Stick figure “Jake” is Life Is Good’s model of prosperity. As many as 30,000 people attended each of Jake’s 17 annual events, according to Life is good Inc., which renders its brand name like a complete sentence.
Last year, the company sold 4.2 million of its $25 T-shirts and had sales of roughly $107 million, said Bert Jacobs, who along with his brother, John Jacobs, founded the business in Needham, Mass., in 1994 with only a handful of styles and a van. They were trying to create “a symbol about what was right in the world,” he said; Jake would be a character “who was happy not because of anything he had or because he was materialistic.” Their most popular style has Jake and his pie-faced grin sitting in an Adirondack chair as if there was nothing more to life than kicking back.
Like the mass popularization of smiley face buttons in the early 1970s, which coincided with another oil and economic crisis, Life Is Good T-shirts have caught on among people who feel the products are spreading a positive message in a troubled world.
“The years when the company has thrived the most have been the most economically, politically and socially challenged years,” Mr. Jacobs said, adding that the company is on track to reach $135 million in sales this year through retail stores and a Web site. In addition to the 4,500 stores that carry the Life is good merchandise, there are about 105 independently owned shops in airports and cities across the country that sell only Life Is Good products.
