Business to grant wishes through shirt sales

A wish with every T-shirt — that’s the premise of Penzi, a new business on campus.

Penzi, a T-shirt company, gives customers the opportunity to submit a wish when they receive their T-shirts in the mail.

The company plans to choose one wish per month and grant it using money made from T-shirt sales.  

“We want people to think outside the box,” IU student and Penzi Vice President Lauren Gendron said. “We want people to wish for things they don’t have the time or money to do themselves.”

Penzi opened Sept. 5. The name of the business is the Swahili word for love and desire.

Tyler Fosnaugh, owner and founder of Penzi, came up with the idea during his freshman year at IU when he became involved with The Compass Fellowship social entrepreneurship group.

He was inspired by businesses such as TOMS shoes and To Write Love on Her Arms.

“As far as where the wish idea came from, well, my parents have always pushed me to chase my dreams and do whatever makes me happy,” Fosnaugh said. “This idea of being happy became very important to me, and I started doing lots of research on the psychology of happiness and how it works. It always seemed to me that if you were happy, nothing else really mattered. So while wanting to make other people happy, the wishes just made sense. We’ve all had dreams that didn’t come true. But if something were to come true, how much of an impact would that make on you and the people around you?”

T-shirts include a design with a giraffe graphic and another with the motto “Dream it, wish it, live it.”

The shirts range in price from $14.99 to $19.99.

“We hope to be able to grant wishes soon,” Gendron said. “We’re waiting for funding.

So far, only three people have sent in their wishes, and we just can’t do those right now. Because we are just starting out, we have to look for wishes that we are financially able to fund.”

In the future, Gendron said Penzi plans to grant wishes that require larger amounts of funding.

“The first wish we ever got was someone wanting funding to go to a mission trip in Guatemala,” Gendron said. “We want to be able to fund this kind of thing in the future.”

After granting wishes, Gendron said Penzi plans to take videos and pictures of the wish experience and share them online.  

Fosnaugh said he hopes to inspire others with these messages to “create their own adventures” and “take their lives into their own hands.”

Currently, Penzi is trying to broadcast its message on Facebook and Twitter. It is promoting on campus as well, including chalking and a setting up a booth.

“Yes, we may be a T-shirt company, but we like to emphasize that that is not just what we do,” Gendron said. “We want people to know that we strive to inspire people to reach for their dreams however impossible they may seem. We sell T-shirts as a way to make that happen. Hopefully within the coming years, we can fund ridiculously crazy and impossible dreams.”

For more information or to buy a T-shirt, visit Penzithreads.com.