Crooked Monkey: The _Heeb_ Interview

Micha Weinblatt is the 26-year-old founder and CEO of the online T-shirt store, Crooked Monkey. His shirts have been worn by Ryan Seacrest, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, and the company has been featured in Seventeen magazine, GQ, DC Modern Luxury magazine, the Washington Post Magazine and The Baltimore Sun. Heeb recently caught up with Weinblatt to talk about fame, fortune and funny Ts.

So just how big is the Crooked Monkey Empire these days?

Crooked Monkey was started four years ago. The Crooked Monkey Empire is expanding rapidly. We’re sold all over the states and internationally in Japan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia (my favorite) and England.

What type of numbers are we talking about?

We’ve sold about 180,000 T-shirts since we started. We’ll do a big thing for our 200,000th T-shirt, like the billionth downloaded app for the iPhone.

Does this mean that you have real offices now?

No. We’re still working out of [my parents’] basement. Keeping it real. We’ve got high school interns in our office, though.

Having interns is the true sign of success.

They keep us young.

What’s it like working out of your basement? Are your parents around a lot?

Yeah. For my birthday last year, my mom knew I didn’t like cake. So she brought down a pizza with a candle in it.

Are you still living at home?

No, I live in DC. I work in Potomac. I’ve lived in DC for the last one and a half years. I drive to my parents’ house everyday.

There’s something really funny and sweet about that.

Watercooler talk with my mom is priceless.

Do you guys have a real watercooler there?

No, my mom’s Iraqi, so we do tea instead.

How many other people are working for Crooked Monkey?

We have a showroom in New York City, a showroom in L.A. We have a printing facility in Columbia, Maryland, and one in L.A. We have a production manager out in L.A. Two graphic designers, two interns and a head of operations.

I’ve been seeing your shirts being worn by more and more celebrities. What’s your favorite celebrity sighting so far?

Ryan Seacrest. He’s huge. He’s like our generation’s Dick Clark. My favorite aspect of these celebrity sightings is that we don’t send them T-shirts for free. They actually go to Urban Outfitters or Fred Segal or wherever they shop, see our shirts and then pay real money for them. Considering how much free stuff they get, it’s cool to see them wearing Crooked Monkey shirts.

I have heard that you got the company off the ground by just asking all your friends to e-mail you funny slogans to put on shirts. How much of that is true?

It’s partially true. We would e-mail our friends our T-shirt ideas, because they’re better at laughing than making jokes, and we’d ask them what they thought was funny. Original shirt ideas: Picture of Smoky the Bear saying ‘Only you can prevent Chlamydia.’ That never made it. But some of our originals are still fan favorites. Our ‘I slid into third at Rachel’s Bat Mitzvah’ and ‘Butterface’ shirts are timeless. We’re going to relaunch the ‘Slid into third’ shirt with Heeb Magazine. We retired that a little bit ago, but I’ve been itching to bring it back.

Do you come up with all the slogans yourself?

I come up with about 90 percent. The other 10 percent is either e-mailed in or from the interns.

What’s your favorite shirt that never made it?

Sometimes the funnier, more subtle ones just don’t make it to production. One of my early favorites that never really caught on was, ‘No one reads your blog.’ It was made about three years ago when personal blogs were popping up. And they were real boring, but everyone had one. That one never caught on, because we are primarily a wholesale operation, and our store owners didn’t know what a blog was. We’ve got two Facebook shirts that we produced about two and a half to three years ago and they only made it to market about one and a half years ago, when the buyers finally knew what Facebook was. ‘Facebook Stalker‘ and ‘Facebook: It’s my day job.’ We’re also working on: ‘You had me at Poke,’ and ‘I just twatted.’

My favorite shirt that you guys ever made was ‘End Women’s Suffrage.’ Did you ever get any flack for that one?

That shirt garnered our first piece of hate mail. We posted it on our site at the time.

Have you ever been laid wearing that shirt?

I’m usually not getting laid while wearing a T-shirt.

Picked up a girl in that shirt?

No. But I was wearing the ‘I’m hunting Cougars’ shirt and got picked up by a cougar. She was with her daughter.

Your dad is a rabbi. Has he ever expressed concern or told you stop printing any of your shirts?

My dad is a practicing rabbi. But he’s a modern, hip rabbi. His sermons are always laced with jokes and my dad knows that to teach you need to use humor. He’s got one T-shirt he can wear, ‘Never Leave College,’ and that’s good enough. I try and keep him from the basement most times.

How do you feel being Jewish and growing up as a rabbi’s son has influenced Crooked Monkey?

As much as Crooked Monkey has some irreverent shirts, we do try to keep them somewhat clean. We try to toe that line between offensive and funny. Judaism teaches a lot about balance. Growing up as a rabbi’s son is an interesting life. I embraced it, and all my siblings did too, but it’s not easy. You have to be the perfect child. And Crooked Monkey’s T-shirts are obviously not the ‘perfect child,’ but we do run our business the way Judaism asks us to. Honesty, integrity, fairness, giving back to the community. Oftentimes, in business matters more than in T-shirt slogans, I’ll turn to my dad or Jewish scripture to see how we are supposed to deal with certain business issues that arise.

What was the first shirt that you made?

The first shirt I ever made, which was two years before Crooked Monkey was launched, was a pro-Israel University of Maryland T-shirt. I was president of TerPAC, the pro-Israel Group at UMD. I had an idea to create a T-shirt that all students, Jews and non-Jews, would wear around the university showing their support of Israel. I got funding from the Federation to give out 750 free T-shirts, and then Hillel gave me another grant to produce 750 more. Just the other day I was driving in Georgetown and spotted that original TerpZ for Israel T-shirt.

Let’s talk about your current fame and fortune. Is it nonstop celebrity parties now?

I wish. I was in L.A. the other week for the Maxim Hot 100 party. But DC isn’t really the spot where celebrities party.

Have you had any cool celebrity experiences, besides seeing them wear your T-shirts?

I’ve had a few wet dreams about some celebrities. Just kidding. I’ve gotten to meet famous entrepreneurs more than celebrities. I’ve met with Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, a couple of times.

That’s it? Everybody in Baltimore knows that guy.

Ha. [I met with the] Founder of Honest Tea. But you’re right. I should start hanging out with celebs more often.

Are you earning a living off the company?

The company is profitable, and has been profitable for the last three years. We do well. This year we’re up from last year, but retail sucks right now, so we’re real happy. But it’s definitely slowed this month.

What’s next for Crooked Monkey?

We just started to get into graphic tees, which you can see online. That’s been real exciting and has helped us out this year. Right now we’re focusing on those graphics that have done well for us. Stores are liking our direction. Then we’re going to look into posters and shot glasses. A flagship store might be in order in the next three years. A store would be cool because we’d be able to bring our concept to life.

How would you differentiate Crooked Monkey from Threadless and the other major online T-shirt retailers?

Threadless has built a phenomenal online community. We’ve focused more on the wholesale end, getting our shirts into the stores. We’re looking to build our Internet presence a lot more in the coming year. Bringing our brand to the end consumer. Not everyone needs to make a T-shirt to feel involved with the brand. We’re going to be connecting with our consumers through promotions (with magazines and radio stations), contests (through Twitter and Facebook), and getting more involved with the college scene. We are organizing street teams this summer at three universities and we’re expecting big things from them.

Anything else you want to add or plug?

Our blog. We update it daily and it’s pretty funny. And apparently I need to hang out with more celebrities, so if you’re reading this, e-mail me so we can hang out. And of course I should give a shout-out to the Jewish Day School cross-country team–I wouldn’t know how to cut corners without it

What do you think?