About Us - Great To Be Here Tees

Our Purpose at GREAT TO BE HERE TEES -- What We Do and Why We Do It

Our goal at G2BH is to make "shirts for people who are passionate about places" -- and we strive to provide our customers with unique, distinctive, clever, interesting, funny, smart, classy, wholesome, and stylish apparel and gear.

We realize the t-shirt marketplace is a crowded one, and there is a lot of cool and funny stuff out there. We are focused on growing our collection within our unique brand identity, and strive to continue our principles of... being 95% wholesome 95% of the time * doing nothing mean, offensive, sexual, political, anti-establishment (we believe that's all being done to death) * we try to describe everything in an interesting and freshly insightful way * we try to never be overly obscure * we want all our shirts to mean something * and we’re emotionally invested in every shirt we make.

We also strive to provide our retail and wholesale customers with the best, smartest, friendliest customer service we can. Now, I can't guarantee we won't sell out someday :) -- but for now, we are going to stand bravely and boldly against the tide of brainless, robot-like, press "1" for this..., nightmare that customer service has become. We will also be very frank -- we L-O-V-E our customers, because their M-O-N-E-Y is what keeps us in B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S! And the vast majority of our customers are wonderful people. However, if you've ever been in customer service, I can tell you from experience, there is a % of people out there who are some combination of unscrupulous, unreasonable, and just plain irrational. You know who you are, and we'll try our best to serve you too, but once in a while we may crack under pressure. :)

Our History

G2BH was originally called Festa Stuff, then Festa T-Shirts, and was formed in 2003. Founder Christopher Festa had always had a notion, since high school, of starting some form of t-shirt company, and Festa's first t-shirt was inspired by his love for the Chicago Cubs, "IN DUSTY WE TRUSTY"^(c) -- celebrating the team's initial success under new manager Dusty Baker. Chris was able to get some early attention and press coverage over the spring and summer, but in the meantime developed about a dozen other t-shirt ideas and began vending the initial print run at the 2003 Taste of Randolph Street festival in downtown Chicago. From this first batch, 3 shirts really stood out from the pack: "773-FOREVER I'll Never Move to Naperville" -- celebrating Chicago's yuppie area code and making fun of the suburbs; "CHICAGO'S JUST RIGHT FOR ME" USA map design calling the rest of the country "too" something; and the "MIDWESTERN GIRL", inspired by Chris's fondness for girls from the heartland. What also emerged was that women were a much larger market for us than men.

Things really took off in September 2003 when Chris guested on WGN Radio, and the t-shirts were featured 2 weeks later in The Chicago Tribune -- it so happens -- on the day the Cubs clinched the NL Central Division Title and he was on TV with his huge In Dusty We Trusty banner. (See press section for highlights) Orders and publicity flooded in for 18 magical days -- until Bartman. With the cursed Cubs experiencing another spectacular failure, business dropped to zero overnight. Undaunted (unless you call closing the blinds and lying in bed in a dark room for 5 weeks eating cold pizza and shutting yourself off from all contact with the outside world "daunted"), Chris focused on developing a line of women's apparel based around the Area Code, Map, and Girl-from-a-Place concept. After spending about a year and a half figuring out what we were doing, getting our shirts placed in some local stores, making a lot of mistakes, we began going to Trade Shows late in 2005, got an office and moved out of Chris's apartment, and began building the business you see today.

Some Of Our Operating Principles

First and foremost, we humbly, gratefully, and proudly appreciate the fact that we were born in and are able to have the freedom to originate and operate our business in the United States of America. We appreciate and will never take for granted the blessings, safety, and prosperity we enjoy in the USA, and we'd in particular like to thank and recognize the men and women of the United States Military, without whose sacrifices and bravery since the mid-1770s, we would not have the wonderful nation we have today. We'd also like to recognize the great men and women of business and industry, the many inventors, investors, and entrepreneurs who came before us, and the free enterprise system itself, all without which there would be no Great To Be Here -- we'd all be living in caves or at best, working in the fields from dusk till dawn threshing wheat!

