Growing up, 21-year-old Clemson student Connor Fata always enjoyed telling jokes and making people smile.
As the world went into lockdown in 2020 and his semester abroad in Barcelona ended abruptly, Fata decided he wanted to broaden his reach.
“I couldn’t get on social media without being frustrated; it should be a place to make you smile,” said Fata.
Creating XL-Ant Life
Drawing inspiration from one of his dad’s favorite phrases —“Have an excellent life” — Fata decided to run with a pre-COVID idea he had about creating a line of t-shirts.
He discussed his idea with a classmate, who started drawing a couple designs using an ant as a featured figure.
“I have always seen ants as they are super-strong and they don’t give up,” said Fata. “They always work in a team. You can try to spread happiness to others but if you do it with others, then it is magical and everyone feels better.”
Using the ant as inspiration, Fata chose to name his business XL-Ant Life as a play on “excellent life.”
Getting rolling
Three weeks after coming up with the idea to create the apparel line and with the design settled on, Fata found a place to print his shirts in Charleston and in May 2020, XL-Ant Life was up and running.
“I said, ‘Screw it. What do I have to lose? I want to make people smile.’ We started selling the shirts to friends and family to get feedback,” Fata said. “Then we sold them up and down Litchfield Beach around the July 4th holiday last year. At the time, I worked at a beach bar called Cabana Café and I saw someone I sold a shirt to earlier in the day wearing it there that night.”
Fata says by improving his website and selling in-person on Litchfield Beach and to co-workers at the Cabana Café, he has seen his business grow significantly. Over a year into the business, he has sold 450 shirts and made $9,000 in revenue.
Lessons learned
Fata says he’s learned the importance of pushing himself to succeed while enjoying his work.
“I have so many competitors being in the apparel industry,” said Fata. “I’ve learned persistence, discipline and no matter how good you think the idea is, it is going to take a lot of work. Success is not going to happen overnight, but you have to enjoy the process and what you do. If I didn’t like what I did, there would be no way I could do this day in and day out.”
An eye to the future
As the accounting major heads into his last year at Clemson, he has already expanded his brand to include koozies as well as five-paneled baseball caps known as dad hats and trucker hats, which are also baseball caps but they have a mesh back rather the same material all the way around.
He is also working on getting XL-Ant Life trademarked and adding coasters to his product line. He’s started a newsletter featuring jokes and quotes of the day.
Fata has employed a couple of freelancers to help him with search engine optimization and Facebook ads while he works with his sister to handle Instagram, marketing, shipping and emails while working to get his brand into stores in Clemson and Greenville.
For more information, visit xl-antlife.com.
