Local couple’s state, travel-themed shirts take off on Instagram

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PROVO — David Lesue’s successful Kickstarter for hand-lettered state T-shirts was only the beginning.

Since the campaign funded at the end of 2013, Stately Type has evolved into an interactive company featuring travel-themed apparel. Lesue and his wife Holly started the business as a fun side project and have garnered more than 12,000 followers on Instagram so far.

“We’re really collaborative with our audience,” he said. “Almost everything we do is through Instagram. At the beginning of every week we ask our followers on Instagram what city, state or country they would like us to design a shirt for next.”

After a theme is selected, Lesue mocks-up between four and six designs for followers to vote on. Only the winning style is produced, but in total Lesue estimates he has created more than 150 designs to date.

Recently, he also designed the game day shirt for Brigham Young University’s upcoming football season, which will be sold at the school’s bookstore. More than 2,000 people participated in the voting process, according to Lesue.

Even though Stately Type has grown significantly, the couple still runs the company out of their home. Lesue has a full-time job as a creative director at Workfront, so he largely works on the designs at night and on the weekend. His wife, who stays at home with their four daughters, ships the T-shirts and runs all of the customer service during the day.

“When we started off it wasn’t anything big, just a few sales here and there,” he said. “Now we’re actually a making a pretty significant amount of money and are able to do things like pay off our car with the extra money.”

Their most successful project so far was a collaboration with Moda Fabrics, which requested a shirt designed specifically for “quilters, sewists and fabric junkies.” The response was so positive that Lesue decided to produce all four of his proposed designs. Three of those continue to be the site’s best sellers.

Stately Type’s adventurous customers have shared pictures of themselves wearing the company’s T-shirts around the world, according to Lesue.

“The only continent we haven’t hit yet is Antarctica, and actually when I mentioned that on social media one time we had a few people reach out and say, ‘I know somebody who is down there. I can get you a photo,’” he said. “So we’re trying to make that work right now to see if we can get a photo of somebody there.”