“It Isthmus what it Isthmus” screen-printed shirts sit upon shelves near others celebrating UW-Madison hockey stars Nicole, Rachel and Kelly Gorbatenko. A joke inspired by fact — “Wisconsin: even the soup is beer and cheese” — adorns merchandise in the same store.
Located at 670 State St., Raygun, to the uninitiated, may seem like a goofy place to buy goofier T-shirts. And owner Mike Draper, who opened the first store in 2005 in Des Moines and expanded to Madison in September, using Paul’s Book Store’s former space, finds inspiration from fellow comedic sources.
The shirts are witty and comical, leaning toward the news satire of “The Daily Show.” Draper also read a lot of Madison’s The Onion. He wrote for the Des Moines alternative weekly Cityview, but wasn’t a journalist, but a self-described practitioner of performative humor. He played in bands, did theater and art and wrote a lot.
“The local aspect of an alt weekly, plus humor, plus politics,” Draper said, describing Raygun’s style. “You merge all that together.”
And then there’s the content portion of Raygun. If you visit the store’s website, it’s filled with links to catchy headlines covering some of the more outrageous news of the week, all curated by some of the company’s “characters,” including Gary the cat and Pancake the dog.
It’s all a little oddball and surreal, and Draper called Raygun “a media company dressed up as a shirt company. Our content is on the shirts.”
This is Raygun
It doesn’t take long to realize Raygun is a progressive-forward company.
“We do a lot of political content, so that can be a wild ride,” Draper said. “Our belief structure is not a secret. A lot of people ask us if we get conservative pushback, and it’s not as much as you think, as we’re not a fun target for conservatives to go after. It’s not very fun to bully someone who’s funnier than you.”
Draper said Raygun’s original store filled a niche of ultra-positive slogans about Des Moines mixed with progressive politics and humor.
“Investors were not lining up around the block,” Draper admitted. “I have no experience in retail, never worked in a store, never worked a cash register, never screen printed. … Who’s coming with me?”
But it worked. About five years later, he opened a second store. And a third in 2014. He is now up to 11 stores and is planning on opening another in Chicago next spring. The stores and retail make up about 75% of Raygun’s revenue, with 25% of the business handling printing for others.
It’s a union shop that handles everything from web stores for National Public Radio to printing shirts for groups like the Wisconsin Education Association.
Raygun donates money to charities it connects with, not just to tick a box.
“We don’t donate to things like national leukemia association and American cancer association, not because we’re pro-leukemia or pro-cancer — we are absolutely anti-cancer — but those huge national organizations have so much money already, our help isn’t going to move the needle,” Draper said.
Instead, Raygun works with local organizations they’re connected to in a tangible way or work with one where the store’s assistance can actually move the financial needle. A lot flows organically. Raygun had public education products in stores before they began supporting teachers’ unions with donations.
Taking over Paul’s location also led to supporting Wisconsin Public Radio. The bookstore was sold and Raygun leases it.
“When we were taking it over, as someone who takes community seriously, and knows how neighborhoods operate, I reached out to the family to tell them what we were doing,” Draper said.
Paul’s Books T-shirts, tote bags and dog bandanas came from that, as well as the special request for donating to local public radio with merchandise sales.
The cost of printing
Raygun designs and prints its shirts in-house, allowing for a quick turnaround of one to two days for new T-shirt or merchandise ideas to reach online and physical stores.
“It gives the entire place this ever-changing vibe,” Draper said.
A quick turnaround, however, means owning a printer. And owning a printer is great for the business, but not especially great with ongoing tariffs.
Some of Raygun’s shirts are made in Tennessee, some in LA and some in Central America.
“On one hand, it’s one of those if it’s made in the USA it won’t increase processes, but the printing equipment, like an autopress, nobody in America makes auto screen presses,” Draper said. “A company in Portugal makes one for $56,000. So now there’s a 15% EU manufacturing tariff on it, and I sent $8,200 to the U.S. Treasury for basically a sales tax.
“Even making American goods, these residual products add cost,” Draper said. “Tariffs haven’t hit us as hard… but our equipment costs have gone up. Even American products have foreign components. You inject this into the economy, and it’s going to come out in all sorts of unexpected ways.”
Draper calculated the direct tariffs Raygun has paid, and he estimated it’s around $65,000.
He mentioned he’d like to spend that money on employees instead of tariffs, but his company, like many, is dealing with it the best it can.
If you don’t go to the University of Wisconsin, you’re gonna end up eating government cheese and living in a van down by the river!
Wisconsin enjoys its fair share of comedy connections, from The Onion to Chris Farley (who said the above line in a UW-Madison video as one of his “Saturday Night Live” characters, Matt Foley), and Raygun has the sales to back it up: the largest amount of online purchases for a state without a brick-and-mortar store comes from Wisconsin.
It made sense to open the store on State Street.
While Draper said there have been some hiccups as he’s built his business — like almost running out of money — for someone who studied history at the University of Pennsylvania, things have gone well.
“No hopes of a legit career and I began selling shirts on campus, then out east for several months,” Draper said. “A friend suggested opening a store in Iowa. I had thought about it and it clicked. I thought I could move back in with my parents, open a shop. A buddy of mine had a dad with a screen printer.”
And it worked, although Draper joked he’s not gone far in life geographically. Raygun’s downtown Des Moines headquarters is six blocks away from where he was born.
Des Moines heroes
Draper isn’t the only one from Des Moines doing well. Basketball star Caitlin Clark grew up there, before heading to basketball stardom at the University of Iowa, down the street from Raygun’s Iowa City store.
When he began to feature women’s basketball merchandise in stores, Draper said some assumed he was just jumping on the Iowa hype train. But his mother played college basketball at the University of Michigan and coached his high school’s team.
He grew up knowing women’s basketball fans were diehard, and now he could dominate the market.
“We are down the street from what became the most famous female basketball team of all time, Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes,” Draper said. “We worked with everyone on the team.”
Wisconsin athletes are now getting the same treatment.
Raygun has two T-shirts featuring the Gorbatenko sisters, hockey royalty plying their trade for UW-Madison. And Madison can expect its UW volleyball team to be featured on shirts very soon.
Draper is excited to keep working with female athletes — though he lamented how Clark signed with Nike instead of Raygun — and to keep pushing new ideas on merchandise, all while helping local, progressive organizations.
It may have taken 20 years, but Draper is happy to do a job he loves.
“Funny. Midwestern. Progressive,” Draper said. “There’s a lot of content in those three things.”
