Faith Miller
Managing Editor
Rocka Shaka Tee Company was founded in the summer of 2022 by a group of Florida Southern College students. They had the goal of creating a shirt brand and company that local Greek life and other college organizations could order through.
The founders, Matt Agostinelli and Matteo Zampese had backgrounds in business and graphic design and used this as their basis when they started the company.
“Both of us wanted to do something bigger than a corporate job and create something of our own that would make a difference in our community,” Agostinelli said
When starting the brand, they planned their strategy and how they would build their clientele. They worked directly with school clubs, Greek life and other campus organizations. This helped them gain “quick credibility and connections.”
“Meeting with club reps at Blastoff helped us really get our name out, as well as branding on all platforms such as Google Business, Instagram, Facebook and a website,” Agostinelli said.
On the Rocka Shaka website, consumers can fill out a form regarding their shirt request– including filling out the form of apparel needed and a general message of what the consumer wants. They then take these requests and process them with design. According to the website, the company experiments using heat transfer vinyl and different screen printing techniques
As they sit down to work on a design, they love when a client comes in with just an idea of what they want, giving them the ability to create a design from scratch.
“If a client comes with just an idea of a design, I get excited. Sometimes printing graphics that are already given to us feels a bit boring,” Zampese said.
Their design process consists of letting ideas “flow” in their mind for a day before putting anything on paper.
“I like to mentally sketch, it’s faster coming up with multiple directions this way for me,” Zampese said.
From there they start sketching. Once they have a few sketches, they will show them to the client to help decide what will go on the mockup. After they create a mockup, they get confirmation and start printing the order.
When they go to work, they start by checking and responding to emails from the previous day and following up on current orders. From there, they go into working on current leads and cold calls of potential clients.
“The afternoon is dedicated to printing until we get to the end of the day when we take time to wrap up any current projects and prepare our to-do list for the next day,” Agostinelli said.
Looking back on the company and the work done, Agostinelli said that one of their most impactful moments was meeting the leaders of our community and seeing that they come from all backgrounds.
“It has constantly helped us build confidence in our business and support efforts to accomplish our dream,” Agostinelli said.
