Two friends, one enrolled at Boston College and one at University of Texas at Austin, have initiated an all-female T-shirt company that has earned about $200,000 in revenue in its first year.

Angela Jin, a junior marketing major at BC, and Nishiki Maredia, a sophomore government and history major at UT, are exactly 1,950 miles away from each other, which was the inspiration for their company’s name, 1950 Collective.

“We wanted it to be as personal as possible,” Maredia said. “I think we were planning a trip between the University of Texas and Boston College when we realized that we’re exactly 1950 miles apart.”

The company specializes in making products with focuses on One Direction and feminism. Maredia said she and Jin were at a One Direction concert when they noticed that the products available were not very in-tune with what fangirls wanted.

“We approached this niche market as actual fangirls rather than a company exploiting it,” Jin said.

Jin said the idea of social justice — and specifically feminism — is prevalent in the efforts of 1950 Collective. She added that the pair wants to focus even more on feminism in their future lines.

From the outside perspective, boybands and feminist concepts may seem like a strange juxtaposition of subjects to build a brand upon, Jin said, but the contrast is purposeful.

“I think it’s actually very complementary. People don’t understand that fan girls have other interests. They stereotype them as ditzy, young or un-opinionated. People assume that me and (Nishiki) are like that too,” Jin said. “Girls are multidimensional, and having their interests crosslinked in one, safe place is important.”

Courtesy of Angela Jin

Jin added that that from a business standpoint, women’s work is often discredited, or women are not taken seriously. She added that women can be “just as, or more” successful than men, and “shouldn’t have to apologize for it.”

Mareida said she doesn’t like it when people tokenize feminism, or boast the messages without really supporting the cause, which she said sometimes happens on social media or in pop culture.

“We support women of all kinds through our use of diverse models and artists, we are educating young girls about feminism and being successful business women and we donate part of our profits to importance causes.”

Both Jin and Maredia send out regular emails to teach girls about how to be successful in business. They also donate 10 percent of their monthly profits to different organizations, Jin said, which was one aspect of the business that both girls said they always knew they wanted to do.

“We put our money where our mouth is,” Maredia said.

Jin added that it didn’t matter how big or small the business was because even if they only made $1,000 total, they wanted to donate some of that to causes that meant important things to them.

“My mom and dad are from India, where it is hard to get an education growing up, especially for women,” Maredia said. “One month we were able to send around 70 girls to school for the year with school supplies. That was incredible to me.”

Published on February 24, 2016 at 11:22 pm

Contact BreeAnna: blposhek@syr.edu