Big followers of small screen

Trendy T-shirts

When you pass someone wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘I am a rockstar’ or something similarly as  humourless and crude, do you cringe inwardly? Do you dread shopping for T-shirts because you know you will have to visit a dozen shops before you can find one that is to your liking, one that reads intelligibly?

The works created by Vivek Pathak, Anshuman Sharma and Ashish Bharadwaj of ‘Chulbul Store’ not only cater to people who are on the lookout for witty and mind-bending T-shirts, but they also make them look stylish.

Created almost two years ago, ‘Chulbul Store’ has been a success, online and offline.
Talking about how the three began, Vivek says, “We all graduated from IIT-Roorkee in 2008 and went our separate ways after that. But we ended back in Bengaluru in 2011, all working as engineers for different companies. Even though we were financially stable, we wanted to do something on our own because there was no independence at the companies we were in. So, in June 2013, we started ‘Chulbul Store’ and launched the online store a few months later.”

However, this wasn’t their first attempt at attaining “independence”. “We had another start-up before this called ‘Catercap’ to help engineers during their exams. It lasted for nine months and then the team split up. We named the next venture ‘Chulbul’ because the first one was a mouth full...this name was easier to remember.”

‘Chulbul Store’ doesn’t just have any kind of T-shirts, but a range of them inspired from the most popular television series and movies. Their most popular ones are from ‘Game of Thrones’. “We have taken the words ‘Valar Morghulis’, which means ‘All men must die’ and have turned it into ‘Valar Murga Lis’, which means ‘All chickens must die’. Another popular one is ‘Weekend is coming’, which is a take off from ‘Winter is coming’,” says Vivek. He adds that shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and movies like ‘Fight Club’ are other popular themes on T-shirts that are trending these days.

He says that their market mainly caters to ‘nerds’. “All of us have sat through the engineering exams, so we consider ourselves ‘nerds’. After the first start-up, we realised that whatever a person is doing, one needs to be in love with it and be passionate about it, or else they will lose interest soon.”

The three, who have taken this up as a full-time job, have an elaborate procedure for coming up with the designs. “First, we watch a movie or a television show. Then, we discuss on it - how the funny and the intellectual aspects can be brought out on the T-shirts. Ashish, our designer, then comes up with the concepts, which is sent for production,” says Vivek.

The store has achieved a lot in a short period of time. “We made a design based on the movie ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’, capturing the fun moments all the three heroes experience, and put a picture up on Twitter. To our amazement, Farhan Akhtar retweeted our design! We immediately wrote to him and sent him four of those T-shirts,” says Vivek. He adds that another milestone in their career was when they got listed on ‘Flipkart’. “Now we are on many other online shopping sites,” he ends.