Cruvie Clothing is an online T-shirt company making its imprint in fashion with a simple design that celebrates Atlanta neighborhoods, communities and landmarks.
Founded by Anthony “Tony” Cruver, the company produces shirts that come in black polycotton fabric with its signature, “Cruvie Tight-Knit,” in arching vinyl white block letters, printed across the front. The font is inspired by boxer Muhammad Ali’s terry cloth robes in the 1960s and has become a popular garment worn by artists including Outkast, Usher, Killer Mike, Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri; media personality Ryan Cameron; and politicians such as Mayor Andre Dickens and former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Yet Cruvie Clothing, while observing its 10th anniversary this year, has never been sold at a major retailer or at boutique stores. Word-of-mouth helped the product fly off the shelves.
“It’s been the result of people saying that I do great work and suggesting that folks rock with me. It’s the thread that connects us,” Cruver, a native of College Park, said.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Cruvie Clothing operates out of Cruver’s West End home. He converted his dining room into an office and production studio, now decorated with stacks of boxes of blank shirts, laser printers, banners, vinyl cutters, heat presses, stencils, memos, daily affirmations and images of celebrities wearing the shirts.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Taking 20 minutes to make each shirt to order, Cruver leaves the merchandise for pick up on his front porch in a large bin that’s surrounded by security cameras. Prices for the neighborhood shirts and hoodies start at $30.
He fulfills Cruvie Clothing’s bulk orders through a shared space with Affordable Screen Printing, a mom-and-pop shop located in Riverdale that he’s been partnering with since 2014. Cruver believes running a tight-knit business with no staff drives product demand.
“It’s giving someone an original piece of art, and I can keep things under control with not a lot of overhead,” he said.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Raised by a seamstress, Cruver was a star football player at Mays High School. He graduated in 2004 and enrolled at Appalachian State University.
In 2013, Cruver wore one of Cruvie Clothing’s prototypes to his high school homecoming football game. He split Southwest Atlanta into three words (South West Atlanta) using the “Cruvie Tight-Knit” arch. It received positive reactions from his classmates.
“People kept asking me where I got the shirt from, and that’s when the vision expanded,” he said.
For the next year, Cruver conducted trial-and-error on shirts with different cotton blends, vinyl and heat presses. He sent samples of the shirts to 30 of his close friends to get their feedback.
Working as a part-time digital producer for NBA TV before becoming a digital marketer with Triumph Motorcycles, he added gray and white T-shirt options, and started selling the shirts using Champion hoodies and sweatshirts.
“I use the stuff that big companies are using. If you get a shirt from Cruvie, you can wear it 50 times, and it’ll still hold up,” he said.
After the “South West Atlanta” design, Cruver added a College Park option, and included other metro Atlanta neighborhoods and landmarks.
He started a customization option on his website after early customers started requesting personalized garments. “People were asking me for different areas that I didn’t have up, so I created mockups and uploaded them. I realized we could spotlight everywhere,” Cruver said.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
In 2015, CeeLo Green was the first Atlanta artist to wear Cruvie Clothing. The entertainer contacted Cruver after mutual family and friends connected them. They partnered on a capsule collection that was never released.
That same year, Cruver decided to leave his full-time digital marketing job with Triumph Motorcycles to concentrate on Cruvie Clothing. He achieved a career highlight, he said, when the musical collective the Dungeon Family headlined One Musicfest wearing his clothes in 2016.
“The whole DF had Cruvie on, and that was an epic night because I was right there when they got offstage,” he said.
Nick Love, music executive at ONErpm and native of Decatur, learned about Cruvie in 2017. He had a Decatur hoodie made for late rapper RaRa for his music video with T.I., “For the Money.” Love said fans flooded his social media inbox with inquiries about how to purchase the shirts.
“It was an East-meets-West moment. It gave everyone a sense of pride to see our side represented,” Love said.
West Coast rappers Kendrick Lamar, the late Nipsey Hussle and R&B singer Maxwell started wearing Cruvie Clothing because of Cruver’s relationship with Courtney “Bear” Sills, an entertainment executive and College Park native.
“I would tell him who I was trying to connect with after doing my research to see who was coming to town, because he was either connected to their managers or knew them personally,” he said.
Comedians George Lopez and Cedric the Entertainer began wearing the shirts after seeing Atlanta photographer Shannon McCollum in a custom shirt along with red braids to honor his son, rapper Lil Yachty.
As Cruvie Clothing became more popular, Cruver said he was fine with people knowing the product more than him.
“I’m just going with the flow, moving at my own pace, connecting with like-minded individuals and being thankful for the opportunities,” he said.
Cruver is in the process of having Cruvie Clothing printed on its own fabric, experimenting with twill and embroidered letters. He hopes to partner with local sports franchises and community organizations to use fashion as a way to spread unity. Down the road, he would like to partner with a Nike or a Foot Locker.
Though Cruver has no plans to celebrate his company’s 10th anniversary, he projects that Cruvie Clothing’s fall collection is going to “take the streets by storm.”
“I knew Atlanta was the beginning, and the world would be the end,” Cruver added. “I want people in Australia and everywhere else to start rocking the brand.”
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