Unimpressed Official

Contemporary apparel turning unique in-house designs into embroidery and printing on t-shirts

Who we are

Behind this brand are two young women entrepreneurs who grew up in Vancouver, BC. For the sake of anonymity, we will refer to ourselves as C and H, mainly to see how far we can go without endorsement from friends as we truly believe in our products. We are very proud of what we have accomplished so far.

We met and became very close in high school, went to the same university but majored in different fields – C chose psychology while H pursued accounting. As you can see, neither of our backgrounds are in design nor business. In spite of that, we have been able to build from scratch given the deep-rooted connection and synergies with working with your best friend. We have always seen eye-to-eye on almost everything, whether it is food we both like or dislike (the list is probably equal for both categories, not going to lie), fashion sense, travelling style, dark inappropriate humor, or most importantly, our work ethics for giving things we care about our 110%. The list does not end there, but you get the idea.

Why shirt design

Fast forward to the present, we have both progressed in our full-time careers for almost a decade but while stable, we can never shake the idea of starting a business together – something we can call our own. As mentioned earlier, we have similar tastes in fashion, specifically when it comes to cute and minimalistic designs on basic shirts, crewnecks, you name it. Oftentimes, we will share links to clothing we think each other will like, mostly from Uniqlo or Sunday Best, one of Aritzia’s exclusive brands. If you are unfamiliar with either brands, they have embroidered icons of cartoon characters, animals or foods on the left chest. We are suckers for these shirts! Over time, we constantly find ourselves wishing we can find shirts of other adorable icons or designs we see and love and saying “if only this were embroidered on a shirt, I’d buy it”.

One day, C came across some cute iron-on embroidered patches online and shared it with H, suggesting that she put them on a shirt so she can customize it herself. But H had the brilliant idea of designing them ourselves and offering them to those who share the same passion we have. And because we are a small business, we would be producing our designs in small batches with exclusivity and uniqueness in mind. So C began doodling, starting with foods that are more commonly seen, like sushi. Then C moved onto other types of foods that would set us apart from what was already a dime a dozen. H would give suggestions of popular categories too, after extensive research. The more thought and effort we put in, the more excited we were to see everything come together. Hence the different collections we offer with distinctive designs that you will not find anywhere else!

How we got here

Given the lack of history to this particular line of business, we started from zero and went through hours and hours of research, trial and error, and risk-taking to figure everything out ourselves – from local suppliers for wholesale, to production, to materials and methods of embroidery/printing, to platforms to set up shop, to logistics of getting our products out and into the hands of our customers. We had to gain an understanding of the ins and outs of starting a business from scratch, and it took us months! Even just the logo design itself took a good 3 months. Did we pique your curiosity? You can see its evolution on our Instagram highlight under “About Us” (@unimpressedofficial).

Choosing the best shirts made of the best quality from the best brands also took a long while. We strived to find the perfect mix of softness yet firm build for the style we desired. The philosophy behind our brand is to put ourselves in a consumer’s shoes. Would we buy this ourselves and want to wear it? Hence the additional touch on each shirt – the hem labels we created and put onto each garment. The placement of these labels shows the extra care and thought we put into what we do – bottom right for men’s and left sleeve for women’s, because we know some ladies like to tuck their shirts in!

We have just begun the launch of our brand and still have tons of designs coming. We truly believe that you will feel the result from the time and love we pour into each shirt. We look forward to sharing Unimpressed Official with you!