Siena Ducharme, four-month-old daughter of David and Kellie Ducharme, whose T-shirt business Are You Outside the Box? is finding its own niche in the market, models one of their shirts.

BY ABBY FOX

Local newshounds may remember the name David Ducharme, who works for E. Turgeon Construction, the contractor for the new East Greenwich Police station on First Avenue.

The Ducharme name is back in circulation again, now that Richmond residents David Ducharme, and wife Kellie, have started their own brand of organic T-shirts based on the idea: “Are You Outside the Box,” and in little time, have turned it into a profitable online business: www.ruoutsidethebox.com

The story is an inspiration for any would be–entrepreneur. Ducharme said the idea was born by accident two years ago when he was on a plane to the West Coast for a vacation. He was disappointed that a problem at work had forced him to fly behind his family. “How was that a problem?” he asked himself. “We just had to look at it another way.” Ducharme was doodling on a cocktail napkin, thinking, “No one’s thinking outside the box on this stuff,” and laughed a little when he realized he had scratched something pretty interesting: a sketch of a box, but a broken one. It was the image of someone breaking away, going “outside the box.”

Then this past winter, the Ducharmes were eating dinner with friends and explaining the design he had come up with, and they were encouraged them to do something so it, so Ducharme went to a lawyer and had it trademarked.

But it wasn’t until two weekends ago, at the Charlestown Seafood Festival, where the couple decided to rent a booth that David and Kellie realized they had an idea that would appeal to people. In three days, they sold 29 infant T-shirts, 44 children’s, 33 adult shirts, 400 bottles of water with their logo, and 52 stainless-steel water bottles.

“It was amazing; we were blown away by the response,” she said. “We were kind of laughing, because we had literally just put this idea together.”

The Thursday night before the festival, they had picked up their T-shirts from a print shop in Warren, and the next day, they were at the festival. “We were scrambling, but it was worth it,” he said. “Sunday night, when it was all over, we were on cloud nine.”

Passersby said the image “was so simple, it drew them in,” he said. “We talked to so many people and there were a lot who said they wanted to see a small business like ours succeed.”

Aside from the picture, which puts the cliché of “thinking outside the box” in a new light, the T-shirts are themselves outside-the-box because they’re 100 percent organic, made-in-the-USA cotton, which reflects the “green” philosophy of the Ducharmes, especially Kellie, who’s a science teacher in Coventry.

 “We sold out of the Infant one-sies with I think Outside under the box logo on the second day,” Kellie Ducharme said. “I never thought we’d be saying ‘Sorry, we’ve sold out’ of anything that weekend.”

“A couple from New York City spoke with me for about 15 minutes in our tent to tell me how great this idea is,” her husband said. “And a parent who heads an alternative learning program wanted to purchase 10 of the I think Outside shirts right then and there. She stated that the message being conveyed couldn’t come at a more ideal time; more so in a society that seems to overcomplicate some things.  The problem was, we were sold out.”

Mr. Ducharme said the “cool thing is you can apply it to so many things” in life: and the shirts reflect that, with various sayings of think outside, be outside, play outside and live outside, etc., and different colors: natural, white, pomegranate, Dijon mustard, and blue, with more on the way.

It looks like plenty of people see the application to the shirt: the Ducharmes said last Monday night, their web site, ruoutsidethebox.com, went up, and by the next day, it had registered 1,000 hits.