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humanity's doing some amazing things here, and that there were two really confused people but there are lots of other people—many, many more—who have their heads on straight and want to help each other," Jacobs says. The message resonated. In a little more than a month, the shirt's sales raised more than $538,000 for the One Fund Boston to assist victims and their families. "That's the best-selling T-shirt in the history of our company," Jacobs says. The marathon episode is the latest demonstration of Life Is Good's power to effect good. Tracing roots to 9/11, the company's philanthropy has become central to its mission of spreading the power of optimism, a quest that began with two brothers hawking T-shirts on the streets of Boston in the late 1980s. T THE TWO YOUNGEST OF SIX SIBLINGS RAISED IN suburban Needham, Massachusetts, Bert and John Jacobs started designing and selling T-shirts in popular areas of Boston before buying a used van and pitching their wares door-to-door in college dorms along the East Coast for weeks at a time. During their sojourns, the then-twentysomething brothers had a recurring dialogue about how the media inundated people with negative information, leading them to the idea of creating an optimistic symbol. "There's a reason that news stations focus on what's wrong," Bert says. "Preying on people's fears, it sells. So it was a question that we were asking: Would we be able to sell the other side? Because if we would, it would be healthy. And that led to my brother doing the frst drawing of Jake." Jake is the wide-smiling, beret-sporting stick fgure who adorns most Life Is Good merchandise. Although John Jacobs calls the icon "one simple drawing of many," Jake struck a chord among those who frst observed his sketch posted on an apartment wall during a 1994 keg party the brothers hosted upon returning from one of their sales trips. (Such gatherings were Bert and John's laboratories for testing new art ideas.) "Somebody wrote on the wall, 'This guy's got life fgured out,'" Bert recalls. "And that we sort of distilled into, the next day, 'Life is good.'" That September, the brothers printed forty-eight Jake T-shirts and brought them to a street fair in Boston's neighboring city of Cambridge, where they sold out swiftly. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the ensuing two decades, Life Is Good has grown into an estimated $100 million business selling apparel and accessories through approximately 3,500 retail accounts, 75 independently owned Life Is Good shops, six company-owned stores, and online at lifeisgood.com. Over the past year, the company has entered into partnerships with Hallmark to produce Life Is Good greeting cards and stationery and J.M. Smucker to produce Life Is Good coffee, the frst of what the Jacobs brothers—who remain the private company's majority owners—envision as several extensions of the brand. With 265 employees in Boston and Hudson, New Hampshire, Life Is Good plans to relocate to a new headquarters in Boston's Seaport District in October that will more than double its space in the city. Looking back over nearly twenty years, the brothers credit the brand's growth in large part to its optimistic credo. "It's a timeless message," Bert says. "The foundational elements of Life Is Good—essentially that optimism is fun and powerful—could have existed ffty years before us and could exist ffty years after we're gone." "Over time people realized it's a message of not life is great or perfect or easy, and people with a healthy perspective, even if they face great adversity, they already have that sense of gratitude for being alive," adds John, forty-fve, whose title is chief creative optimist. "And I think our brand helps them express it." Evidence of customers' deep connection with the LIFE IS GOOD HAS GROWN INTO AN ESTIMATED $100 MILLION BUSINESS SELLING APPAREL AND ACCESSORIES THROUGH APPROXIMATELY 3,500 RETAIL ACCOUNTS, 75 INDEPENDENTLY OWNED LIFE IS GOOD SHOPS, SIX COMPANY-OWNED STORES, AND ONLINE AT LIFEISGOOD.COM.