Student Business Spotlight: West Exit
by Batavia High School juniors and BPS101 Communications Department interns Grace Ward and Brooke Meyer
“A brand based in the Chicago suburbs, powered by teens.”
This is the concept of West Exit, a clothing brand created by Batavia High School students Joe Ruzicka, Julian Davis, Michael Jansey, Connor Davis, and Jake Paoletti.
These five juniors missed a train on their way home from Chicago and were stuck in the train station for more than an hour. Their conversation led to their visions and goals, and the idea for West Exit was born.
You might know West Exit as the team of guys who sold the Batavia vs. Geneva T-shirts this fall and raised $11,000 for charity. Clearly they have what it takes to be young entrepreneurs, so we interviewed them to talk about their journey.
Who came up with the idea for West Exit?
West Exit: All of us. I’d say Joe brought it up, but it was definitely all of us. When we were brainstorming names, Joe put together “West Exit” and from that point on we loved the name and stuck with it.
What were some of the name ideas you had before you guys chose west exit?
West Exit: West Exit was the first one. We only came up with others just to make sure, but we don’t even remember any of them
What was your first item you sold?
West Exit: The white West Exit urban hoodie, then the skyline long sleeves. They’re still our bestsellers.
What’s hot: West Exit’s skyline long-sleeved T-shirt and white urban hoodie.
What was it like selling these Batavia vs. Geneva T-shirts, and how has it helped you?
West Exit: It was awesome to see how much money you can raise and how many people you can connect with within such a short amount of time. It was pretty awesome. We raised $11,000 with the help of the Batavia community for an awesome cause. The whole fundraiser gave us a lot of experience with marketing and running a charitable movement. We’re currently working on developing a charitable aspect to our brand. We want to intertwine cool streetwear with philanthropy. So for us, overseeing this whole fundraiser was a very fortunate experience. We’re thankful Coach Piron gave us the opportunity to run it!
How has the BHS INCubator Entrepreneurship course helped you with your business?
West Exit: It definitely helped shape the idea of our brand and the concepts. It helped a ton with connections. There are lots of speakers that come through here and we can reach out to them, which is really awesome. Shout out to our mentor, Vince! We use the class to brainstorm and get the technical things done. We do most of the real functionality stuff outside of school.
How did you you get the word out about West Exit/advertise for yourselves?
West Exit: A lot of social media. Yeah, mostly social media. We also went our around the [Batavia High School] lunch room back when we were coming up with a design for our first product and had about 200 people vote on what should be made. Plus, anytime someone buys something, we tell them to tell their friends. The Geneva vs. Batavia T-shirt fundraiser helped, and so does our website. I guess word of mouth [helps] a lot, too. People talk.
Tell us a little about your process.
West Exit: We sat down at Joe’s house, literally, two weeks after we had the idea, drew a bunch of sketches, got on Illustrator and made the logo. For designing and the website, Julian uses Illustrator and other Adobe software. We have a manufacturer in Elmhurst. We make a design and just send it in and they print it. We also do self-stitched, embroidered stuff. We eventually want to do our own printing.
Speaking of, what are your goals for your business? Where do you see it going?
West Exit: Some of our goals are to make a blog and news section in our website. We want to interact more with customers and we’re definitely working on the charity aspect right now. We’re ready to help other people.
We want to open our own store. We have some ideas already, but our biggest goal is to go global. We want people to know us for our vision—kind of like Supreme. We see it heading in the same direction with a movement behind it. Our vision started with making this brand to create a type of culture and movement for kids in our grade: doing what you want and becoming what you want. Overall, we want to be super busy with this and have fun at the same time.
Who are your biggest supporters?
West Exit: Each other, friends, parents, mentors, and Mr. Piron, our INCubator teacher. Honestly, our main supporters are each other. We build each other up. We push each other. We just want to put our time together toward something really positive and that’s cool to us.
Was it harder or easier than you’d expected? More or less successful than you’d expected?
Joe Ruzicka: When we first started, I definitely never thought we’d get this far. What’s happened in this year is insane, and just thinking about all the years ahead of us—it’s crazy dude. We already have stores hitting us up! One store in Southern California reached out to us yesterday.
Michael Jansey: I haven’t thought the process has been hard. We put a lot of work into it, though.
Julian Davis: I expected our growth, to be honest. The time we put into it … I just think you get out what you put in. It hasn’t really been hard because we love what we’re doing. We’re just having fun doing what we like. We work on West Exit every day. When we’re not working on it, I’m at home thinking about it, or coming up with new designs. There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not thinking about the next move.
