Can You Make Money Selling Tie Dye

Tie-dyed Economics

May 2, 2011

Rob Baynard

Byron Howes of Art On Cloth helps me get the breakdown on all things twisted and tie-dyed. (photoillustration)

Born in the early 1980's, I never understood what the fascination with tie-dye was among certain people in America. Growing up in Florida, tie-dye prints could be seen on every beach, in every tourist gift store, and almost always were worn by someone on island time who had long hair and a carefree attitude. It was probably in middle school when I first realized that this type of fashion was from the hippie era of the 1960s and 70s. Those people, who I thought were really cool in their fluorescent colored tie-dye shirts, were actually the kind of people I didn't want to be when I got older. They seemed to have little responsibility and even less motivation.

I would see tie-dyed locals and their tourist dopplegängers marching up and down Gulf Boulevard in St. Petersburg, bobbing their heads as if they were listening to Jerry Garcia after just having lit a marijuana cigarette. Most of these tie-dye wearing hippies that I talked to, have an anti-establishment, anti-government position on issues that makes it easy for them to blame people who are not remotely responsible for their lack of ambition.

They chose the life of a beach bum, a hippie, and a pothead. They chose their path through life, and their style reflects that dedication.

I'm always looking for ways to make more money. One day as I was cruising around my local farmer's market, I came across Byron Howes selling his tie-dye shirts for $30 dollars a piece. WOW! How could this guy sell these for that much money, when you can go buy a tie-dye shirt at Wings on the beach for $5 dollars? Three t-shirts at Wings cost only $10 dollars. This guy must make a killing.

So, the next week I hit the local grocery store to pick up a bunch of different colors of Rit® dye. I purchased 20 shirts from Target and even pulled out a few old items from my closet. I was ready to try tie-dye.

Having no clue what I was doing, I found some instructions on Google, and got to work. I mixed four different dyes with my first batch and five with my second. I spent five hours carefully twisting, tying, folding, and dunking my shirts into plastic buckets filled with powdered Rit® dye mixed with water.

Almost immediately after the first shirt, I started to see how much fun it was to see what I could create. This was entirely new to me, but now I know why so many people got hooked on tie-dye in the 1960s and 70s. Watching the colors bleed, run, fade, and merge into each other, then spiraling out of control and shifting into patterns that I never could have even drawn with a pencil. The bright colors had to be applied in stages from lightest to darkest, starting with yellow and moving through to blue or red, controlling and limiting the amount of dye I used in each area. Seeing the dramatic results of the dye changing the fabric, I was reminded of a line from Rachel Carson about using chemicals from "The Other Road" in Silent Spring, "The chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life […] capable of striking back in unexpected ways."

My Rit® dye was not the best. As soon as I started rinsing out my designs, the color drained and faded almost instantly. I did something wrong. Being all out of dye, frustrated from having spent a whole afternoon on this project, and disappointed in my lack of craftsmanship, I decided I needed help.

I went back to Howes at the market that Saturday to find out how he made his colors stay so bright. As I entered, Howes welcomed me back and remembered me from the week before. I told him of my failed experiment and asked him if he wouldn't mind telling me how he does his.

Howes asked me, "Do you use Procion dye?"

Beginning to realize what my first mistake was, I hesitantly replied, "No, I didn't. What's that?"

Howes went into a surprisingly scientific monologue of the difference in dyes and how it affected the fabric. "Rit® dye is called interstitchal dye," said Howes. "All it does is fill the gaps between the stitches. The color is actually between the fabric, and as you wash it, a little comes out each time. But Procion dye is called fiber-reactive dye; it molecularly bonds to the fabric and becomes part of it. That's why these stay bright over time."

Imperial Chemical Industries introduced Procion dye in 1956, and patented it as the first fiber-reactive dye in the world. Since then other dye manufacturers have created similar reactive dyes that they market under many different names today. Reactive dyes changed the textiles industry, allowing for colors that resisted being washed out or faded by the sun's exposure.

Procion dye could only be ordered through specialty places like DharmaTrading.com in California, where Howes buys all his dyes.

Howes contends that tie-dye is the only art form America has ever invented. He can control the colors and make geometric patterns and symbols, whereas traditional tie-dye could not create those affects. With precision, Howes has developed his own tools and process to control the color like an artist with a brush.

Under the large camphor tree in his back yard, he lays out corrugated plastic on tables where he folds and twists his shirts and tablecloths, securing them in place with dowels and chopsticks, and using plastic squeeze bottles to paint on the color with artistic control.

At 55 years old, he has been selling tie-dye at outdoor markets and festivals for over 15 years. His business, Art On Cloth, has the slogan, "Visualizing peace one shirt at a time." Howes is now a Buddhist and continually returns to the idea of the healing nature of art for him.

Howes moved to Florida when he was 10 years old after his mother straightened out her life enough to take him and his four siblings out of an orphanage in Watertown, NY, where they all grew up.

"I lived in an orphanage up there, called the Jefferson County Children's Home. My mom went crazy, but she finally got us back," said Howes. "When she finally got us back, she moved us down here. I remember the first day I was in St. Petersburg: I thought, man this place is heaven."

