I freaking loved it, the wife loved it.
Now I needed a logo! It didn’t take long for me to decide that the image I had been drawing for twenty years was the absolute perfect fit. The meaning of the image still isn’t exactly clear, but it’s left for mine and your creative interpretation. I see an alternative looking American flag with two different sized people within it. Others see a house.
One of the best things about the emblem and the Alternative Motive name, is that it is not a concrete image. If I wanted stop creating and selling shirts and start a band ( probably a Rock Band band ), I could still use the two together. Although, I must say, that my Rock Band’s name is already Motivella. Another play on the word motive.
Thanks for reading! This is the first time that I have ever given the entire meaning of the company Alternative Motive, and I hoped you enjoyed it. Hopefully it will spawn some creative and entrepreneurial fire within you! Owning your own company is not easy, but starting the right kind can be fun and truly rewarding!
