FT: Cash from cheerfulness

By Rebecca Knight

When brothers Bert and John Jacobs were in their early 20s, they bought a beat-up old Plymouth Voyager minivan – nicknamed “the Enterprise” – stocked it full of T-shirts they had designed, and went on road trips up and down the east coast selling their wares on college campuses.

They covered their costs selling the shirts for about $10 apiece, but it was a meagre existence. They slept in the van, lived on peanut butter and jam sandwiches and every so often would scrounge to buy a pizza or rely on one of their customers to sneak them into a school cafeteria.

“People say, ‘Oh that must have been tough.’ But it wasn’t that tough, we were young and strong,” shrugs John, the younger by three years. “There was a hope it would lead to something big, but we were doing something we liked to do. We were selling our artwork, travelling, meeting new people, and watching the girls go by. On slow days, if the weather was decent, we’d toss around a Frisbee.” (more)