Teecycle Shirts Freshen Wardrobes and Waterways

Most people don’t exit a rummage sale thinking, “I could do that better…”, but for Tim Cigelske that inference helped initiate the business model for Teecycle in Whitefish Bay.

Teecycle offers an eclectic variety of gently-used, or recycled, T-shirts for roughly half the price they’d normally find. That premise alone may not sell shirts, though a less-recognized selling point is Cigelske’s conservationist ethic. Producing new T-shirts in bulk can wreak havoc on the environment and waterways. The store’s website projects that a new T-shirt, from cotton field to store shelf, requires roughly 713 gallons of water, that's the equivalent of more than 100 showers.

With $1 of every purchase going towards the River Revitalization Foundation (and the rest going to the website and scavenging efforts), Cigelske felt working with RRF led him closer to the principles he believes people and businesses needed to get back to, specifically the preservation of his local community and its water supply.

In fact, such environmental concern is what Tim and his wife Jess attribute their original enthusiasm for founding Teecycle to back in 2008.

“I was tired of seeing low-quality, high-price shirts everywhere I went,” Cigelske said. “It felt like a cheap trick, since those ‘flavor of the month’ shirts I’d see weren’t built to last two weeks from then, once the hype of the design had died down.”

While he understands fashion trends, Teecycle gives Cigelske the freedom of not having to adhere to them. The disappointment of thrift-store scavenger hunts, he jokes, could perhaps be solved by a visit to his store. 

“Instead of going to American Apparel to buy a shirt that looks old, people can often obtain the ‘real deal’ here, so to speak, and for much less.”

Cigeslske’s had a lifelong natural interest in vintage T-shirts, and of reusing things. In the context of his business, this is rewarding, as Teecycle has rather low, at times nonexistent, production costs. Yet despite the store’s disconnection from the retail models we’re all used to, this allows the store to provide a rare and competitive selection for roughly $13 a piece (shipping included).

Recycling shirts while making the best use of our resources is, to Tim and his wife, a simple way to do one’s part for the planet. After four years of scavenging and research, Tim feels his merchandise basically sells itself.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
“And because we don’t have any real production costs per say,” he adds, “I can buy my ‘business supplies’ by roaming around at rummage sales, friends’ houses, wherever…”

Tim’s responsibility for his two-year-old daughter, along with his job in the Office of Marketing in Communication at Marquette University, is not the only thing that’s changed for Teecycle over time. Furthermore, Cigelske’s involvement with the store sounds more like a hobby than a business these days.

“My work has definitely gotten more streamlined, since I haven’t been able to put as much into it as before,” he explained. “I like being home with my wife and daughter, so that’s made a big difference.”

Such obstacles haven’t dampened the quality of his business, though.

“The unexpected result of this, is that my goal can live on through whoever buys these shirts,” he explains, likening the shirts to heirlooms or the backstories of interesting people.

“People who buy [our stuff] can also be part of the anecdote behind what they buy – conversation pieces, in a way,” he said, citing both a 1988 Prince concert shirt and an awkwardly humorous garden-themed honeymoon design from the early ‘70s as some of the more colorful examples that he’s come across.

Cigelske said the most random t-shirts come from rummage sales and thrift stores, but that a healthy amount has reached him from all over the world, including Australia and Japan.

A glance at websites like Star500, Wolfgang’s Vault, or American Tee Shirt might reveal competition to some, but aside from those websites’ emphasis on vintage, Vault in particular seems geared towards nostalgic baby-boomers with money to burn.

“The thing is,” Cigelske said, “people can’t quite find the concentration (or character) of shirts on EBay and craigslist.” In other words, people who buy vintage stuff are pursuing a look, and you often can’t find that look for just a few dollars.

Anyone who’s gone to Goodwill with the hope of retrieving such merchandise and have been disappointed should probably check out Teecycle when they can.