Q&A: LIfe is Good's Bert Jacobs

In 1989, two brothers, Bert and John Jacobs, started hawking T-shirts on the streets of Boston, eventually quitting their substitute teaching jobs to take a five-year jaunt through college towns lining the eastern seaboard. Sleeping on T-shirts in the back of a van, the two pounded on dormitory doors until their supply was sold out, only to restock and hit the road again. In 1994, they sold the first Life is Good T-shirt at a street fair in Boston featuring Jake, the company's happy-go-lucky beatnik icon; and slowly, Jake has become a phenomenon.

In 2005, sales for the Derry, NH-based company reached approximately $59 million, well above the target of $48 million, and dwarfing 2004's level of $35 million. But Bert Jacobs, the company's president, says Life is Good is not aiming to blow out the brand.

"We're much more focused on making higher-quality products, having better merchandising at retail, and servicing better," he says. "The idea is not to necessarily get bigger. That's happening and we shouldn't fight that. But rather than working and planning to get bigger, we're planning to get stronger."

OB talked to Bert Jacobs about the widespread appeal of Life is Good, the brand's growth potential, as well as the company's deep commitment to doing good.

Why do you think Life is Good has been so successful?

JACOBS: So many retailers and customers of ours have asked us how long we think this is going to last because they see these lifestyle things come and go. But I think the difference is that the foundation of those brands that come and go are usually tied to a trend, either a fashion or cultural trend. And when that trend tails off, so does the brand. The foundation of our brand is optimism, and optimism is timeless. It always has a place in every demographic and in every economy, and it's always something that's in need. Certainly, you can make the claim that the media is overly focused on what's wrong with the world. As a result, consumers get inundated with negative information. So ours is something that butts up against that. It's refreshingly different to what people are hearing all the time, and people are attracted to that. The other element that I think has been important to our longevity is that we're also living in a world that is technologically advancing so fast and everything's become so very complex. Its like we're racing into this 21st century. So what our brand does well is it causes [people to] pause, and causes people to take note and celebrate things that are so simple, and in some ways old-fashioned, that they could have existed 100 years ago. So that's also a uniqueness. We don't always have to be pushing the latest and greatest.