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My shirt? Shoot, it's bamboo

A pair sees green in a business online and in the Grand Central area.

By ROBBYN MITCHELL
Published June 11, 2006

Daniel and Lisa Jacobs opened Shirts of Bamboo at 2414 Central Ave. with money from the sale of their Old Northeast home.

The store, which opened last week, offers clothing, soaps and accessories made of the treelike grass. The couple said they hope the store is their contribution to creating a greener world.

"Bamboo is such a naturally sustainable and renewable resource that we thought it would be great to market and sell products made from it," Daniel Jacobs, 38, said.

Married for almost 10 years, the Jacobses are notorious among friends and family for taking chances.

"We tend to jump into things both feet first with our arms flailing because that's just how we live our lives," Lisa Jacobs, 39, said.

She said they embraced the venture because of the eco-friendliness of the plant. Bamboo material is said to be softer than cotton, naturally antibacterial and made from one of nature's fastest growing plants. The average price of a shirt is $24.

Dawn Bielawski, one of the owners of neighboring Grinders Coffee Shop, is already a fan. She said she tried a shirt and fell in love, so she now also owns bamboo sheets.

"The softness and the feel of it were great and the fact that it is eco-friendly was such a plus," Bielawski said.

An Internet entrepreneur, Dan Jacobs is the former owner of Las Vegas' Wizard.com, an Internet service provider he began in 1994. After living for six years in Sin City, the couple decided to sell the company, which had more than 5,000 customers, and move to Seattle to get into computer programming.

But when Jacob's grandfather, set to turn 90 this year, needed more help at home, the couple decided to move to St. Petersburg in 2002.

He said he found his new home relaxing but recalls that he couldn't stay away from the Web for long.

"I spent way too much time on the Internet, and I found a Web site that was selling clothes made out of bamboo," he said.

He purchased a shirt made of the unusual material, which was light and airy, he recalled, even when he worked in his garage during the summer.

Amazed at the absorbent ability of the fiber, he decided to share the "wonder shirt" with friends at a party.

"Everyone was feeling the shirt and asking questions about it," he said. "That's when it hit me that I would love to share this with other people."

He told his wife that he wanted to start an Internet company selling bamboo shirts. Excited about the idea, the couple started www.shirtsofbamboo.com more than six months ago and began sharing the antimicrobial fabric with the world.

It wasn't long before the couple saw a future in it and decided to set up a booth at the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Petersburg, where they said business was phenomenal.

Shannon Terry, friend and sales associate, attributes the boom in business to Dan and Lisa's likable personalities and drive to succeed.

But the seasonal closing of the market posed a new issue for the Jacobses. Then the owner of Grinders Coffee Shop, whose booth at the market the couple frequented, told them about an open retail space on her block in the Grand Central District.

"I wasn't sure if it was a storefront business, but they were doing great at the market and I saw the drive and passion that they both had so I recommended the space," Bielawski said.

So the Jacobses sold their house and invested almost $200,000 in the Internet company, merchandise and securing the storefront. They now rent an apartment downtown.

The clothes they sell are created mostly at factories in South Carolina and California using bamboo grown and spun into yarn in China. Daniel said he knows of no U.S. factories that produce the yarn.

The Jacobses hope the store, which opened May 31, is the first of many. The two still maintain the Web site and plan to return to the street market next season. They've even started dabbling in wholesale.

"I don't want to become the Gap or Abercrombie and Fitch of bamboo, but I would like for this idea to really take off in the future," he said.

[Last modified June 11, 2006, 08:32:07]