When brothers Bert and John Jacobs launched Life Is Good in 1994, they started with a simple goal: spread optimism through a line of cheerful graphic tees. Thirty years later, the brand is a household name, with more than $150 million in lifetime sales—and it continues to grow under the leadership of president Tom Hassell.
Tom shares how Life Is Good brought production back to the US, implemented a print-on-demand model, and kept purpose at the center of the business. Here’s how the company has evolved while staying true to its roots.
When founders step aside to let new leadership scale
Life Is Good began as a wholesale business, but by the early 2010s, direct-to-consumer (DTC) was taking off—and the company needed to adapt. “The business grew more complex from 2010 to 2015 as ecommerce came into the picture,” Tom explains. “We were no longer just serving the needs of wholesale customers, but we were also engaged in direct-to-consumer activities.” The shift added new layers of complexity: ecommerce fulfillment, marketing, and inventory management—all of which required operational expertise.
Bert and John recognized they needed help scaling. “They realized that they should continue to focus on what they love and are so good at, which is creating optimistic graphic messages,” Tom says. The solution: Bring in a new team to run the operations, while the founders remained focused on creative and mission.
Building a print-on-demand engine inside a legacy brand
Before 2019, it took Life Is Good about six months to launch a new t-shirt design. “We were essentially purchasing those products speculatively,” Tom says. “Sometimes they would sell quickly, sometimes they would not. Meanwhile, we had this huge backlog of amazing art that had been created over the 30-year history of the brand.”
To move faster, the company invested in industrial direct-to-garment (DTG) printers and mastered printing with water-based inks. “We were able to reduce our lead times from six months to literally two and a half days,” Tom says. “If an artist creates a new graphic on Monday, we can be selling that graphic online on Wednesday afternoon, because we’re showing it as a virtual item.”
This system didn’t just speed up production—it changed how the team thought about inventory. “Now there are literally millions of customer choices on lifeisgood.com, and we’re able to do that while simultaneously reducing our inventory because we own blank inventory here in the States, and we finish them after the order is taken.”
The long-term payoff of reshoring US manufacturing
Life Is Good made the decision to bring production back to the US in 2019. The lead time overseas was too long and quality control was harder to maintain. “We knew coming into this that our cost per unit was going to be slightly higher producing in the US versus overseas,” Tom says. “But we realized that having a much broader catalog of products from which the customers could choose would increase our business at a dramatic clip.”
That bet paid off. “While we’d see a slight reduction in gross margin percent, our gross margin dollars would grow because our revenue would grow so quickly as a result of expanding our offering.” The team discovered other benefits as well: improved sustainability through water-based inks, better alignment of customer orders with production methods, and more resilient logistics when the pandemic disrupted retail in 2020.
Embedding purpose through consistent, focused giving
Life Is Good donates 10% of its annual profits to support children in need through its Playmaker Project. The initiative trains early childhood educators to help kids heal from trauma—a cause the founders adopted nearly 30 years ago.
“One of the key ideas that [Bert and John] built the company on is that business for good is good for business,” Tom says. He points to the brand’s Net Promoter Score of 91—more than double the apparel industry average of 39—as proof that customers value a mission-led brand.
For entrepreneurs, Tom’s advice is simple: “Find something you’re passionate about … and do everything you can to focus your giving and help on that particular topic, because your customers will reward you for it.”
Life Is Good’s evolution offers a clear roadmap for brands facing similar inflection points: bring in specialized leadership when growth demands it, rethink how products are made and delivered, and make purpose a non-negotiable part of your strategy. The tools may change, but optimism—and operational clarity—remain key to scaling intention.
To hear more from Tom Hassell about Life Is Good’s evolution, listen to the full Shopify Masters interview, wherever you get your podcasts.
