Tiny Little Monster Gets Creative For Businesses in Need

Tiny Little Monster (tinylittlemonster.com), a small print shop in St. Louis, has created an online store for local St. Louis businesses to sell branded T-shirts to help their struggling operations. The online store features T-shirts for individual small businesses that choose to participate; customers can purchase a T-shirt for $20; $10 from the sale goes directly to the business. The other $10 is used by Tiny Little Monster for T-shirt production and packaging and to pay furloughed staff.

When asked what inspired her to start the Here For Good movement owner Sloan Coleman says, “We were watching our sales numbers drop to nothing and in speaking with some of our most reliable customers realized that we are all in the same boat. Fear, closures, and social distancing habits are slashing small business earnings to the bone. Something had to happen. We print T-shirts so we came up with this idea to sell T-shirts on behalf of local small businesses as a way to generate a different source of revenue for them.” 

And the movement took off. Within five days of opening online and advertising the store to local businesses using social media and the hashtag #HereForGoodSTL, more than 40 St. Louis business owners submitted T-shirt designs to sell. In its first weekend, Tiny Little Monster’s Here For Good movement raised more than $7000. By May 10th more than 8000 shirts have been sold, generating $80,000 for more than 250 participating small businesses. 

As Tiny Little Monster’s local movement kept growing in St. Louis, the screen print shop was contacted by other screen printers around the world who were curious about the process. With screen print businesses in more than 30 states, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, asking for assistance in setting up their own online stores, Here For Good rapidly expanded to help small businesses throughout the globe survive the changing economic climate. 

“We’re just trying to do our part,” says Coleman. “St. Louis is a unique city and we just knew folks would step up to help keep their local business community thriving. We’re trying to make sure that small shops are around forever, or Here For Good.”