Meet Robert Thornton of Paper Clouds Apparel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Thornton.

Robert, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Paper Clouds Apparel started from a drawing hanging on a fridge. At the time I was bartending by day, and getting blackout drunk at night and really had no direction or passion in my life after getting hurt and no longer being able to play baseball. I happened to be visiting my parents in Northern California, and there was a drawing on my parent’s fridge that got my attention.

There are no grandchildren, so I asked my Mom about the drawing. She had just taken a job driving a school bus for children with special needs and a little girl on her bus, after getting buckled in, would draw on her ride to school and gave this drawing to my mother. I spent the night mesmerized by these characters.

When I woke up the next morning and grabbed the drawing off the nightstand, I had a vision and immediately knew what I wanted to do. I ran downstairs to tell my Mom that I was going to start a clothing company that featured art created by those with special needs as a way to help raise money for special needs causes. This was the birth of the idea for Paper Clouds Apparel.

The business wouldn’t launch for almost four years! I knew I would need to raise the money myself and was working half the year in California on a road construction crew, staying in fleabag motels and working 12-14 hour days, and then when season ended I would call all my friends in Phoenix and see who had a room to rent, where I would sleep on the floor and would work bar jobs until road construction season started up again.

After almost four years of that, I had what I needed to launch. Since that day, it has been an uphill battle, but we have been fortunate enough to be featured on The Today Show, Fox 10, NBC 12, CBS 5, featured in Men’s Health, The Huffington Post, Arizona Republic, and many other publications and blogs.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Starting ANY small business when you are fronting 100% of the cost, and doing all the work is going to be extremely difficult, and Paper Clouds Apparel has had our share of struggles.

Surviving is made even more difficult when you factor in that we donate 50% of the proceeds from everything we sell to the special needs causes we team up with. The first four years of running PCA, I also had a full-time bartending job. An average week for me was working 40 hours at the bar, and another 40-60 hours on PCA items.

Sleep has never been something I cared much for, so this workload was not really as hard as it sounds. PCA was really starting to gather steam when Facebook went public and developed an algorithm to keep posts from being seen by those who follow our page. This move is a way for Facebook to make pages pay for their followers to see their posts.

This is something a small business like ours cannot afford to do, as even when you do pay, there is never a positive return on your investment. So this has really hurt our sales, and we are still fighting to find a way to get our sales to where they were before Facebook took away our exposure.

Please tell us about Paper Clouds Apparel.
I know at business school you are told that your business is not unique and that people are already doing what you’re doing, and your way to success is to set yourself apart. In 100% honesty, I have yet to find a clothing company that sells apparel featuring art created by those with special needs, while donating 50% of the proceeds.

AND hires adults with special needs to fold and package every shirt we sell! I am proud of the fact that we have given over 400 individuals with special needs the reward of having their art featured on our apparel and the artist being showcased to the world via social media and our website.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I was raised in Paradise, California, the small sleepy retirement community that recently gained notice as California’s deadliest fire just burned almost the whole city to the ground.

The biggest gold nugget during the gold rush was found in Paradise, and every year to celebrate they help Gold Nugget Days.

This was a day filled with little league, a big parade, and then my parents always had a huge BBQ. These parties from my youth are the things I look back on and always makes me smile.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.papercloudsapparel.com
• Phone: (602)525-1315
• Email: papercloudsapparel@gmail.com
• Instagram: @papercloudsapparel
• Facebook: facebook.com/papercloudsapparel/
• Twitter: @papercloudspca

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