October 7,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Melissa O’ Sullivan, a local Ridgewood, New Jersey mom who started a t-shirt company with her son Jake, who is Autistic.
Their company, Autistic Heroes Teeshirts, came to life after Melissa shared some of her son’s artwork, which she says has helped her connect to his more internalized emotions. The positive reaction from her Facebook friends inspired her to begin printing his masterpieces across T-shirts for the rest of the world to wear and admire. And with that, the Autistic Heroes community was born.
New Jersey mom, M Anne O'Sullivan, is proud of her autistic son's artwork. So proud, she decided to put it on a shirt and give it a name: Autistic Hero Teeshirts. Now other people with autism are showcasing their creativity on clothing, too, after she posted on Facebook.
Posted by Community Voices from Facebook on Wednesday, October 4, 2017
As you can see in this mini documentary, the duo has continued to grow the Autistic Heroes community through the company’s Facebook Page, where Melissa and Jake connect with other Autistic artists from around the country and provide them the opportunity to showcase their artwork on new t-shirt designs. The secret to the community’s strength and success? As Melissa puts it, “everyone needs to feel a mission in life.”
According to Melissa , my now high school age Autistic son Jake Soper created books filled with childhood comic drawings in 2011-13. He was drawing fan art based on his favorite object competition shows and also piles of original superheroes, side-kicks and villains. Jake is an extremely shy person so we were THRILLED to see such a wonderful imagination percolating under Jake’s calm facade.
Based on the keen interest s…hown in Jake’s sketches, and my recent Parsons degree (2014) in Graphic Design, I decided to make a T-shirt line for babies, toddlers and kids (and adults as it turns out!) called AUTISTIC HERO TEESHIRTS. I curate his images, clean them up, bring them to life with color, and make edits where necessary. I brand, produce, advertise, design/maintain autistichero.com, and market and ship the T-shirts. AHT also travels the NJ (and soon NY) area selling T-shirts. Jake designs specific T-shirts I am looking for now that he is older and helps me with editing during the design process. We will teach him more and more steps to this process.
AHT sells name brand, gift worthy T-shirts. We donate a dollar to Autism per shirt. Jake Soper also makes a dollar per shirt income. We are modeling business skills to our son within the home and the ASD community at large and want to be role models for pro-autism business. AHT has developed strategic partners in the ASD community with whom we support, barter, donate, mentor and trade ideas and advice in addition to our cash donations.
*Recycle AHT is a spin off brand we only sell face to face and is not available at autistichero.com. A brand where we rescue and repurpose viable, unique, gently worn clothing items and put characters or images from AHT on them for sale at a less premium price point than our main line.
The mission of AUTISTIC HERO TEESHIRTS is supporting creative and entrepreneurial effort in the Autistic community. We are a for-profit clothing brand with a charitable aspect.
For Fun For Profit For Autism
