It seems little kids aren’t the only people who dream of being superheroes. A Thomasville-based small business is now leveraging the dreams of adult would-be superheroes to take his enterprise to the national level.
The business is called Everfan. Scott Chastain is its owner and founder.
“It’s a business I started about six years ago with the idea of creating collegiate superhero costumes for kids and adults,” he said.
And as so often happens with a new business, Chastain explained his customers started guiding him in a slightly different direction.
“As I got into it, I realized that people were contacting us asking for custom superhero capes and other types of costume accessories for superhero-themed events or superhero fun runs, or hospitals that work for kids, and so it was kind of a niche market that wasn’t being filled, and so we started building the business off of custom costumed accessories.”
Everfan Creative Director Claire Swindell says the firm is now looking to further expand its business footprint.
“April 28th is a real thing called ‘National Superhero Day,’ something that Scott’s done locally in Thomasville for a couple of years and this year decided to broaden the horizon a bit and promote it nationally,” Swindell remarked.
And Chastain described what typically took place when folks from his business would show up in costume to honor a local superhero.
“We’d give them a cape and make them put it on and what we realized is that people responded very well to this. When they first saw us, they thought it was a little kooky or whatever, but by the time we read them a letter of gratitude that someone had wrote for them and told them why they were being recognized as a hero, we’d have people crying.”
So Everfan is now making its Superhero kits, containing cape, mask and recognition certificates available, not only across the nation, but also to our armed forces stationed around the world.
“March 15th is the day we’re launching the campaign on our website and we’ll have on our homepage and other pages of the site all the information about the campaign, about the mission and what we’re trying to do here; the value of gratitude and recognition and also the value of using this as Everfan a way to give back and recognize our heroes overseas.”
Chastain added that will be posted as National Superhero Day on April twenty-eighth approaches.
“With the military packages, we’re partnering with a non-profit called ‘Hero Box’ and they will pair us up with an actual unit overseas. We’re going to get to communicate with that unit, so as we get closer to the day and get more information about our unit, we’ll be able to push this on social media so the people that are receiving these and are participating in the campaign will actually get to see the military people benefiting from it as well.”
And, at least on the 28th of next month, Chastain insisted that a cape and a mask will be an acceptable part of any attire, be it civilian or military. www.everfan.com
Copyright 2018 WFSU
