The Jay Victoria Name Established in 2017
The name Jay Victoria came into existence in 2017. There was a group of us there at the time. It took a couple of hours because we needed to find a name that hasn’t been trademarked or had an available domain. One of the names we came up with was SoCrew Lime! Could you imagine this clothing brand called SoCrew Lime instead of Jay Victoria? It probably would have been pretty fun. In the end, we settled on the names of our loved ones. They are actually the middle names of our younger brother and niece. We put the two together and voila! Before you know it, we created social media accounts and paid for a domain.
At the time, we started selling tanks and t-shirts that look like this below. It was a hit and we eventually sold out of these.
Our very first product and logo.
Can we talk about the logo for a minute? Can you say amateur? It makes me cringe! Year after year, we would sell tees and tanks at the Twin Cities Pride events. This quickly became old. We just didn’t know what it took to create a button-up shirt or where to even go to help. We reached out to a local manufacturer who said they could help with development, but it will cost over $10,000. That was just for development! It was money we didn’t have so we decided to get into real estate. One of us had already received a real estate license and began to try to flip homes. It was the worst experience. We felt like we got robbed of our money. Let’s just say, we learned a thing or two about jumping the gun and being too naïve. Maybe we can talk all about it later!
