Who says you can’t go home? College Hill Custom Threads’ (asi/164578) founder and President Tony Poston has never forgotten what helped put him on the road to success. Even though his custom design company is headquartered in Seattle, Poston works 300 miles away at the company’s Pullman, WA, location, above a local bar, not far from his alma mater, Washington State University, where it all began.

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It was at WSU that he got his start in event promotion and merchandise sales.

“My first love was music – I put myself through college promoting concerts and managing local bands,” Poston says. But a sophomore year position as philanthropic chair of his fraternity, Phi Kappa Theta, had the most impact on shaping his career, and inspired a solid commitment to giving back.

Poston’s first philanthropic event was promoting Dry Fest, a live music event on campus, and selling T-shirts to raise money to help offset the hospital bills of a fraternity brother. It was the first shirt he designed, and the first concert he ever planned, and the event raised $6,000.

After graduating, he toured with and sold merchandise for some of the bands he managed, and started his first custom apparel company with a partner. Eventually he moved back to Pullman and founded his own company, College Hill. The firm donates 10% of every philanthropic order to the client’s chosen nonprofit. “I owe my success to that philanthropic fraternity position at WSU. Giving back is built into our business model and we wouldn’t be successful without WSU, our flagship school,” says Poston. He continues to repay the school that helped launch him. “College Hill is the youngest major gift donor to WSU athletics, ever,” Poston says.

Its Pullman location includes a WSU Coug shop selling Cougar merchandise, and its website has an online Coug store. However, the firm’s college sales aren’t limited to Cougs’ gear – College Hill sells to over 260 campuses nationwide. In addition, 35%-40% of its clients are non-collegiate accounts. The company is in the process of rebranding its website to combine the college and corporate divisions into one entity.

Ask around and you’ll find College Hill is known for having its finger on the pulse of what college students like. “SanMar has brought us in to work with their designers and asked us our opinion on the ‘next big thing’ before they launched the District Line of apparel, which was very gratifying,” says Poston.

What trends does he notice? Full dye sublimation is really taking off at fraternity and sorority recruiting events – students are willing to pay more for this technique, as it’s easy to do custom names and numbers, he says. And people continue to favor technical performance fabrics, thanks to retail brands like Lululemon, he adds.

Despite College Hill’s rapid growth – last year it was named to Inc. magazine’s “Inc. 5000” list of America’s fastest growing private companies – Poston says, “I want to keep a startup family mentality no matter how big we grow.”

One of his proudest moments was when an employee bought a house at age 24. “It makes me feel great that I created a company where an employee can work hard and achieve that goal at such a young age,” he says. “College Hill is all about relationships – we aren’t transactional sellers. I’ve carried shirts in my suitcase on a plane to get them there on time.”

And even though College Hill has an 800 number, its salespeople and clients typically use cellphones and call or text customers directly. “I’ve received texts inviting me to bars at 2 a.m., and I say, ‘I think you have the wrong Tony.’”

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