Pyknic

Pyknic

What it does: T-shirt sales
Founders: Andrew Marshall, 24, and Stephen Thompson, 23
Website: pyknicwear.com
Based: Robbinsville, N.J.

College friends Andrew Marshall and Stephen Thompson started Pyknic in 2006 by selling a first run of 200 T-shirts they had decorated by hand with Sharpie markers to their classmates at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa. Today they're projecting $500,000 in sales for 2010, double what they recorded last year. Their T-shirts are targeted at youth, particularly high schoolers and college students interested in skateboarding and music. "It started to catch on like wildfire internationally," Marshall says; until recently, sales in Europe, Australia, and Japan exceeded U.S. sales. The pair run the operation on their own out of a warehouse in Robbinsville, N.J. The T-shirts, which retail for about $20, are conceived with food themes and rendered in cartoonish fashion. The shirts are printed by contract printers in the U.S. and China and sold online and at specialty retailers such as Hot Topic (HOTT) and Pacific Sunwear across the U.S. —JT