As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jason Spiers, owner of JMH Graphics in Hattiesburg, was confronted with a unique set of problems.
His business was hit with economic hardship, and Spiers had a strong desire to help his struggling community. To tackle both at the same time, he helped co-found the Hattiesburg Strong T-shirt movement.
Like many local businesses, JMH Graphics was forced to alter work hours and lay off employees, which resulted in Spiers trying to find a different business method.
"We had to lay a couple of employees off and reduce hours," Spiers said. "For a lot of our employees, we talked to them and asked, 'What do you need to live off? What's the minimal amount?'" We have tried to adjust the work schedule to make sure everyone is provided for."
Spiers then discovered a business model that helped keep his employees paid and, at the same time, provided fundraisers for other local businesses. The initial idea to use T-shirt sales started between Spiers and The Porter restaurant owner Roy Windham. The thought occurred to Windham after it was ordered for restaurants to reduce their hours and resort to delivery and curbside pickup.
"When we had to close our dining room, I just kind of started thinking of ways where we could bring people together, obviously not physically, but in spirit," Windham said. "It's an idea that we can turn to whenever something tragic or something big happens in our community and city. It came to mind of maybe working on a shirt or graphic that everybody could purchase or just something where we can all come together."
Spiers began to produce and help sell T-shirts to be sold for other businesses. The only profit Spiers makes is used to cover the cost of production and pay his employees, which in turn allows him to pay bills. All other profits are given to the business he helps.
"Let me keep a dollar a shirt so I can just pay my employees," Spiers explained. "We are not trying to make any money. We are just trying to keep everybody with paychecks or help people who have no way of making a paycheck."
What resulted was a partnership between Spiers, Windham and the Hattiesburg Jaycees, which is a nonprofit organization that culminated in the creation of Hattiesburg Strong. The money from Hattiesburg Strong goes toward a grant that helps food service industry workers dealing with economic hardships as a result of the pandemic. The Hattiesburg Strong T-shirt profits fund the grant itself.
"Roy reached out to (Hattiesburg Jaycees) and asked if they wanted to work on this project," Spiers said. "The money we raise from the Hattiesburg Strong is sent to the Jaycees, and they set up a grant and have applications for people to apply. They have a blind committee that decides on the applications. The applications don't have a name on them; they just have a number assigned to them. They have been very instrumental in getting that project off the ground and really turning it into something more than me and Roy and selling T-shirts."
The grant is decided with a blind committee, which has given away more than $4,600 to workers.
"They go through a couple of questions because we want to go get it to people who actually need it," Windham said. "There is a lot of people out of work, but a lot have some sort of backup like family or friends that they can rely on. There is a lot of people who don't have that and are in a pretty bad situation."
According to Spiers, as of now, the Hattiesburg Strong initiative has sold over just over 500 T-shirts.
Outside of Hattiesburg Strong, Spiers has also been able to donate surplus T-shirts to help create face masks. Speirs explained that he gives away older T-shirts that been misprinted or shirts from orders that clients had never picked up.
"Two or three weeks ago, I was talking to Jeremy (Hirsch), the guy who just donated the 60,000 masks to the city, and me and him were trying to brainstorm some ideas of what we could do to help the community. He mentioned face masks, and after he got off the phone, I got to thinking that we have all these extra T-shirts that we collected from over the years. It's misprints, things that have holes in them, they have seams unraveling, or a customer may have not picked their order up or whatever. We just end up with extra T-shirts over the course of time."
Spiers gives away the unprinted portions of the T-shirt bottoms, which are used to help create the interior of a mask. After putting a post on Facebook, Spiers has given away more than 1,000 T-shirt tails to various people who help create and donate homemade masks.
"I got to thinking that we can take these T-shirts and cut the unprinted portions off the bottom, the tail of the T-shirt, and then donate that back out to the community to anybody who needed to make masks," Spiers said. "(Normally) you would use an actual fabric that you would buy at a fabric store to make the shell of the mask, but (instead) you use the T-shirt material as the liner for it.
"It never really serves another purpose after it's been printed. It was nice to be able to take that, repurpose and recycle it in a way and put it back out into the community for people."
People can still pick up the extra fabric bundles any day of the week at JMH Graphics on S. 40th Ave. Anyone interested will need to call ahead at (601) 261-2500 as the bundle will be delivered on a curbside pickup.
For Spiers, helping the community was a way to aid his business and also help fight the pandemic.
"It's kind of like pro bono work," Spiers said. "With no events or baseball season going on, schools being out … our business is like a restaurant; we just don't have any customers coming in right now. As opposed to sitting here and doing nothing, we decided to pivot our business model and try and do some community service."
Shirts can be ordered online at hattiesburgstrong.com with shirts priced at $20 and 2XL and 3XL sizes costing $22.
