Life Is Good founders Bert and John Jacobs
Contained in the cavernous constructing in New Hampshire the place Life Is Good prints and ships hundreds of T-shirts and different branded attire each day, the Boston firm’s ethos is spelled out in big letters above the manufacturing facility ground. “The whole lot is figureoutable.”
That mantra has steered the 30-year-old firm by way of turbulent occasions, together with the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s saved the optimism of its founders, Bert and John Jacobs, intact as they develop operations right here.
Enterprise has been regular since Life is Good opened its 500,000-square-foot manufacturing and achievement middle three months in the past in Hudson, the place it has had a presence for greater than 20 years. To maintain up with demand, 12 industrial direct-to-garment printers run 24 hours a day.
Throughout a current tour, a tiny drone buzzed across the new advanced, capturing footage for a advertising and marketing video that was being produced to tout the corporate’s new customized printing division.
Maintain it Easy — which quietly launched in Could however is getting a promotional push this month and its personal web site (keepitsimple.co) — gives customized service to corporations akin to eating places and rock bands that need T-shirts and different attire with their logos printed on them.
As a result of Life Is Good has hundreds of clean T-shirts saved on-site, the corporate can provide a 48-hour turnaround.
“That guarantees to be a really large enterprise for us,” mentioned Tom Hassell, the corporate’s president. “There are many individuals who do that, however they have an inclination to have longer lead occasions and fairly important minimal necessities.”
The customized work will assist hold manufacturing regular all year long. Life Is Good employs about 150 fulltime staff on the plant, however on any given day 50 to 150 non permanent staff be a part of the ranks based mostly on demand. Summer time tends to be the slower interval for the corporate.
“A part of it’s discovering the proper companions, as a result of throughout November and December we’re actually busy,” Hassell mentioned. “The primary couple of consumers that we’ve signed up for Maintain it Easy, their demand is in the summertime, which is ideal as a result of then we are able to hopefully be actually, actually busy through the summer time and actually busy through the vacation season.”
Bert Jacobs, who like his brother has the title of “chief govt optimist,” says the customized work will assist even out staffing on the new plant.
“Our enterprise is regular for 12 months, but it surely does peak in the summertime and peak at Christmas,” he mentioned throughout an interview together with his brother over Zoom. “Already we’ve acquired musicians and bands and many issues leaping on board. I simply got here from a convention, and a number of other mates with companies are going to begin printing with us.”
Strikes the corporate made in 2019 to carry manufacturing to the US to enhance lead occasions set the stage for Maintain it Easy.
“They have been between 12 and 15 months from artist desk to a product displaying up in a retailer or on our web site,” Hassell mentioned. “And we realized that on the earth of T-shirts, we had the power to make graphics about what was occurring right now, and the one approach we may try this was to carry the printing on-shore.”
Life Is Good clean T-shirts are manufactured in Peru, however its screen-printing work is now performed within the U.S.
“We purchased our first printer in 2019. It took us a couple of 12 months to get good at it, as a result of there’s truly plenty of analysis and growth related to printing on any new shade or cloth, and we have to guarantee that you could wash a product 15 occasions and have it nonetheless look nice,” Hassell mentioned.
The moved proved fortuitous when COVID-19 hit in March 2020, and retail shops shut down across the nation.
“Our wholesale enterprise went to zero,” Hassell mentioned. “It couldn’t have been a worse day of the 12 months for wholesale to close down as a result of that’s the starting of the massive delivery window to get T-shirts out for the summer time.”
With its lifeline seemingly shut down, Life Is Good contemplated chapter.
“Then we acquired collectively and we determined to deal with the alternatives, given the truth that we’re an optimistic firm,” Hassell mentioned. “We mentioned, ‘Properly, we now have these new machines. Everyone is experiencing the identical factor within the nation proper now, so let’s make some T-shirts.’”
Quickly the corporate was producing T-shirts with graphics that had pandemic-inspired inspirational messages like “Keep cool” and “Keep dwelling.”
“They bought like nothing I’ve ever seen in my profession,” mentioned Hassell, who joined the corporate six years in the past after stints with different attire producers and e-commerce retailers. “We made much more graphics concerning the quarantine, and it not solely saved the corporate, we ended up having a file quantity 12 months in 2020, although wholesale dropped 40% as a result of it was shut down for 3 or 4 months.”
Wholesale enterprise represented greater than 50% of the corporate’s revenues, Bert Jacobs mentioned.
