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BIG HIT: At spring training
in Mesa, Ariz., Festa, right, gave Baker a tribute
T-shirt.
Courtesy Festa Stuff |
although he'd fallen in
love with Chicago, Christopher Festa was weary of the
teasing he endured about being a Cubs fan. So when manager
Dusty Baker left the San Francisco Giants for the Cub-house
two years ago, Festa, ’87, was jubilant. The gloating
e-mail he sent to former Bay Area colleagues and Stanford
alums bore the subject line In Dusty We Trusty.
It also struck him that the phrase would look good
on a T-shirt.
Some 10,000 shirts later, Festa’s pledge of allegiance
to Dusty has become a Chi-town staple. The shirts, which
come in several styles and cost between $20 and $35,
sell online at festastuff.com and at street festivals,
boutiques, Chicago-area Nordstrom stores and, starting
this season, Wrigley Field itself.
Festa, blessed with a name that means “party”
in Italian, has dropped a tech career in knowledge management
to build a fashion company that celebrates hometown
sentiments. Other shirt designs praise Midwestern girls
(the “corn-fed, fun-loving, up-for-anything”
type) and area code identities (the “312-FOR-EVER”
shirt promises that the wearer will “never, ever,
ever move to Naperville” or any of 23 other alphabetized
Chicago suburbs.) A longtime lover of road trips, Festa
hopes to create silk-screened wear for locales throughout
the United States. He says he avoids a “carpetbagger”
reputation by reading local newspapers and websites
and “reality testing” his slogans with friends
in each area.
His company, founded in May 2003, projects sales of
$200,000 this year, a figure that presumably could experience
blips along with the Cubs’ prospects. Festa feels
confident the Cubs are “gonna break the curse”
that’s kept them out of the World Series since
1908. “Ideas are in the vault, under lock and
key” for the shirts he’d produce if the
Baker boys were to win it all.
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