At A Glance

Josh Sneed never intended to become a t-shirt mogul. The standup comedian started Cincy Shirts as a side project while touring comedy clubs, but discovered something powerful: local nostalgia sells. Operating from Cincinnati with a scrappy team that calls in family members during peak periods, Josh has built a five-brand empire that's donated over a million dollars to charity through viral moments like Fiona the hippo and Damar Hamlin's recovery. In this interview, he reveals why his most successful designs are often the ones they throw up "on a whim," how they turned 100 shirts around in five hours for the Cincinnati Reds, and his unconventional advice for entrepreneurs about letting businesses grow organically rather than forcing success.

Who is Josh Sneed?

Meet Josh, Co-Owner of Cincy Shirts!

About Cincy Shirts

Cincy Shirts is an apparel company with a unique focus on Cincinnati-specific designs. In addition to representing their community, Cincy Shirts also supports it. An active participant in many local school and charitable fundraisers, Cincy Shirts is dedicated to making a difference. 

Josh’s Journey

Josh Sneed's path to co-owning a multi-brand apparel empire began in the most unlikely place: the standup comedy circuit. "I'm a professional standup comedian for going on 25 years now," Josh explains, describing how he met his future business partner who "was dabbling in comedy and had gone to the art academy here in Cincinnati. We clicked immediately. We both had entrepreneur minds. And we decided we wanted to collab together on something." Their first venture was a funny t-shirt website called Look at Me Shirts, with Josh leveraging his comedy tours for marketing: "When I was on the road doing standup, I would tell people about it at shows, or I would tell people about it when I went to the radio station."

The breakthrough came when they realized the power of local nostalgia. Their Cincinnati section began attracting attention from locals who remembered "old businesses that people remembered from when they grew up, old amusement park rides, former professional athletes that were their heroes as a kid." The response was immediate: "If you showed that site to someone who lived here or who was from here, they'd say, I want all of these." This local connection proved so powerful that "our local brand quickly surpassed our national brand."

Today, Josh oversees a five-brand universe including Old School Shirts, InTheClutch.com for sports merchandise, and Dressing Festive for holiday wear. The operation includes "two retail stores" with managers and part-time staff, "a production center," "two full-time designers who work remotely," and "a full-time head of sales" who "handles all the big accounts locally of people that we print shirts for, as well as the wholesale to all the different national stores that we sell to."

Business Growth and Revenue Strategies

Cincy Shirts' revenue growth has been driven by strategic reinvestment timed around viral cultural moments. "In the beginning, we were happy to have any profit," Josh recalls. "We had basically no overhead. So when two sales came in on a single day, it was like, this is the greatest thing ever." The company's expansion strategy became a cycle of reinvesting every dollar from breakthrough moments. When FC Cincinnati soccer team launched, Josh capitalized immediately: "Second game, they broke the league attendance record. The team was not ready to handle that much merchandise. We were the only other people making it. So everybody was coming to us." This influx funded their second store, and when Fiona the hippo became a global sensation, "we used that to open our third store."

The challenge with this growth model is managing extreme peaks and valleys. "You have too much staff and too much space when you're in the valley. And then when something pops off and now you got to ship out 2000 shirts in one day, now you don't have enough manpower or equipment to handle the production and fulfillment," Josh explains. 

For peak periods, their strategy is refreshingly honest: "When that happens, you're never fully prepared. We're literally calling family members, neighbors, anybody that we can to come in and help us pack orders, sort shirts, whatever it is." The e-commerce landscape has created both opportunities and challenges, particularly around intellectual property: "The second we load something onto the web, it is on 10 different bootleg websites. And there's no way to really shut it down."

Cincy Shirt’s CX Philosophy 

Cincy Shirts operates under a simple customer experience philosophy: make it right, no matter what. "For experience, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to get the product they're looking for and order it," Josh explains. The challenge comes from competing against Amazon's delivery expectations, but rather than try to match impossible timelines, they focus on service recovery. "Even if it wasn't our fault, we're still going to make sure it ends up in their hands because we feel that them having a positive experience with us at the end of the day will pay back any costs that we've incurred."

The company adds personal touches that larger competitors can't match. "We have custom bags, and a lot of times we'll throw little things inside the bag that just sort of make it fun. With old school shirts or in the clutch, sometimes we'll throw in little bags that have a few baseball cards in them. Just little things that we hope don't add a lot to the cost for us, but just might surprise and delight a little bit." This approach extends to individual customer requests, particularly for local customers who can pick up orders at their physical stores when timing is critical.

Innovation and Adaptability

Innovation at Cincy Shirts happens through rapid response to cultural moments and an acceptance that success is unpredictable. Josh's approach to product development is refreshingly unscientific: "We might have something happen in Cincinnati and we come up with two designs and one is super. We don't think anybody will buy, but it might get a laugh if we put it on social media. So let's throw it up there. And then this other one has amazing design work. Everybody's going to want to wear it. And we're wrong. We're wrong more often than we're right." This unpredictability is enabled by their print-on-demand model, where "the only investment we had was in the amount of time it took to design it and upload it."

Looking ahead, Josh's strategy centers on replicating Cincy Shirts' local success across their other brands. "The roadmap for us looks like if we can get our brands to have the success that Cincy Shirts has had locally, that's our dream. If when you go to old school shirts or you go to in the clutch and you click on a city that city is bringing in the same amount of sales we bring in just from Cincinnati." The company is also diversifying revenue streams through custom printing, which "has grown into basically an equal of our online brand sales." This provides stability: "If any or all of our brands just quit clicking with people, we still have a way to bring in income."

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Josh's advice for aspiring entrepreneurs emphasizes patience and financial security over rapid scaling. "Don't put everything into it that if it fails, you don't know what else you can do. Have something else on the side that maybe pays your bills and let this thing grow organically." His reasoning is rooted in personal experience:

 "What that allowed us to do was not put the pressure on us to be successful right out of the gate. This company could grow in its own time. It could make mistakes, learn from them and build off of them." He advocates for choosing the right partners and having aligned long-term visions, but most importantly: "Find something that you love doing and let it grow to a point where it can be profitable for you."