Shirting the Issue: Scott Boyers Sells His Thoughts on T-Shirts

If it weren't for Sonny Bono, Scott Boyers, of Shrewsbury, might not be as successful as he is today, and might not be in Northborough. Well, sort of. His success story has a little to do with Bono, Starbucks, ingenuity, timing, drive, circumstance and geography. It all got him here, as one of the most successful T-shirt (and coffeeshop) entrepreneurs around.

Boyers owns in Northborough with his wife Lala. If you've ever dropped in to this funky, eclectic coffeeshop-lunchstop, you'll notice the displays of eye-catching, thought provoking T-shirts throughout the store.

Shirts hang on displays, reading such things as "She wanted a cat. I wanted a dog. We compromised and got a cat" or "Pothead." Most are texts set over or aside a simple, but artistically catchy, edgy graphic.

There's a long history behind those shirts, the business, and Boyers.

Born and raised in southern California, Boyers went to school for graphic arts and developed a knack for screen printing. Just out of school in the late '70s, he says he chose making money over being an artist and dove head first into the T-shirt retail business.

"We were competing in a world with a lot of creative work," Boyers said. "There was a lot of complicated design work coming out in the surfing and album cover industry. Well, I had a knack for headline writing, and I just found it easy to write and sell headlines over art, and I wasn't as good artistically."

Throughout the '80s, his business blossomed in the spring break soaked Palm Springs. Palm Springs, where Sonny Bono eventually became Mayor.

"We had shops up and down the boulevard," Boyers said. "We developed the retail scene, and it was very successful. I found my niche. We had retail, wholesale and eventually manufacturing. We did very well, and then one day I met a fellow named Sonny Bono, and I almost thank him for getting me where I am today."

Boyers and his company supported Bono's run for mayor campaign, and "did everything we could to get him elected."

"I got the business community behind him," Boyers said, "and eventually he won the position of mayor. Basically, he then turned the whole town around, and decided to take a town that was a young vibrant one with a college attitude into a program that would be family oriented and focused on retirement. We battled for a couple of years. I thank him for turning me around but he ruined my young, progressive business."

Figuring out a way to survive in the business, Boyers turned his shops upscale, and catered to golfers with a resort wear line. It was the late '80s, and at that time there was a company in Seattle coming out that was just starting to creep in to southern California. It was called Starbucks, and you may have heard of it.

"I saw how I could sell $3 coffees," said Boyers. "I thought, well, maybe I could put lattes and cappuccino in my store, so I put a few carts in there. The combination did very well. I then built a couple of T-shirt stores with coffeehouse attitudes."

In the early '90s, in fact, the coffee started to outsell the T-shirts.

"I felt like, well, now we've got to make another change," said Boyers. "So my wife, Lala, and I thought, well, let's do a coffeeshop and put T-shirts up. We played with that idea and converted all our T-shirt stores into full-blown coffeehouses at the time."

After building up the businesses, in 1997, a buyer came along and made an offer. Lala was itching to get back to her New England roots. They sold everything off and moved east. The couple opened a kiosk, calling it Lala Java, in the Hanover Mall on the South Shore in 1998.

"Steven Tyler was a customer there," Boyers said. "That was our claim to fame."

Not particularly enjoying their time on the South Shore, the Boyers combed the state and opened a shop in Shrewsbury, and moved the family there. Located on Route 9, Lala Java stayed there for eight years until Price Chopper took over the property. "It forced us into a better area," Boyers said.

Opening at their present location in Northborough on July 7 of 2007 at 7 a.m. with seven employees, the shop - and its T-shirts - is thriving.

Still sticking with the combination of simple artwork and catchy, often short, sayings, Boyers has a variety of lines for sale in Lala Java, and throughout the country. Most recently, he just added a line called "Old Bones," which is geared toward "boomer humor" concentrating on some of the older sayings from the '60s and '70s.

Boyers is hard pressed to come up with his all time best sayings, but admits that one of his shirts "bought me a house."

"It's three words, but you can't print it," Boyers laughed. The shirt, which includes the words "spring" and "break" literally sold hundreds of thousands to kids on spring break in California in 1990 and 1991. Another popular all-time seller was "Come on Vacation, Leave on Probation," which alluded to the riot that had taken place in the area that year. One year, bikinis were banned in the area, and Boyers capitalized on the opportunity, selling the shirt "Wear a Bikini, Go to Jail."

Those shirts were a sign of the times-something Boyers constantly tries to reflect with his sayings, and you never know what will hit the cotton next.

"I have more headlines and designs filed than printed," Boyers said. "My wife always said she wanted me to insure my file cabinet."