“We actually have been type of compelled into an operational change, and the operational change didn’t simply get us by way of the pandemic,” he mentioned. “It did that — and we averted chapter due to it — but it surely type of launched us into this subsequent chapter, too.”
Life Is Good’s success through the pandemic by way of a line of T-shirts that projected optimism is the face of adversity additionally mirrored again upon the corporate’s roots, mentioned John Jacobs. He and his brother’s first brush with success after years of struggling got here just about as a fluke, when a batch of shirts they printed that mentioned “Life is Good” turned an prompt bestseller.
“The hope was, it doesn’t matter what’s happening with the financial system or if there’s a warfare happening, folks nonetheless wish to gravitate in direction of one thing optimistic,” he mentioned. “One of many issues that saved us within the pandemic was even when folks have been at dwelling on Zoom solely, they nonetheless wished to share one thing optimistic, talk one thing optimistic in an clearly very difficult time. The neighborhood type of rallied and saved us.”
The corporate’s potential to department out into customized work stems from how Life Is Good is consistently updating its product line.
“We create 60 artistic endeavors each single week, and that interprets to about 250 merchandise as a result of we’ll put the graphics on sweatshirts and T-shirts and tank tops and hats and issues like that,” Hassell mentioned. “We are able to push the bestsellers out by way of our wholesale channels inside weeks, versus needing to attend 12 or 18 months to get these merchandise on a retailer’s ground.”
Customers who purchase shirts and different attire by way of Life Is Good’s web site are literally ordering merchandise that don’t but exist. On the day we visited the plant in late Could, the corporate was gearing as much as fulfill one other bunch of buyer orders.
“We had good enterprise over the Memorial Day weekend, so we’ve acquired 45,000 shirts we have to print,” Hassell mentioned.
An indication inside Life Is Good’s new manufacturing facility in Hudson alludes to the corporate’s sense of optimism. (Courtesy of Life Is Good)
Making shirts to order
Life Is Good can print 14,000 shirts per day on every of its 12 business printing machines. Employees working the machines seek the advice of video screens as they feed shirts into the printers. Every clean shirt has a barcode that determines what design might be printed on it.
“Each single one among these shirts goes to have a distinct brand on it. And each one might be going to a distinct buyer,” Hassell mentioned as an operator fed shirts right into a printer. Shirts which have graphics on either side go into the printers twice.
As soon as these T-shirts are produced, they’re despatched for delivery. Inside a warehouse with 40-foot ceilings, 102 industrial robots made for the corporate by Geek+ maneuver round lengthy aisles, discovering product and transporting it to ready staff.
“That is referred to as a goods-to-person system,” Hassell defined as robots carrying stacks of bins buzzed round on the manufacturing facility ground.
“Prior to now, we used to have folks strolling up and down aisles such as you would do within the grocery retailer to choose items,” he mentioned. “And now the picker is identical particular person because the packer. The robots go choose up the racks and produce the merchandise to the folks.”
Employees use video screens to see which merchandise to seize from the rack when robots arrive.
A employee prepares a bundle for delivery at Life is Good’s new manufacturing and achievement middle in Hudson. The corporate’s 12 direct-to-garment machines make it attainable to print hundreds of customized T-shirts and different attire in a single day. (Courtesy/Life is Good)
The Life Is Good manufacturing and achievement middle in Hudson is dwelling to greater than 100 robots which might be used to maneuver merchandise across the warehouse and put together them for delivery. (Mike Cote/NH Enterprise Overview)
“You seize it, you flip round and there’s 80 buyer orders and there’s a lightweight blinking subsequent to one among them. You set it there, you hit the button, and by the point you flip round, the subsequent rack is already in place, and it’s telling you which ones product to seize,” Hassell mentioned.
The robots, which the corporate bought about two years in the past, have earned their hold, Hassell mentioned.
“The robots are principally taking away a really mundane activity of any individual strolling over there and looking out on the shelf and taking one thing down. Our choose price is 4 occasions larger per particular person than it was earlier than we purchased the robots,” Hassell mentioned.
The Hudson plant combines operations that have been previously unfold out in three buildings in Hudson and one in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Life Is Good at present occupies about 75% of the house within the plant, so it has room to develop.
“We’re way more bullish concerning the future than even the good previous that we’ve had,” Hassell mentioned. “We see enormous alternative right here within the U.S., and overseas is nearly untapped. We have now a small footprint abroad by way of some on-line marketplaces, however the world is our oyster.”