For Mike Yrabedra, the word ‘fun’ has always been synonymous with ‘Macintosh’.
"It started out to be a fun business and it just so happened that the Mac was really the nucleus of the whole idea."
And so in 1997, Mr. Yrabedra started MacSurfShop.com to make Mac-related T-shirts. Today, the company is known as MacShirt.com and there isn’t an Expo convention where you don’t see someone wear one of his company’s offbeat and humorous walking billboards.
"When we started out back in 1997, I owned my own screen printing shop and I made a shirt for myself and a buddy that simply said, ‘real designers don’t do Windows.’ And he said to me, ‘hey, you should sell those.’ And that was really the start."
Now, however, the 34 year old Yrabedra has decided the fun is gone and its time to move on. Mr. Yrabedra announced Thursday MacShirt.com is ceasing operations after nearly five years in business and will clear out its inventory of remaining T-shirts for US$9.95, while supplies last.
For Mr. Yrabedra, the fun is all but gone.
"When we first started out nearly five years ago, it was a good time," he told The Mac Observer. "The iMac was just introduced, there was a lot of hype and excitement about the Mac and Apple. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen sales go down a lot and frankly, it just hasn’t been fun. We never really did this business for a living because, to be frank, it never made enough money to live on. It was just something fun to do and provide the Mac community with something you couldn’t find anywhere else, especially since the demise of appledesigns.com. The fun is gone, I’m sorry to say."
Mr. Yrabedra said another reason for his closing the business was less than enthusiastic responses as of late from people about T-shirt designs, made mostly by himself and his friend, artist Von Glitscha.
"It had gotten to the point where we’d release a (T-shirt) design and we’d get more complaints about the design than we would actually sales," he said. "It’s not one of the reasons we’re closing, but it got to the point were the complaints were wearing us down because we were just trying to have fun and be part of a really cool community."
For Mr. Yrabedra, he’ll primarily miss designing T-shirts.
"The screening the shirts and coming up with cool designs and seeing them take off. That’s what I’ll miss," he commented. "We’ve always tried to keep our designs tasteful and not malicious as far as bad-mouthing anyone, except of course Windows. Even then, we’ve tried to keep it kind of ‘tongue in cheek’…We sold quite a few shirts to Apple employees and I feel good about that. In fact, from what I’ve heard, a lot of employees wear our shirts on casual Friday’s and you see them all over the (Cupertino, CA headquarters) campus."
Although MacShirt.com is closing, Mr. Yrabedra is keeping the door open halfway to a future return.
"I’m not saying MacShirt or MacSurfShop will never come back," he commented. "It’s just that right now, it’s not going to. We are closing. This isn’t some type of gimmick to sell a whole bunch of shirts; but, you never say never."
Mr. Yrabedra might be leaving the T-shirt world, but he’ll never leave the Mac community.
"I’ve always been a Mac user and nothing but. Nothing will change that."