Senior develops secondhand apparel business through The Catalyst
Tae-Vheon Alcorn uses community and entrepreneurship to grow online clothing business
Tae-Vheon Alcorn is many things. He is a senior finance major and entrepreneurship minor, a first-generation college student, a former Kansas track and field athlete, co-founder of a company and a member of The Catalyst program.
With his twin brother, Sae-Vheon, he co-founded The Vintage Hawks, an online secondhand clothing brand focusing on vintage Kansas Jayhawk, Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs apparel.
The journey of The Vintage Hawks began with his mother’s love for going to Goodwill. That inspired Tae-Vheon and his brother to start buying any vintage KU, Royals and Chiefs clothing they could find around the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
“It’s normal to wear modern day clothing, but how cool is it to wear clothing from the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s that you will likely never see someone else wear?” he said.
In high school, the Alcorns sold modern apparel worldwide by promoting their products on the social media platform Vine, which accumulated millions of followers. Today, they source their products from people nationwide to help support the secondhand clothing community and grow their business.
Tae-Vheon and Sae-Vheon started The Vintage Hawks by focusing on social media marketing, which has been the biggest marketing avenue for the business. After seeing previous success on social media, they decided to continue promoting their business this way. Now with nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram, the brand has grown further than they could’ve imaged.
“I thought social media was a great way to market and promote our product,” he said. “It’s turned out to be a very useful marketing plan.”
As a School of Business student, Tae-Vheon saw how the school helps its students with their business aspirations. His older brother, Stephonn, had a friend in The Catalyst who benefited from the program. Seeing its success firsthand, he was drawn to join and hoped to have a similar experience.
Ryan Rains, director of entrepreneurship co-curricular programming and the head of The Catalyst, has weekly meetings with the students to work through company and idea development one-on-one. This challenged Tae-Vheon to think outside the box by having him explore aspects of his business he hadn’t considered before.
The idea of mentorship also interested him. He believes it is essential to learn from experienced people. While Tae-Vheon has learned about things as he went, he believes learning from experienced people provides value to his development.
Students regularly meet with mentors to develop their ventures and report on their progress. The Catalyst uses a mentoring village of experts in topics ranging from real estate to venture capitalism to work with students on whatever their individual needs may be.
The Catalyst Mentoring Village
- Venture capital — Dan Kerr | Partner at Flyover Capital
- Small-business owner — Kirsten Flory | Founder and Owner of Foundations Commercial
- Attorney — Tom Fredrick | Co-founder of Life Sciences Legal, LLC and KU School of Business instructor
- Startup founder — Jaime Gassmann | Venture Builder at 1848 Ventures and Co-Founder of Fluent
- Traditional business owner — Colin Aldrich | Business Banking Relations Manager at Commerce Bank
- CPA — Chris Kohart | Senior Manager at SSC
- KU Small Business Development Center — Kristina Mease | Director and Christian Hopkins | Program Specialist
The Catalyst program illustrates how mentorship and coaching can play a vital role in helping entrepreneurs develop. By listening and providing thoughtful guidance, experienced mentors can help new entrepreneurs solve problems, overcome challenges and grow.
The Catalyst encourages entrepreneurship and professional development through mentoring. Students have opportunities to work out ideas and venture plans with input from industry mentors. Learn more at business.ku.edu/catalyst.
By Alexander Houston
