EDMONDS — Eric Carr is a T-shirt and jeans kind of guy.
In fact, so is most staff at South By Sea, the custom collegiate apparel company he and his friend, Brandon Metcalf, founded in 2011.
Despite the laid-back dress code, it’s all business at their small second-story office in an old building on Dayton Street in downtown Edmonds.
Atop the front desk, an inbox overflows with orders and requests, and past the dimly lit foyer, a team of designers hand-sketch and revise dozens of new illustrations a day while sales representatives take orders from universities in Florida, Georgia, Texas and more.
“We just ended up taking a leap of faith,” Carr, 31, said.
Their leap of faith is paying off. The company has nearly 50 full-time employees — about 30 in Nashville and 20 in Edmonds — a sales team that is set to break the $7 million mark this year, and a plan to continue growing.
The company offers custom apparel, hats, tumblers, koozies, water bottles, sunglasses, totes, socks and more, with free artwork and revisions.
In the past four years, they’ve sold more than 1 million products for bid days, semi-formals, homecomings and other Greek life events.
“We try a lot of different things,” Carr said. “What works, we’ll keep. What doesn’t, we scrap.”
It’s not just about custom gear. Along with South by Sea’s design office in Edmonds and print shop in Nashville, the company has an unexpected division — music.
Since the start, Metcalf, 29, dreamed of combining the apparel business with his passion for music. In 2012, after South by Sea saw 300 percent growth, he left the Pacific Northwest to take the business in a new direction.
With four employees and a recording studio in Nashville, the heartland of American music, Metcalf is already seeing success with artists like Frankie, who made Taylor Swift’s list of favorite new songs in October.
Compared to the apparel side, recording and developing artists is a small portion of South by Sea’s business. In between music projects, Metcalf oversees the print shop.
Ninety-five percent of the company is focused on the college market, but by the end of the year, South By Sea is launching a new corporate division aimed at gearing up local business owners, nonprofits and events.
“We’re not necessarily after water bottles for Microsoft,” Carr joked.
Carr and Metcalf have always had an entrepreneurial spirit.
In high school, Carr, who grew up in Ferndale, opened a business setting up Christmas light displays. By his sophomore year at Washington State University, he was president of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi.
Metcalf spent his summers helping his father lay flooring in the Everett area.
As a teenager, he took that work ethic, which he said is “in his blood,” and started his first T-shirt business designing and selling musician merchandise.
“I don’t have a lot of formal education or training other than jumping in and figuring things out along the way,” Metcalf said.
When the two met and started talking business, they realized with each other’s help they could make something successful.
Building a successful business wasn’t easy, but with the help of their dedicated team, the two pushed through it.
“We’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs,” Carr said.
Every dime the company made was reinvested. They worked around the clock, putting in 100-hour workweeks.
Even still, they made sure to always have fun. “Some of our most enjoyable times at the company were at the beginning when we had nothing,” Carr said.
Back then, Groupons for Burger Madness, a local burger chain, were incentive enough. Anne Hornung, the company’s creative director, turned the company into a trio.
After two years running the business out of an apartment in Northgate with Carr living upstairs, they moved South by Sea to Edmonds, to its first bonafide office space.
“We just really liked the area,” Carr said. “This place popped up and it was a great deal, we have a cool view of the water and a safe environment.”
The bottom line is they stay focused on the future and excited about their growth.
Carr is planning how to double their collegiate sales and build up the new corporate division.
His goal is to break $25 million. Metcalf wants to add more capacity to the Nashville print shop and expand into the West Coast.
“Overall, I feel very fortunate to be involved and get to be exploring my passion,” he said.
The credit goes to the team for building the company into what it is today, he said.
“It was all part of the dream, but being here and living it is pretty awesome,” he said.
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