Coed Naked’s First Million Dollars
People often ask when and how did we sell our first million dollars of Coed Naked tees- well here’s the story.
If you asked me at the end of 1990 how long it would take before we sold our millionth dollar worth of Coed Naked tees I would have said maybe never. Afterall our accountant said it was time to close up shop because we had run out of money. That was not true. We had $700 left. And with that $700 , on a January morning, I flew to Daytona and began knocking on every retail door along the East coast. My hopes of making $1 million seemed fleeting given that the buyer at every retail store I knocked on seemed to be unavailable. They all were in Orlando. It wasn’t until I was in Palm Beach that I realized I needed to go to Orlando too. In Orlando, was the Orlando Surf Show. And at that Surf Show I met Ira, a sales rep in Florida. Ira asked me what I did and I told him that I owned Coed Naked and was looking for representation. He said the magic words, “I’ve heard of that line.” Then he spoke more magic, “Do you have a rep in Florida?” I flew home the next day, after hiring my first sales rep. By the time I got into the office the next morning I had orders on the fax machine. By December of 1991, in large part thanks to Ira, we had sold our millionth dollar of Coed Naked tees. By the end of 1995, Coed Naked was arguably the best selling t-shirt in the United States with just under $50 million in sales. When Coed Naked was taken off the market in 2006 we had sold about 10 million tees.
In the summer of 2022 we re-introduced Coed Naked. The time was right. The selling is different. Most tees are sold direct to consumer through our website, coednaked.com. Many are sold in collaboration with bars and breweries such as at Libby’s Bar and Grill on campus at UNH, Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton, New Hampshire, and at Mike’s Bar and The Revelry Bar on campus at LSU. Different type of selling but the same result. In 2023 you will once again find our tees popping up in key retailers throughout the United States. By April we will surpass our millionth dollar of Coed Naked sales. We appreciate all of our fans and look forward to this new journey.
Read the complete Coed Naked story in my book, “The Coed Naked Truth” available on our website.
Mark Lane
Coed Sportswear
