Founded by two college students, Michael DeSerto and Dustin Looney, Mad Discs and Dyes was established in 2004. We initially started out as an aspiring Frisbee Golf company called MaD Discs (MaD being an acronym for Mike and Dusty) during our junior year of high school. Through our love of playing Frisbee Golf we realized that the sport is becoming increasingly popular among college-age people and a market for a new kind of innovative discs was present. Our goal was to offer a line of four tie-dye discs that we thought would appeal to the typical Frolfer more than those offered by the companies that dominate the market. As two naïve entrepreneurs, we began drafting a business plan and designing our discs immediately, hoping we could have a product by the summer before our senior year of high school. After submitting prototypes of our discs to various plastic companies, we soon found out that we would need nearly $60,000 just to set up the molds for our discs. Unfortunately, we could not fund the start-up cost and our dream was put on hold, but we vowed that we would make an effort to eventually give the “disc business” the “old college try.”

 Early in the summer of 2007, MaD Discs began brainstorming different ideas for an alternative business venture. Mike took a course in tie-dying at Carthage College (basket weaving was apparently filled) and he learned the art of tie-dyeing t-shirts.  So we decided to give the tie-dyeing business a try. After a couple weeks of training ourselves to become high-quality tie-dyers, we were accepted into a local Farmers Market, and on our first market day we sold approximately 25 shirts … way more than we anticipated.

 Encouraged by the public’s reaction to our garments, we changed our name to MaD Discs and Dyes and we decided to go full throttle and make a true effort to share our tie-dyes with anybody who would appreciate them. We were invited by the generous Michael Stanard to vend at a music festival (headlining Canned Heat and Iron Butterfly) in Woodstock, Illinois.  We were also accepted into the Kane County and Boone Country Fairs. We produced approximately 1,500 shirts, in addition to many bandanas, A-shirts, onesies and bags. We also bought a mass-quantity amount of dyes and we purchased a screen-printer, enabling us to customize prints on our tie-dyes.

 Overall, our summer turned out to be immensely successful. Although we did not make a large profit, we put ourselves in a position to expand our enterprise and share our tie-dyes with the public. Today, we offer 11 different colors and several different designs for our garments. All the dye and garments we purchase are top-quality, so our shirts will hold up through years of hard wear. Each shirt goes through an extensive hands-on process of hand-tying, hand-dyeing and hand-washing, making each product a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. We are looking forward to another excellent summer in 2008, as we have some very promising venues lined up.

 Our goal still remains to earn the funds and one day make our original dream of Disc Golf discs a reality, but until then we are trying to share our tie-dyes at a reasonable price with the public and…    Make the World a More Colorful Place!