CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. – Lloyd Kerry believes he’s found a business opportunity in a sentiment felt by many locals and tourists visiting the Island.
This summer, Kerry is planning to sell “I (heart) PEI” shirts and reusable tote bags from a booth at the Downtown Charlottetown Farmers Market on Queen Street on Sundays.
“Tourists really like P.E.I. and like to go home with something from P.E.I.,” he said. “So, I thought this is probably something a lot of people will wear.”
Kerry has also been reaching out to Island businesses about selling the products.
So far, Kitchens Unlimited in the Confederation Court Mall has ordered 100 tote bags while the Elmira Railway Museum has ordered 25 shirts (blue and black) and 25 tote bags for the gift shop.
Lynn Morrow, the museum’s site manager, said the gift shop is also planning to sell Kerry’s Confederation Trail shirts from last summer.
Given that Elmira is located at an end of the Confederation Trail, Morrow suggests that Kerry look at I (heart) PEI baseball caps for trail users.
“I think the branding is good for both visitors and locals,” she said. “I think it’s something that locals would wear as well.”
Kerry filed a trademark application for the phrase with the symbol of a heart with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office on Feb. 28. He said he did a search to see if the phrase was already trademarked but couldn’t find anything.
Kerry, who worked for the federal government for three decades, has a woodworking business in addition to making shirts.
He got the idea for the I (heart) PEI shirts and bags from other places where the phrase is popular.
But he also realized last summer at the farmers market that tourists were looking to buy items that had a P.E.I. brand. Kerry remembers one tourist who agreed to buy a wooden barbecue brush he was selling only if he wrote Made in P.E.I. and signed it with a marker.
Kerry is planning to have about 100 shirts (printed locally) with different sizes and colours in stock for the Queen Street farmers market. He plans to sell the bags for $6 and the shirts for $20.
The tote bags are timely, especially since Liberal MLA Allen Roach proposed banning plastic bags on the Island, he said.
Kerry recently acquired the domain name ILovePEI.com at auction for $21 for a website he’s launching.
Kerry has been making shirts with a social message and a sense of humour in his spare time for several years. Some of the past topics include roundabouts, Mike Duffy, bridge tolls and the PEI EI PI shirt in 2013 that was inspired by the “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” sketches.
“It’s a part-time thing, but it’s fun,” he said.
Twitter.com/terry_mcn
