Hey everyone, my name’s Alex and I’m the founder of Stay Vocal. Let’s start with a little background of Stay Vocal and the explain what exactly we do. I originally started out in Massachusetts, and wanted to make skateboards. This was in 2003, and while making the boards I would recycle t-shirts and put my logos on them to sell alongside the boards. After some time, I realized that the niche and idea of reusing clothing and re-doing it could really start a positive movement. Stemming from that idea, I decided to make Stay Vocal a company producing only re-used apparel and accessories.

I eventually moved out to Chico so my girlfriend could go to Chico State, and as soon as I got here I knew it was a great place for Stay Vocal. The whole community is really green and there’s a lot of potential for new things and ideas to flourish in such a positive area. There seemed to be a really great reaction here, so we’ve grown and continue to be a leader in the re-used movement.

More recently, we’ve really been able to push the brand and add some aspects of production that only strengthen our re-used theme. We were fortunate enough to have a host talk about our company on Good Morning America, and then have our link put on their site and the host’s twitter, so that was great and really increased sales and awareness.

As far as production, we’ve implemented a lot of tactics that save money and promote recycling. For example, we print all order forms on recycled paper from local businesses. We also use used boxes and packaging materials, especially cereal boxes to ship a lot of our stuff. Just about the only thing we don’t recycle is the tape! That’s about it for now, keep checking our site (www.stayvocal.com) and the Grid for new stuff, and do your part to make a change and a better life for us all. And most of all, stay vocal!