Seattle's Loomerang, started by former Amazon colleagues, prints artist T-shirts from a garage

Loomerang, a Seattle marketplace for artist-designed T-shirts, was the subject of GeekWire's Startup Spotlight on Thursday. The company made its first sale less than 12 hours after going live in June. Four months later it has 40 artists from 15 countries and has expanded to India. Artists open storefronts for free, set their prices and keep 60 percent of what remains after manufacturing. Loomerang prints, inspects and ships each order, for now from co-founder Matt Koyama's garage.

CEO Vijay Roy, who spent nearly 11 years at Amazon, started the company in early 2024. He and Koyama had worked together on Amazon's print-on-demand book business. Koyama joined a few months later and went full time this spring after leaving Xbox. A third co-founder, Arka Majumdar, leads design. The company is bootstrapped. Its 14-person team is spread across Seattle, Minnesota and Kolkata, and the founders are not taking salaries. Koyama said they do not use AI to make art. They use it in code, operations and tools that help artists upscale files.