The road to a revival of our Avenues of Hershey Tee
The new version features the addition of Caracas Avenue on an organic cotton tee with light brown and dark brown ink.
Back in summer 2017, we were gearing up for the fall launch of Stay Apparel Co. A big part of that was finalizing tee designs, one of which was our Avenues of Hershey.
The hand-drawn design featured Chocolate and Cocoa avenues, which form one of the most iconic intersections in America, as well as several downtown streets named for cocoa-producing parts of the world: Granada, Java, Areba and Caracas.
But I thought the design was too expansive, so to tighten it we arbitrarily deleted Caracas.
Customers never knew, and the design — black ink on a white tee, inspired by the colors of Hershey street signs — sold pretty well. As with most of those early designs, we overbought (why wouldn’t we sell seven-dozen smalls?) and overprinted that design, but we finally exhausted the inventory in early 2024.
But that was not the end of the road for Avenues of Hershey.
Fast forward to June 6, opening day for our new store at the Hershey History Center. The first two customers through the door inspired a conversation about the Avenues of Hershey Tee, which I had occasionally thought about reviving.
The customers were barely out of the store before I resolved to bring Avenues of Hershey back, but with a few tweaks.
First, it’s going to be on a pistachio organic cotton tee with light brown and dark brown ink. I’ve learned that customers generally prefer non-white tees, sometimes citing their tendencies to spill food. The new design is more colorful and dynamic.
Second, Caracas is back in the design. Sara and I moved to Caracas Avenue in 2020, and we just couldn’t betray the street for a second time!
The new Avenues of Hershey design will debut by early July; you can order it now, however. It’s available in unisex sizes small, medium, large, XL and, for the first time, 2XL.
We’re also bringing back our The Chocolate Town Tee and will add one or two more Hershey designs in the weeks ahead now that our journey has brought us to a permanent home in our hometown.