UGP's House of Tees

The Gold n Blue 2010

Underground Rishi — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:50:29 +0000

Everyone knows that UGP loves its old school hip hop (check out this concert co sponsored by UGP Morgantown):

But lately, UGP has been the place to go for up and coming rappers. The latest is 6′6 240 (yeah, thats his name too). A local rapper from Morgantown, WV - he has written a rap for the WVU Football team the past 4 or 5 years. He recently got shirts made to promote his new album, “Hard Work & Dedication“. Look for his upcoming track “WV Girls” - coming soon! His Myspace page is www.myspace.com/mrdubvee.

The Gold n Blue 2010 Official Video (check out all the UGP sponsored gear!)

How Sweet The Sound…

Underground Rishi — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:11:01 +0000

I love it when UGP employees do cool things outside of Underground Printing (and inside Underground Printing). I found out today that one of our graphic designers, Ryan W. who is a very talented artist, won the “How Sweet the Sound” Community Art competition and had his art selected to represent the city of Detroit!

Ryan describes the competition and his experience:

“This was for a nation wide choir competition called How Sweet the Sound. It was like the American Idol for choirs and it was sponsored by Verizon Wireless. Verizon went to each of the host cities and selected one artist to rep the city in a painting, which they would use to advertise the event on billboards, buses , posters, newspapers (Detroit Free Press and Detroit News) and featured on tv and also have available for download as a wall paper background on your cell phone.

Back in February, a rep from Verizon emailed me out of the blue and asked if I would like to represent Detroit. How could you ever say no to that? It was the perfect sound board to portray how I see the city especially with everything going down in it right now with the auto industry, people’s homes and the whole Kwame thing. I finally was able to personally do something uplifting for the city.

When it came to Detroit, I was a distinguished guest and was asked to autograph the posters and postcards of the painting.
The painting has been to all eleven cities in the contest and now has been donated to the Metropolitan Detroit YMCA.

It was a really awesome experience.”

Congrats Ryan! You can check out his artwork below!

Swimmin’ with “The Sharks”

Underground Rishi — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:59:11 +0000

If you have ever seen the show “Shark Tank” on ABC, you know that there are a lot of long awkward pauses, that Kevin guy is a real jerk, and you need confidence, good negotiating skills, and a great product/company to get your investment money. Luckily UGP customer Sawyer Sparks, founder of Soy-Yer Dough, has all three in spades! Sawyer went on the show a couple weeks ago and used some shrewd negotiating and some Indiana charm to get himself a $300,000 investment in his company!

Soy-yer Dough is a non-wheat based alternative modeling clay (like Play Doh) for children who suffer from wheat allergies such as Celiac’s Disease. Congrats Sawyer, keep up the good work!

Sawyer on “Shark Tank”:

Soy-Yer Doh T-shirt:

UGP supports FOB Farah - and all our troops!

Underground Rishi — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:38:21 +0000

From time to time, Underground Printing gets requests for custom printed apparel from our troops while they are overseas. Its an honor and a privilege, and we are proud to do it. However, usualy, we never get to see our shirts in action. But the men and women of FOB Farah (FOB stands for Forward Operating Base - yes, I had to look that up) were awesome enough to not only take pictures of themselves wearing the shirts we printed, but to also fly an American flag over their base on August 4th, 2009 to show UGP’s support. We are humbled and touched, and the Flag that was flown was actually sent back to our West Lafayette store (where the order was placed) - where it now hangs proudly.

Thanks guys for allowing us to be a part of your day and thanks for all that you sacrifice for all of us over here in the homeland!

We are the Yaoki Ishii of fast growing companies!

Underground Rishi — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:19:11 +0000

Who is Yaoki Ishii? And what does that have to do with UGP?

Yaoki Ishii (see below) is currently the 989th ranked tennis player in the world. He hails from Japan, and from the looks of his picture, has an amazing serve complimented by excellent fashion sense.

Underground Printing (see below) is currently the 989th fastest growing company in America. We hail from Michigan, and while our serve is just so-so, we know we have excellent fashion sense.

The Inc. 500|5000 Fastest growing companies list is a very prestigious group to be a part of, and we are proud to be on it for the second straight year, moving up 267 spots from #1256 in 2008. Check out the our profile here and to learn more about the Inc 500|5000 List, go here

Follow Up: What Do You Do With 365 T-Shirts?

Underground Ryland — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:19:15 +0000

Earlier this year we posted a story about Jason. He had the inspired notion in 2009 to sell himself for money [hey, it's a recession!] His site www.iwearyourshirt.com started with the idea that he would sell “ad space” on himself, in the form of advertisers’ t-shirts. He would wear a new shirt every day in 2009, with each day being sold at face value for its day of the year, and all the while Jason would be blogging , taking pictures and videos, and generally doing his best to promote your group or organization while wearing your shirt around town.

Well on Monday August 10th (222 days into the venture and wearing his webhostingsearch.com shirt), Jason announced that the final day in 2009 had been purchased, Decemeber 31st for $365.

Congratulations to a novel entrepreneur who proved in the world of social media and advertising, the power of the t-shirt knows no bounds. He has plans for 2010 already in the works, so hit up the website and check some of the advertisers. Even Bonobos got in on on the action (December 14th) - and I thought they only made awesome pants.

UPDATE: Check out UGP on January 8th 2009 over at iwearyourshirt.com - Jason will be rocking one of our shirts!

Check out this interview with Jason from the guys over at Mixergy.com

Kzoo represented on Regis and Kelly!

Underground Rishi — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:34:07 +0000

Last week while Reej was out, Live! with Regis and Kelly held a contest called “Local to Live” where Local TV hosts and anchors had a chance to be Kelly’s co-host. Cities where two of our stores are located were represented: Jason Colthorp out of WILX-10 in Lansing and Jeff Varner out of WMMT in Kalamazoo were both on the show as co-hosts last week.

In fact, Jeff was nice enough to bring Kelly some gifts - including a shirt printed by UGP for the Kalamazoo Chamber of Commerce, proclaiming that “Yes…there really is a Kalamazoo”

Here’s the video (skip to 8:07 if you want to get to the shirt): Jeff Varner on Regis and Kelly

They then proceeded to sing a Glenn Miller ditty which I know cant get out of my head called “(I’ve got a gal in) Kalamazoo”. I seriously can’t stop singing it. And now I just found this video on youtube so i’m screwed. Please help.

Dancing with the…Professors?

Underground Rishi — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:38:58 +0000

You may have heard of Dancing with the Stars but Dancing with the…Professors? This hilarious idea comes from customers of our Indiana store, who use the event to showcase their talents for the hometown crowd. Below you can see them sporting custom printed track jackets and showing a Professor how to “get jiggy” (thats a technical ballroom dancing term).

UGP On Twitter!

Underground Ryland — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:49:29 +0000

Check out all our stores on Twitter for the latest in deals, promotions, giveaways, and the daily goings on around town!

@UGPDinkytown - Minneapolis
@UGPintheZoo - Kalamazoo
@UGPDubV - Morgantown
@UGPWisco - Madison
@UGPSteelCity - Pittsburgh
@UGPBoilermaker - West Lafayette
@UGPChicagoland - Chicago-land
@UGPHouseofPaign - Champaign
@UGPEastLansing - East Lansing
@UGP_IU - Bloomington
@UGPGoBlue - Ann Arbor

UGP Co-Founder Rishi Narayan’s interview with Blake from Actiontalk.com

Underground Ryland — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:40:41 +0000

We’re going to replace that ceiling tile one of these days, we swear.