Heaven for Howes was much different from most people. Instead of a steady job, a nice house, and raising a family, Howes was content to be a counter-culture artist, supported by his wife, who ironically works a corporate job at Fifth Third Bank to support their basic living expenses.

"I wouldn't be able to do this if she wasn't supportive," said Howes. "I don't make enough money to even come close. I don't make her by my pot though. I buy my own pot, and I buy groceries for the house, and occasionally I buy something else. That's okay. I don't need much."

Howes blames his lack of success on each event in his life. He grew up in an orphanage; Charlie Crist took his quarterback position in high school; and Eckerd College has not given him a diploma because he still owes them money.

"Obviously I want to be able to make a living," said Howes. "But eventually, or maybe if I got recognized for a new art form – which it is – that's pretty big. Who the hell has ever invented an art form? I've invented a new thing that people think of as tie-dye because they don't know any better. But it's definitely not tie-dye."

Tim from the Sweetwater Farms booth across the aisle, has come over to check out some of Howes' best cloth.

Howes believes that he should be recognized as an innovator of the tie-dye industry. He is trying to work a deal with his dye and fabric supplier where they can market his "by-dye", as he calls it, to the rest of the tie-dye industry, making new products and peeking new interests in an art form that has been in steady decline over recent years.

Well, I wasn't going to get my hands on any Procion dye, so I decided to try to sell the things that I made anyway the next day out on Gandy Beach in St. Petersburg. I showed up early on a Sunday morning and started hanging my 20 shirts off of the flatbed of my truck. I pulled out the sign I had made that said, "Tie-dye $10." I figured I had about $3 into making each t-shirt, so $10 would give me a $70 profit if I sold all 20 shirts.

I decided that I was going to be there for four hours, or until all the shirts sold, whichever came first. Maybe it was Sunday morning, or the fact that it was Easter, that nobody stopped to check out my tie-dye. I could not believe that after four hours with my sign on a major road and my multicolored creations hanging off the bed to my truck, why were people just driving right on by? Maybe everyone thought what I did at the outset of this experiment: why would anyone want to wear tie-dye?

People looked at me real strange anytime I wore the tie-dye, like I was a burned-out pot smoker. Wearing tie-dye is the quickest way to get people to think you do drugs. I tried holding the sign above my head and waving to people as they passed by. I got plenty of smiles, waives and honks, but no takers. Nobody wanted my tie-dye, and I quickly realized, like Howes, that I wasn't going to make any money at this. So now I'm stuck with 20 tie-dye shirts that I would never wear in a million years. Drat.

Now I understand why Howes was practically giving his stuff away any time someone came into his tent, and the longer you talked, the better the deal got for you. Back in his tent at the market, Howes was telling me about how much he hates commercial products and corporate sponsors. Then some customers walk in.

"They're supposed to be $30," said Howes. "But if you both get one, I could give them both to you for $30. Would you like to try it on? I have a mirror. I do everything one of a kind, so I wouldn't have the same thing in a different size. Also, I want to give you a gift too. I'd like to give you one of these scarves."

No wonder this guy did not make any money, he was giving his product away for next to nothing. For someone who is so anti-establishment, his marketing persona and pitch was as savvy and smooth as any booth at the market that day.

What I still may never understand is why someone would spend their entire lives thinking and fighting against corporate greed, when they were just like any other good capitalist come Saturday mornings at an outdoor market. The trade was independent enough. His ideology was simple, but his contempt for organized authority can never be productive. He was fighting a battle he could not win. To check out, as many of his hippie friends did in the 1960s and 70s, he couldn't make the world check out with him.

Unfortunately, in our modern world we are bombarded at every corner with a new advertisement, an ad for a for-profit college, and the images of success on television and in magazines. Even those counterculture relics of the 60s who believed they were changing the world through peace, love and pot smoking, never really achieved their goals. Vietnam ended, and the boys came home from war. After that, people started running out of things to protest. With little to rebel against, they had little choice but to conform. Today most hippies look like you and me. They have moved on from their tie-dye days and worked as lawyers, doctors and even college professors. They have become the people they once despised: squares. Even Howes was a square when someone was interested in buying something. His pitch methods make you realize that this guy could have been a valuable asset to any marketing firm.

Most people, like him in the 60s and 70s, have grown up into real jobs that come with real responsibility. Howes avoids responsibility wherever he finds it. He says the only reason he got married was so he could get on his wife's health insurance. As he gets older, he said the sun seems to get hotter. His health is not the best, and he probably won't be able to do this for more than 10 more years. As he gets older, he realizes how much he has missed by not being able to do pay for the things he wants to do in life. With no children, he has no one to pass on his art form to when he dies. What's left for a 55 year old, self-proclaimed hippie artist with a bad back and a lot of medical bills? I think he is wishing now that he chose a career that was a little more inside the mainstream. Retirement will never be an option for Howes.

A slow but steady flow of customers net Howes just enough to come back and try it all over again next week.