Interview Tim Cigelske wants to save your unwanted T-shirts

Milwaukeean Tim Cigelske loves hunting through piles of clothes at thrift stores and rummage sales in search of rare, vintage T-shirts. Two years ago he decided to turn this pastime into a business venture by founding teecycle.org, which accepts donated shirts and re-sells them at a low price. While Teecycle is more a labor of love than a big money-making venture—Cigelske’s day job is at Marquette University, and he’s a former staffer of the defunct local weekly MKE—he got a big leg up in 2009 when Pepsi gave him a grant of $4,500 as part of a contest recognizing community-oriented businesses. The A.V. Club sat down with Cigelske to discuss Teecycle and whether some T-shirts are too ugly or stupid to save.

The A.V. Club: Where did the idea for Teecycle come from?

Tim Cigelske: I was just leafing through a Rolling Stone, and in the back there were all these ads for T-shirts with the latest clever slogan of the week or some movie catch phrase—for 25 bucks! I thought it was ridiculous. It actually pissed me off. [Laughs.] Because there are much better shirts out there in the back of someone’s closet or at a rummage sale or a thrift store. I was like, “Let’s just reuse what we have.” And then when I did some research, I found out the average person owns 29 T-shirts. But they don’t really wear 29 T-shirts and don’t really realize they have that many. I thought we could recycle what people have, and just started going to thrift stores and rummage sales. Then people started sending me theirs. [Laughs.] People give me shirts all the time. I wasn’t expecting that. Now I’m inundated with shirts. I get donations from all over. There’s even a lawyer in San Antonio that mails me big boxes of shirts.

AVC: Teecycle donates $1 from every shirt sold to the River Revitalization Foundation. What made you decide to donate almost 15 percent of the sale price of each shirt?

TC: When I started, I read the founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing. He talks about how the goals for their company aren’t even to make a profit. It’s to be the most sustainable company they can, and to give back. They feel that if they do that, the other stuff will take care of itself. That really influenced me as I was getting this underway. I live near a river and I’ve done river cleanups, and I use the Oak Leaf trail every morning for biking to work.

AVC: You must have a different shirt to wear every day.

TC: I don’t keep any of them. I told myself when I first started, I’m not gonna keep these shirts. They will go to another home. Someone else will enjoy them. That’s the whole point. You’re extending the lifecycle of these things. I’ve been very tempted in a lot of instances to just keep one for myself, but I’m like there’ll be another T-shirt that comes along that’s cool. And who knows, maybe I’ll run into the same one again.

AVC: It's great that you're giving these shirts a new life, but are there shirts too stupid or ugly for even you to sell?

TC: I'm donating some shirts to a woman in Madison who repurposes them into other items like scarves for her friends. But honestly, I try not to be too judgmental. What you find stupid someone else may find interesting, and I say more power to them. It keeps it out of the landfill. Of course, I am always a little surprised when something like a Franklin Recreation Youth Sports T-shirt finds a new owner. But the beauty of the Internet is that someone with an interest in the incredibly obscure can find it on the web.