Featured business profile

I Used To Be Cool, LLC.

Not so long ago, Shannon Jones was a free spirit who drove an F-150 and owned her own ski boat. A teacher, she spent her summers traveling out West, camping and hiking. She spent every Winter and Spring Break skiing in Colorado. On weekends she slept until she felt like getting up. She met her husband, a camping, biking, music-loving pilot at a concert and for a while they had a whole lot of fun. Enter two babies in 15 months.

6 months pregnant with a 9-month-old in a carrier, Jones couldn’t get herself or her baby into her truck anymore and ended up with a minivan. “I cannot tell you how many times I swore that I would NEVER drive a minivan,” she says laughing. When she showed up at school with her van, her colleagues gave her so much flack that she had a bumper sticker made up for it that said “I used to be cool”. She was stopped so many times over the following two years by people wanting to know where she got her sticker that she decided to make a business of it. She had some shirts and stickers printed up and applied for a federal trademark. She would wear her shirts around Louisville, and people would make comments, like, “Ah, you’re still cool”. One lady stopped her in Kroger and said that she’d like one, but it would have to say “I’ve never been cool.” That’s how Jones starting adding shirts to the theme. She now sells shirts, stickers and hats in 14 different sayings on her web site. She has shirts for the entire family, from newborn through size 2X. Nothing on her site is over $20.

Jones prides herself on customer service. “I put a lot of emphasis on packaging, and I ship fast,” she explains, “I try to establish a relationship with each customer. I’ve had a few size exchanges, but I haven’t had a return in the year and a half that I’ve been doing this.” She goes the extra mile for a customer. “A lot of my orders are for 40th birthday gifts; a customer may place an order on a Tuesday and be worried about getting the shirt for a party on Saturday. I’ll go to the Gardiner Lane Post Office at 7pm to get it out that day. That person remembers my site for the next 40th birthday party.” She continues, “If I see that an order is from the Highlands, I’ll usually contact the person and offer to drop it by their house and return their shipping, I don’t overcharge for shipping, but there’s just no need when I live 5 streets over.”

In addition to being a site for fun shirts, Shannon has made www.iusedtobecool.com a fun site to visit. You can find some great playlists, including an “80s fun mix” and “Metal Picks”. The photo gallery is quite entertaining, think high school in the 80s. I haven't seen that many mullets in over 20 years!

Jones feels that it is very important to support local businesses. She has her shirts printed at Kopilot, her stickers at Monkey Drive. Printworx handles her paper printing. “If it can be done locally, I do it here,” she explains, “it is really important for me to deal face-to-face, to have that relationship. Louisville has so much to offer and is so price-competitive, there is really no reason NOT to support the local economy.”

Jones’s shirts can be purchased on her web site and at Wimzy Gifts in the Mellwood Arts Center. She also sells out of her home; you can reach her at 744-5903.

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