When Karthik Shanadi pitched the idea of making custom T-shirts for fraternities and sororities to one of his college friends, he was a junior at the University of Florida with little savings.
His brother and now business partner Luke McGarlin jumped at the opportunity. Young entrepreneurs started “brokering deals through text messages,” Shanadi told Business Insider.
Their first order was from a sorority that needed a custom shirt for an upcoming social gathering. The order was $3,000, which he technically couldn’t afford, but Shanadi worked out the final terms with a local vendor to allow him to “buy now” and “pay later.” Did.
This allowed them to use their limited savings to launch the brand Greek House. Shanadi estimates he spent $500 upfront to incorporate, launch the website, and put cash in the bank.
The friends graduated in 2014, got full-time jobs, and continued building their brands on the side until 2016, when they both quit to focus their efforts full-time on Greek House.
The company’s Fraternity House project has evolved into four apparel brands: Greek House, College Threads, Threadly, and Athlete Threads, and generated seven-figure revenues in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Business Insider verified the revenue through the company’s third-party accountant.
Shanadi, who grew up surrounded by an entrepreneurial spirit in family-run restaurants in Bangalore, attributes much of her success to investing in technology early on.
“We quickly realized that we needed to invest in technology to support the growth of this business,” he said. “So we ended up investing in a website, which was our first investment, and an order that basically allowed us to digitize all of these text messages on our platform. We are also investing in management systems and technology.”
By leveraging technology to optimize their business, which ultimately allowed them to expand to four brands, they were able to differentiate themselves in the highly competitive apparel industry. “Many of the legacy companies in this industry were manual or slow. We were able to automate, and we were able to do it quickly, so we could really disrupt the market with this technology. I did.”
If you lose everything and have to start your business from scratch in 2024, you’ll think about other underserved industries around technology.
“You basically look for industries where you can leverage existing technology and find very large markets where the technology is not serving that market base,” he said.
To narrow it down further, he asks himself four questions. “What am I passionate about? What is the big market? What is the problem? How are we going to solve it?”
That led him into the sports industry, which he thoroughly enjoys and where he sees opportunity. “The sport as a whole is becoming very popular around the world and across the United States, so we’re looking to find a way to really break into this industry. That space will be key.”
Specifically, a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that allows student-athletes to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) creates a huge opportunity for college sports.
“A lot of people are trying to figure out how to support all 450,000 athletes,” Shanadi said. His latest brand, Athlete’s Threads, came out in the wake of the NIL ruling and has already surpassed three other brands in terms of revenue. More specifically, she added, “I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on Division 2 and Division 3 athletes, and women’s sports as a whole is very underserved.”
To best understand and solve problems in your space, consult industry experts and ask them about the challenges they face. He noted that the more people you talk to, the better you’ll be able to understand whether it’s a common issue in the industry. If so, you can start thinking of solutions, but before you try to solve anything, you need to make sure that the problem exists.
After you come up with a solution, continue the validation process by asking the same people if your solution is worthwhile.
“I think the first thing I do is validate the idea before I commit to everything,” Shanadi emphasized, adding, “Nowadays, there are tools and tools that help you validate your ideas before you commit to everything. There are a lot of resources out there,” he added.
That being said, eventually you have to jump in. “If I had to do it all over again, I would pick one problem and do a lot of research on that problem,” he said. “But it’s not enough research to stop me from moving forward.”
