Anonymous asked: As legitimate as you guys are online, I find it really odd that you guys are not an established group, therefore it can be said that your unpaid interns are not interns, but unpaid friends.

Dear Anonymous,

I’m having a hard time understanding what your definition of an “established group” is but I understand your critique and I believe you deserve an honest response. There is so much I can talk about! But I’ll do my best to keep it concise.

We’re growing. Starting up a t-shirt company from the ground up is a lot of hard work and let’s be honest, we’re not making a whole lot of money charging $10 bucks a shirt. So if your definition of an “established group” is a documented business with the Los Angeles County Registrar reporting thousands of dollars in revenue and profit then you’re completely right. We aren’t established.

It’s called YKI Lifestyles for a reason. We do so much more than try to create profits and try to look good on paper. Our lifestyle incorporates friends who simply want to help out. They either have nothing better to do at 2am or want to donate their time and energy to something greater than themselves. 

How many high school/college students can say they know how the silk screening process works? How many students can say that some of their best friends started a t-shirt company in the senior year of high school? Better yet, that the same company is growing after all of it’s members broke off into different parts of the country after starting college?

We aren’t going to be featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and we sure as hell aren’t going to be posted in Forbes. But we are a group of friends who believe in enriching the quality of our lives with a little bit of elbow grease, constructive debate, and a whole lot of laughter. 

Anonymous, yeah. They aren’t paid. But the distinguishing factor from friends to interns is a gradient that we are slowly transitioning into. We have big ambitions, so we’ll call them interns for the time being.

Just because we aren’t there now, doesn’t mean we are never going to be pulling in thousands in revenue.

We’re already on our way ;]
Royce D.
You Know It
01.27.11

  1. dirtysocksinmydrawers said: i loveee this post keep going royce you got this
  2. ykilifestyles posted this