Badknees owner Jim Beck finds joy in creating community. Courtesy photo
By Aaron Cohen
Jim Beck took a gamble after teaching English at Martinsville High School for 11 years. In 2019 he turned his basement hobby, making custom T-shirts and buttons, into badknees, a full-time screen-printing operation.
The company now sells a wide variety of made-in-store shirts, totes, stickers, hats, mugs, and other gifts online, at its brick-and-mortar location at 902 W. Kirkwood, and at various community events such as Taste of Bloomington. Beck’s path from teacher to merchandiser was both a no-brainer and a leap of faith.
“I was a little burned out and demoralized by the state of public education in Indiana,” Beck says. “But I had been having fun printing T-shirts in my basement since 2015, and thought, why not try to make a living from this? I left teaching at the perfect time; I don’t know if I could have lasted through COVID.”
The pandemic turned out to be a good time to ramp up the business. “It’s a classic retail story—people at home in 2020 with a little money to spend wanted what I was selling,” Beck says.
Demand has been so good that Beck now has two full-time and two part-time employees. While revenue mainly comes from online retail, “foot traffic at the store has been a bonus.”
“It’s fun to see people take joy in what we create. It makes them laugh or connect at whatever level, makes them feel good, and lasts a long time,” he says. For his part, Beck finds joy in creating community. This year the shop has hosted half a dozen “badknees market experiment” events, featuring arts and craft vendors, musicians, food trucks, beer, and free T-shirt printing. BadkneesDISTRO helps local artists, organizations, and schools raise funds by printing merchandise and handling shipping and receiving. Badknees itself donates a percentage of online sales to various local organizations, including Hoosier Action, Hoosier Hills Food Bank, WFHB-FM, and Bloomington PRIDE.
Of all the messages Beck has printed on shirts, his first stands out as a favorite: “Read Harper Lee, listen to John Prine, be a good human being.”
For more information, visit badkneests.com.
