It all started with my Aunt Carol. She was funny and smart, and she taught me how to give one heck of a hug. And she was taken from my family too early by breast cancer. Her story deserved to be told – and that’s exactly what my mom and her sister, Terri, planned to do. Mom participated in a fundraising walk for breast cancer and created a handmade shirt with a photo of Carol and words of inspiration. She was proud to share Carol’s story with that shirt, but creating it ended up being costly and time consuming. It just so happened that I had a few ideas about how to do it better.

Together with my partners, Aaron Wiener and Nishit Rathod, I founded Audiolife in 2006 and it quickly became the largest and fastest growing ecommerce and merchandise fulfillment business in the music industry. Through Audiolife, we’d learned a thing or two about on-demand custom printing and the merchandise fulfillment business and we were eager to find a way to use this expertise to give back to the world. Inspired by my Aunt Carol and armed with our unique ability to help millions of fundraisers and cause supporters like my mom create merchandise with meaning, GoodThreads was born.

I think giving people a way to tell their personal stories and support important causes at the same time is awesome. I’m pretty sure Aunt Carol would think so too.

Making shirts that tell stories,
Brandon Hance