Mt. Ellis Won $500K and All I Got Was This T-Shirt

The young Sevy entrepreneurs at eighteenfortyfour.com are determined to turn Mt. Ellis Academy’s remarkable coup in the Kohl’s Cares contest into even more cash. The Internet t-shirt sellers have released a line of casualwear sporting the words “I Voted For Mt. Ellis.”
In September, Seventh-day Adventist boarding school Mt. Ellis Academy won $500,000 in a Facebook competition sponsored by the Kohl’s department store chain. In order to win, MEA needed to rank among the top 20 non-profit schools in open voting. Mt. Ellis, located in Bozeman, Montana, finished inside the top ten, and after the votes were certified, principal Darren Wilkins received a check that will go toward overhauling the school’s septic system.
Adventists around the world (and many outside the Adventist community) joined together to propel Mt. Ellis to the win. Now, thanks to the folks at EighteenFortyFour, voters can commemorate the phenomenon with a $20 tee celebrating the Vote That Brought Us All Together.
In late ’08, the creative team at EighteenFortyFour spoke with Spectrum about the launch of their company. Over the span of its two-year operation, the startup has expanded its line of t-shirts with designs from the classic “I Heart Haystacks” to the more recent “Swine Flu is for Vegans.” Eight new shirts have been recently added to the repertoire. Each design immortalizes some facet of Adventist culture. Shoppers can also create their own shirts with a user-friendly design template.
In addition to t-shirts, EighteenFortyFour offers totes, baby clothing and bibs, aprons and laptop sleeves emblazoned with cheery messages like “Feliz Sabado” or “144K.”
For More: EighteenFortyFour.