Student Enterprise @ Purple Door

Background

Jordan Boon started his business in his first semester at University in 2005, after getting into trouble with the police over a spate of graffiti back at home.  He began to realise that people wanted to buy the designs that Jordan had previously used on walls so he started to spray paint designs onto t-shirts and proved to be an instant hit on eBay.  He kept with this idea creating a larger and larger selection of designs until he thought it would be better to have the professional machinery to print designs onto garments.  With the money that Jordan made from eBay, he bought an old van, market stall and all the equipment, and started up his business, ‘The T Shirt Man’.  He began to attend markets all across the South Coast for almost a year before purchasing his website (www.TheTShirtMan.co.uk) and heavily began pushing his business towards the student market. It was another year until Jordan realised he needed more space and took up residence in one of the student offices at the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise.

Current

Since then the business has moved from strength to strength keeping up to date with the latest machinery, and the finest garments. Now the website is completed and there is the possibility for people to create their garments online, an appeal that Jordan is in the process of promoting.

Another recent development of Jordan’s is the of multi award winning ‘Individual Threads’ an artist community fashion brand based on high quality and limited edition prints from local artist from across the country. For more information and to join his team visit www.individualthreads.co.uk

Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise Support

Jordan believes that the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise has been a great help to him and his businesses and believes that the main advantage of having office space with them is the continual help and guidance they can offer.  As well as this, he believes that PCE also link business to business and create a great network of companies that can help a business grow.

Future

The future of each company is a different one, the ideal situation Jordan would like to be in after leaving University is to hire someone to be in charge of The T-shirt Man, where all orders would be based online. This would give him more time to concentrate on his passion for art by using his time for Individual Threads to recruiting artists as well as attending fashion shows and getting garments into stores across the country.