Casual Industrees making name for itself with hip clothes

In West Seattle, Brendan and Dan Reid are proving you don't have to leave home to make it big. The brothers run the Northwest-lifestyle brand Casual Industrees out of their basement near Alki Beach.

They came up with the idea for Casual in the late 1990s while snowboarding on Mount Baker. They thought all the hooded sweat shirts looked the same, so they designed their own. A few weeks later, Mt. Baker Snowboard Shop in Glacier, Whatcom County, agreed to sell them.

Eventually, they added T-shirts and stickers.

One of their most popular designs, called WA Brah, shows the state as it appears on a map, spliced with sun rays and a small ninja figure where Walla Walla is (insert your own meaning). Another features the Seattle skyline and an evergreen tree.

"You would run into people here wearing 'I love NYC' or San Francisco shirts, and it always seemed odd to me," said Dan, 30. "If you live here, you might as well claim to represent it and be proud of where you're from — or move."

For startup costs, they used a $1,200 damage deposit a previous landlord from a Mount Baker rental house returned.

Today, their T-shirts and hoodies are sold in Zumiez stores nationwide, Nordstrom stores throughout the Northwest and dozens of locally owned shops, including Evo in Fremont, Snowboard Connection in South Lake Union and Coastal Surf on Alki.

T-shirts are priced between $24 and $35; hoodies cost from $48 to $60.

"They have local credibility," said John Logic, owner of Snowboard Connection. "The guys themselves are on the mountains during the winter, and they have local artists. It's just a good homegrown story."

The Reids, who grew up in North Seattle, employ two full-time designers, as well as a handful of college interns who help with design and administrative work.

Last week, more than a dozen boxes crowded their living room as they packed a new line of T-shirts to mail to stores.

"We're like the clothing equivalent of a garage band," said Brendan, 29. "We're still pretty much living in squalor, and I think that makes us relevant to consumers. Rather than trying to find the pulse of the market, we are the market. We're in the trenches."

Dan held several marketing jobs before devoting himself full time to Casual in 2005. Brendan, who wrote a 75-page senior thesis at Western Washington University arguing that a brand built on local uniqueness could have far-reaching appeal, worked for Microsoft on a contract basis to help pay for Casual's growth.

"People think that because we do business with Zumiez and Nordstrom that we're totally rich and we sold out, and it's not true," Dan said. "We still make everything in America, so our profit margins are not real high."

Their shirts have appeared on "American Idol" (worn by Blake Lewis) and on E! network's Joel McHale, host of "The Soup" and former regular cast member on "Almost Live."

"It's kind of cool to see our shirts go from our dingy basement to TV," Dan said.

— Amy Martinez

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Retail Report appears Fridays. Melissa Allison covers the food and beverage industry. She can be reached at 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com. Amy Martinez covers goods, services and online retail. She can be reached at 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com