We also would like to state that we are proud to be part of the great cycle of international trade and world economic development. Our products are manufactured in a variety of locations including Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, other parts of the US, Mexico, and a variety of other Asian and Central American nations. We believe that the more shirts we make, the more opportunities we provide for workers and business partners both in the USA and abroad, and we believe (from economic evidence) that free markets lead to free and more prosperous people everywhere.

Additionally, we seek to enhance and add value to our community by providing jobs, and providing products and services that add value and happiness to peoples' lives. We also over our years in business have contributed merchandise and cash donations to a wide variety of local and national charitable causes. These include...

> The Lakeview Shelter / Northside Housing & Supportive Services Organization of Chicago
> The Infant Welfare Society of Chicago
> Alternatives for Youth Chicago
> Literacy Chicago
> Kids Kicking Cancer Foundation (Detroit, MI)
> The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
> St. Edward's School Scholarship Fund (Vero Beach, FL, Chris's high school)
> The VH1 Save the Music Foundation
> The Field Museum of Chicago
> Friends of Newberry Academy, Chicago
> The Guardians of the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging (Los Angeles)
> Building Communities for Youth of Chicago
> North Park Elementary School of Chicago
> The Salvation Army
> Delta Gamma Sorority "Night for Sight" Aid to the Visually Impaired Foundation Nationwide
> Step Up Women's Network (SUWN) Wellness Bag Program benefiting female cancer patients
> Old St. Patrick's Church of Chicago
> The Children's Heart Foundation (Lincolnshire, IL)
> Special Olympics Illinois
> Junior Board of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago
> The Institute for Justice, a non-profit legal organization assisting minority and non-minority entrepreneurs
> St. Michael's Church of Chicago Annual Chili Cookoff
> The Hillsborough County, Fla (Tampa) Medical Association Charity Golf Tournament benefiting Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
> Chicago Abused Womens Coalition
> Children's Heart Foundation
> White Elephant Shop benefiting Children's Memorial Hospital (Chicago)
> Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
> INFANT Inc, a Chicagoland all volunteer organization that buys and delivers infant formula and clothing to more than 40 food pantries and shelters
> New Leash on Life Chicago (NLOL), a 100% volunteer-run dog rescue group in Chicago
> The Bridge Youth and Infant Services (Palatine, IL)
> Jordan Community School 5th and 6th grade Christmas Giveaway (Chicago)

...and a number of other worthy charitable causes. We are happy when we can to donate merchandise to a good cause, so feel free to contact us about it.

Please note also, that unless explicitly specified, none of our products is in any way whatsoever intended to represent any professional sports team, college, or university. All designs are original creations. Any custom jobs done for an organization are done with the explicit written permission for use of their logo (Please see our "Wholesale" section for more information.)

About Founder Christopher Festa

Christopher Festa was born in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in Vero Beach, Florida when his parents moved there when he was 6 years old, then attended Stanford University in California, majoring in Economics. Chris worked briefly in finance before joining the worldwide firm, Andersen Consulting, now known as Accenture, where he spent 10 carefree (compared to being an entrepreneur!) years working in management consulting and technology, focusing in the latter years on the discipline of Knowledge Management, based in Chicago. In his role, he was fortunate enough to travel to many exotic locations including Atlanta, Cincinnati, St. Charles, IL, and Kenosha, WI, but also to London, Germany, Sweden, Barcelona, and Australia. Chris then worked for a couple of dot-coms in the early 2000's (great timing!) where he earned many 1000's of stock options. After spending some time in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, Chris returned full-time to ChiTown and began the company in 2003.

Chris has always loved, loved, loved traveling and noting the quirky and distinctive aspects of the places he has visited. At age 5 on a cross-country road trip, to quiet him down, his father handed him the Road Atlas and said, "here, read this." -- he did -- cover to cover -- and loves maps and highways to this day (as reflected in many of the t-shirts). Between the dot-com days and starting Festa Stuff, he was also fortunate enough to embark on several massive road trips around the USA, visiting 40+ states and 30+ national parks, logging over 25,000 miles in the process. These fun trips provided more insights and ideas for what would later become Festa t-shirts. He is somewhat of a savant (noticed we omitted "idiot") in matters of geography, pop culture, song lyrics, sports statistics, recognizing patterns in things that few others do, and accumulating and disseminating arcane knowledge.