Three local men have a grand vision.
Though none of them are older than 22 years, they seem close to achieving a kind of success that eludes many for years. With their start-up clothing company Absinthe Notion, these men have big dreams with a small-business ethic in mind.
The company has yet to place its clothing in a single retail store, but it is hard to doubt the chances of Absinthe Notion after spending even a few minutes with the company’s three visionaries.
“Our destiny is in our own hands,” Oregon State graduate Sean Ogle said.
Their grip on success is due in large part to passion and sincerity.
The company should have actually died a long time ago. Portlander Jamie McGaw said his vision surfaced as a “lucid imagination idea,” or absinthe notion, while he was traveling throughout Europe with a friend in 2005, but the partnership crumbled as their business goals drifted apart.
By the end of 2006, McGaw had given up.
Until he found himself in France with Ogle last summer.
Ogle said McGaw’s vision “sparked excitement” in him. With a degree in finance and experience from owning his own painting company, Ogle felt he could offer the business know-how necessary to get Absinthe Notion off the ground.
Back in the U.S., Poul Stefansen came along with the final piece of the puzzle: the money. A University sophomore, Stefansen saw McGaw’s designs while at Ogle’s house.
Stefansen felt that “their vision fit with what I saw myself wanting to do,” so he opened his wallet. Additionally, he became a self-described “understudy” to McGaw and Ogle.
“We were originally looking for an investor, and we found a partner,” Ogle said.
Something that started out with McGaw thinking, “that would be cool on a T-shirt” has transformed into a bona fide clothing company. Made for men and women, the cotton shirts have an urban twist with screen prints of sayings like “I hate my girlfriend” and abstract graphics ranging from animals and chess pieces to a military brigade.
Absinthe Notion offers short- and long-sleeved shirts for men and women, and the founders hope to expand the line to include hoodies, jackets and other accessories. The line is currently for sale on the brand’s Web site, absinthenotion.com, and they are attempting to break into the boutique market.
That’s not to say the company follows the typical business model. Though McGaw, Ogle and Stefansen hold a pretty ambitious view of their business’ future, they are not willing to sacrifice their core values of artistic branding and one-of-a-kind pieces to establish themselves.
They are not so much concerned with money.
“There are much better models for making money than starting a limited edition clothing company,” McGaw noted.
What they deem more important is maintaining the aesthetic quality of their work and creating a perception of Absinthe Notion clothing as being “art on cotton canvas,” McGaw said.
And just like art prints, they strictly limit the production of each design.
“The more we value the design the more limited we make it,” McGaw said.
They hope that their exclusivity will actually help Absinthe Notion in the long run. They are targeting a demographic drawn to buy what is “not just another shirt in the closet,” he added.