Sending a stylish message

Michele Marr

Deborah Kaiser is a single mom of three kids -- 13-year-old twin boys Jason and Corey and 3-year-old Sarah. She is also a former model

who, like her teenage sons and their friends, is attracted to fashion

trends.

Kaiser is also a Christian and, more recently, an entrepreneur.

About a year ago, the abundance of what she perceived to be

ungodly messages broadcast across sports equipment and clothing lines

began to grab Kaiser’s attention. Then she got an idea.

“There weren’t any trendy-looking styles for Christian T-shirts,:

she said. “The style had gotten stuck in the ‘80s: airbrushed, huge,

in-your-face cartoon graphics of open Bibles and scripture.”

She kept an eye on sportswear styles and trends and found herself

thinking, “There needs to be some Christian designs that attract and

not attack, designs based on styles of today.”

As time went on, Kaiser found that ideas for shirt styles, slogans

and even company names kept collecting in her mind, so she began to

write them all down.

“When I get strong intuitions like that, I attribute them to God,”

she explained.

Her sense that her idea had come “straight from the man upstairs”

led Kaiser to take it seriously.

“When I turned 40 this year, I thought, what am I waiting for?”

she said.

She researched the skateboard, surf and Christian sportswear

markets to figure out where her idea fit in. She researched vendors

and costs. She learned how to register a domain name on the internet,

how to file for a fictitious name permit, get a business license,

re-sale permit and she began learning how to build a Web site.

Then she focused on finding a company name.

She first settled on one name, only to find -- even after a lot of

research -- it was already in use. It was a set back. She already had

a logo using the name and had even printed some labels and hangtags

bearing the name for her now developing clothing line. But she

shrugged it off. If her idea were a gift from God, Kaiser thought, he

would see her through.

So she chose another name: Lift Clothing -- Lift for “Living In

Forgiveness and Truth.”

Then she combined it with a tagline, “Today, Tomorrow, Eternal.”

Kaiser drafted a mission statement and defined the vision -- to be

a light to the world -- and the values of her new company. They might

be summed up as the Golden Rule plus fun and profit.

“We believe in personal accountability -- in our actions and

attitudes toward our customers, our co-workers and vendors,” Kaiser

said. “We will accept nothing less than honesty as a way of doing

business.”

For now, Kaiser is a one-woman show. She runs Lift Clothing and

continues to develop its sportswear line while she works her day job.

She’s in charge of everything from business development to graphic

design.

Ideas for her clothing’s slogans come to her all the time. They

are mostly short and catchy: Witness Protection Program; Natural Born

Sinner; Satan is a Poser; Revolution; Believing Is Not a Crime.

Kaiser has an eye for design and, with a computer and professional

graphics software, she develops trendy, edgy designs and typography

for the slogans and displays them on the company’s Web site,

liftclothing.com.

It’s a night job. On weekends, she takes the sportswear to the

Orange County Marketplace and to tradeshows.

The backside of the Lift Clothing hangtag reads, “Come to Me, all

you who are weary and I will give you rest. -- Jesus,” from Matthew

11:28.

As hard as she works, and given the long hours she logs in, it’s

easy to imagine that Kaiser herself would be weary. But she smiles

when she quotes from her business plan, “Life is short. Find a job

you love with a goal you can get behind and you’ll never work a day

in your life.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].