Clothing line offers patients more freedom

Clothing line offers patients more freedom
College project grows into business that creates apparel for people taking intravenous treatments

Monday, August 17, 2009 5:23 AM
By Jennifer Noblit

When Tess Schuster mentions she's starting a clothing company in her dad's basement, many people jump to the conclusion that she'll be cranking out T-shirts bearing clever, funny messages.

What the 22-year-old businesswoman will be producing is indeed clever. But funny? Hardly.

Schuster, a 2005 graduate of Dublin Coffman High School, is putting the finishing touches on Libre, a clothing line designed specifically for dialysis and chemotherapy patients. (Libre, also the company's name, means "free" in French and Spanish.)

Schuster and three partners - Megan Stengel, Mandy Eckman and Bethany Skaff - developed the concept last school year in an entrepreneurship class at Miami University, where all four were seniors.

Stengel, Libre's president, was the first to propose making outfits with hidden zippers that would make it easier for wearers to undergo dialysis or other treatments requiring intrave- nous lines, catheters or infusion tubes.

"The goal is something comfortable and functional," Skaff said.

Schuster said the idea hit home with her because her grandfather has to endure weekly dialysis.

"When Megan talked to the class, when she said 'dialysis,' my ears perked up," she said.

Schuster said her grandfather typically wears golf shirts when he's receiving dialysis because they leave his arms uncovered and easily accessible. Sometimes, though, they don't keep him warm enough, she said.

Before the course concluded, Schuster and her colleagues had assembled a business plan complete with financial data, market research and clothing prototypes. The team visited hospitals and talked to dialysis patients to find out what they would want.

"You create a company to the point where, if investors pick you up, you can start the company the next day," Schuster said.

The plan for Libre won a class competition, yielding its creators a $1,250 prize, business contacts and "credibility, especially going to banks for loans," Eckman said.

"We're just out of college," she noted. "We have no credit."

Early on, the women had decided that even if they didn't win the competition, they were going to try to turn their concept into a reality.

"The further we got into it, we thought: 'This is a good idea. We could do this,'" Skaff said.

When Schuster told family members she was going to help launch Libre rather than pursue a long-anticipated career in event planning, her father offered his basement in Muirfield.

The partners are now focused on securing investors, lining up manufacturers and fine-tuning merchandise.

Their initial product will be a button-down oxford shirt featuring hidden zippers in the sleeves. On the drawing board is a line of clothing for children who have to receive dialysis or insulin injections on a regular basis.

"We hope to start sales in September," Schuster said.

While the women want to build a profitable company, they say they'll also derive a good deal of satisfaction from seeing patients save a little time, achieve a degree of normality and simply feel better about themselves.

"One of the nurses we talked to said it perfectly," Schuster said. "She said, 'Even if it saves 10 seconds of the day, that's 10 seconds they can step back and take a deep breath.'"

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