Two Baton Rouge sisters want to cover the city in Cranch Dressing.No, they don’t want to coat the capital in the buttermilk-flavored condiment. The Cranch Dressing brand provides items “for your body, not your salad.”Jordan and Meredith Cranch are the brains behind Cranch Dressing, the T-shirt design company whose first designs entered stores April 8.Meredith Cranch, University alumna, got the idea to start Cranch Dressing while working at Storyville’s location in Austin, where she moved in August 2008.”I look at T-shirts all day,” Meredith Cranch said. “My little sister had some designs that she had been working on already. I talked to my bosses in Austin, Texas, and originally Storyville was going to fund them, but then we decided to just start Cranch Dressing.”Jordan Cranch, mass communication sophomore, had some sketches from high school, and when her older sister approached her with the possibility of having her designs printed, she jumped at the idea.”I thought, ‘Why not?” Jordan Cranch said. “I figured we could get something on the shelves and try to make some money.”Jordan Cranch said her older sister spoke with Josh Harvey, one of the owners of Storyville, about printing the shirts as Storyville Originals, but then they decided to approach their father to ask for funding.”It wasn’t too hard to convince him,” Jordan Cranch said. “He’s always for anything that could forward us or progress us in a positive manner. He was totally for it. Of course, we’re going to have to eventually pay him back.”The name Cranch Dressing came from a nickname the sisters had. “We have 400 nicknames with our last name,” Meredith Cranch said. “Cranch Dressing is obviously a play on ranch dressing, and also dressing because we’re designing clothes.”With Meredith living in Austin and Jordan still in school, the sisters said it can be difficult to do collaborative work.”It’s frustrating when [Jordan] won’t answer my phone calls or text messages,” Meredith Cranch said. “She’s the creative one, so I’m currently relying on her for more of the creative output. She’s always busy doing schoolwork or sorority stuff.”The sisters currently have two designs in stores and have been working on more. Jordan Cranch said she gets a lot of inspiration from standup comedy.”I like a lot of Mitch Hedberg, Demetri Martin, that kind of dry humor,” Jordan Cranch said. “The forklift shirt that I designed was inspired by one of Mitch Hedberg’s acts. He said something like, ‘I want to see a forklift lifting forks, it’s so damn literal.’ I thought, ‘why not draw it out?'”Jordan Cranch said it’s difficult to draw out ideas like this because not everyone gets the joke.”Meredith said more people have commented on the forklift shirt I designed just trying to decipher its meaning,” Jordan Cranch said.Jordan Cranch said the popularity of graphic T-shirts has made it difficult to come up with ideas.”It’s hard to be original because I feel like everything good has already been taken,” she said.Jordan Cranch said she hopes Cranch Dressing T-shirts will take off because of the popularity of T-shirts in general.”T-shirts are so much easier than going out and spending money on expensive clothes,” she said. “T-shirts are another way of expressing yourself and getting your ideas and opinions out there. I wear T-shirts every day. They’re so easy.”While the sisters are enjoying the new business venture for now, both are unsure of how long they will continue working in the T-shirt industry.”This is something to spend my time on and make a bit more money,” Meredith Cranch said.Jordan Cranch agreed with her sister.
“At this point right now, it’s fun. It’s a little business adventure that I never saw myself getting into until Meredith came up with the idea,” she said. “And we’ve sold some shirts, so it makes it a little more exciting to know there are people out there who do like my work, but I don’t know if I could see myself doing this in 10 years.”—-Contact Sarah Aycock at [email protected]