With prices ranging from $14 to $138, the products on We Heart Philly are designed by Safran and Kathryne Whyte, a graphic designer and manager of Safran and Turney's upscale bodega Grocery. The designs are generally simple: One T-shirt called "I Pretzel Philly" is a play on the site's name, but the familiar heart icon is replaced by the twisted snack - a nod to the city's passion for the soft variety. "They're fun and we like cute things," said Safran.
Some of the We Heart Philly items are available at Safran and Turney's shops, like Open House and Verde, but the site is their first foray into e-commerce. Safran said that they already had a lot of businesses and that she wanted to keep creating without the stress of another brick-and-mortar shop. Safran felt that well-designed Philly-themed items, rather than souvenirs from "those really cheesy" airport stores, were an untapped niche.
While Safran joked that no one was going to buy these products in Utah, the Web allows her products to reach people who might never visit one of her Philadelphia stores.
Fred Lavner, the owner of Retro Philly, is also relatively new to Internet business. Living up to its name, Retro Philly sells replica memorabilia from the Philadelphia that used to be, like T-shirts embellished with the logos of defunct businesses, like Old City's Black Banana nightclub or Moe's Candy Shop, formerly at 60th and Osage.
In one of his previous lives, Lavner was a consultant for throwback apparel company Mitchell & Ness Nostalgia Co. - which reopened its flagship store at 12th and Chestnut earlier this month - and admired their dedication to authenticity. The images that Lavner and his designers use come from old phone books, the Free Library and Temple University's Urban Archives.
