Hi I’m Jon Kruse. I started Totally Awesome, which was then called Mediocore Clothing, back in 2007. At the time I had just graduated college and got my dream job working at a design studio in LA that did movie posters. Our country was going into a recession and I lost my job after only a couple weeks later. Looking back on it that was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I was given a second chance to do whatever I wanted and I decided to start a clothing company and figure out how to make money doing what I loved to do.

The first shirt I sold was called Missing Turtle which I originally made as a poster and wheat pasted 100's of them all around the Cal State Northridge Campus I went to. I made a screen printing press and printed the first batch of Missing Turtle shirts with my mom helping me in my garage. To this day it is one of my top sellers. After that I kept on making new designs and kept on going.

Along my journey many awesome things have happened. I started a blog called www.howtostartaclothingcompany.com which has reached almost half a million visitors since its inception. I’ve started a web design company called www.doubledragonstudios.com that makes e-commerce websites for other companies. I was asked to write an article in the magazine Computer Arts Projects about web store design. A number of my designs have appeared in the book Torso. I also started another clothing company called Shred which makes badass shirts.