Who needs a shirt?

Recession? People are still having babies. Babies still need clothes. Someone has to take care of people’s needs.

Meet Debbie Fireman and Janice McAllister, co-founders of Wholly Shirt. All they do is shirts.

“The idea for a shirt company came when my niece was born,” Fireman recalled from her office in Penn Valley, an area in Pennsylvania’s southeast that borders New Jersey.

“I got involved with her a couple of years ago,” McAllister said. She was ordering promotional products from my company (IM Incentives, a promotions company in Needham, Massachusetts). She happened to mention she wanted to do something like this. She said, “Why don’t we do this together?’”

The business is a side project for both women. McAllister works full-time at IM Incentives. Fireman runs Fireworks, a marketing company in Penn Valley.

“There was a lot of risk involved,” McAllister said. “It’s not always going to work. It’s challenging and rewarding at the same time.”

There are certainly challenges that await the entrepreneurs. According to the U.S Department of Commerce, over 627,000 new businesses opened in 2008. In the same year, 595,600 small businesses closed. The same office reports seven out of 10 new businesses last at least two years. Five will last at least five years.

“We’re very proud of what we created,” Fireman said. It has huge potential.”

McAllister handles the decals when it comes to getting them ready to be on the shirt.

“Jan has access to printers and knowledge of garments,” Fireman explained. “We got together and came up with ‘Wholly Shirt.’”

Fireman handles the design aspect of the company. She and McAllister have come up with a variety of ideas for the shirts. Some examples of the gear are a shirt that reads, “Hi. I’m new here.” There is a shirt with a bar code on it that is sold as a Halloween costume. Another shirt reads “Wear, wash, wow, repeat.”

“We’re just clever,” Fireman said. “We have really cool designs. We took some common football sayings. On a baby, they take on a whole new meaning: ‘Two-minute warning’. ‘End Zone.’ ‘Hand-off.’”

Fireman uses the experience she has from working at Fireworks to steer the company in the direction the women want. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Marketing. She has been working in marketing ever since she graduated. She and McAllister hope to have a website up running soon.

“I can contribute my skills to this business,” Fireman said. “We’ll do some promotions when we get the website up.”

In the meantime, the business will run on word-of-mouth and some people have started to take notice. The company is based primarily in Boston and Philadelphia but McAllister and Fireman are already looking to branch out. The two went to Greenwich Village last weekend and showed some designs. The company got a decent response from people.

“We have some sample setups,” McAllister said. “We walked into seven or eight stores. We have a brochure and an order form. We’re following up on those. There’s nothing yet but it was just last weekend.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Fireman said.

The women have given the shirts as gifts. One of McAllister’s cousins bought six shirts earlier this year.

Wholly Shirt has also embraced social networking and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Shirts had been sold to friends and family when Fireman was at the post office one day. The employee behind the counter learned what Fireman was shipping out.

“The guy at the post office was like, ‘I want one,’” Fireman said.

The shirts are shown to whoever sees them. Shirts are custom made. Designs are created by Fireman.

Freeman didn’t have anyone try to talk her out of the new venture.

“No one ever talked me out of anything,” she said.