Background
The Background
Established in 2014, The PopLyfe Shop is a clothing brand that set out to be different from the beginning. The site caters primarily to dads and carries a range of pop culture and fatherhood inspired clothing.
The Inspiration
“A Brand that Celebrates Dads”.
What started as an entrepreneurial experiment and outlet for my passion quickly grew into much more than just selling shirts. In fact, it never really was about selling shirts. The PopLyfe has always been about promoting Pride in Fatherhood and Celebrating Dads.
As a designer by profession, I was looking for another creative outlet. Once I settled on t-shirts as the vehicle, I searched out themes that I could build on in an expressive way, a theme that would not only resonate with my own passion in the design, but resonate with other people’s passion as well.
There were no products representing the story of fatherhood in a fun way and I thought, “There’s an opportunity to provide Proud Dads with great tshirt designs that aren’t corny.”
Research
Frankly, a lot of the shirts I was seeing aimed towards “gifts for dads” were boring, corny and played out. They were either rehashes of the same 4 or 5 phrases or they were “World’s Greatest Farter – I Mean Father” (Seriously, who buys that for their dad? And who wears that??) I wanted to create designs that would speak to dads and their commitment to being involved fathers, and produce designs they would wear every day.
The PopLyfe has always been a project rooted in my passion for design. It’s about bringing the identity of fatherhood to life, and creating designs dads are proud to wear.
Key Takeaways
- The store needed to cater to Dads. This could be males anywhere from 20 – 60+.
- Even though the target customer was intended to be primarily dads, the store and the products needed to appeal to gift buyers as well. These could be several personas outside the target demo, moms, sisters, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, etc.