Two men with a passion for establishing a different type of T-shirt company is helping those in need as well as those in style.
Unique Tees is owned and operated by A. H. Elijah and Adam Little.
“We both came together in June of this year and merged both of our companies together to do screen printing, embroidery and all custom apparel,” Little said.
Little’s former company was called Homegrown Prints and Elijah’s former company was called Patch Me Custom Embroidery and Apparel. Elijah said they saw a niche they could fill in the Peoria community.
“We saw some potentially untapped or unattended to segments of society when it came to apparel decorations and we saw the hole and we decided to fill it,” Elijah said.
That niche includes the society of Bradley University as well.
“We look to do stuff for Bradley University directly like basketball, baseball, soccer, everything that Bradley has and we want to tend to the university’s fraternities and sororities. And those people who want those one-off shirts, those ‘unique’ T-shirts,” Elijah said.
Their doors officially opened in June, but they have already immersed themselves in the community.
“Right now, we are in the Real Men Wear Pink Campaign with the American Cancer Society. We are raising money for the Society, our goal is $2,500. Every single day, we wear something pink. We have been designing shirts for it as well.” Little said.
They have also incorporated Toys for Tots in their charitable service with the Marine Corps this Christmas season.
The duo chose the Campustown location for two simple reasons: the surrounding businesses and the people.
“It’s a great location,” Little said. “There’s a lot of foot traffic, there’s a lot of good businesses surrounding us and we figured as a retail location and production location it would be a perfect spot.”
When it comes to customer satisfaction, they deliver in a punctual way.
“We don’t tell the customer ‘no’ and we deliver fast,” Elijah said. “A lot of people who have these types of businesses have over engaged themselves and cannot produce fast enough for their customer base and that’s one problem we don’t have.”
More importantly, the duo loves the work they do for others and enjoy their time working together.
“My partner and myself, you will never meet anyone like the two of us. We have a lot of fun here and we have learned that over the years.” Little said.
Unique Tees is located between the Fieldhouse and Steak ‘n Fries in Campustown. They are open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. They will extend its hours for clubs, sororities and fraternities.
