As a Sturgeon Bay High School student, Rex Meikle worked at “one of the many tourist-trap type stores in Door County” where the clothing failed to impress him.
“It was just the same junk that everyone sells,” he says. “It wasn’t cool. There wasn’t a lot of thought or anything else put into it.”
That led to the idea for a quality clothing brand with regional graphics that captured the essence of Door County and all it has to offer, Meikle says. So at age 20, he launched Door Born while an undergraduate student at UW-Stout, kicking off the brand with three inaugural T-shirt designs.
In just five years, Door Born has expanded to feature dozens of items, including activewear, performance fleece, UV-protective shirts and more.
Meikle started Door Born with fellow UW‑Stout alum and Door County native Jacob Cater, who initially led the print shop and graphic design side, but the two recently parted ways.
“Creatively, we have different tastes, and it was kind of like he was helping me build my vision,” says Meikle, who now creates many of the Door Born designs himself or commissions them, but “I’m always looking for people with a shared vision of what I’m trying to build for the brand.”
That means building an iconic regional outdoor lifestyle brand in the vein of Tommy Bahama (Florida) or L.L. Bean (Maine). “There really is no flagship Great Lakes outdoor lifestyle brand,” Meikle says. “That’s what I want to build.”
Meikle’s recent designs feature a simple Door Born logo on the front with a graphic on the back, particularly with his fishing shirts. “I don’t want to alienate the Great Lakes fisherman from different parts of the region, like the Minnesota fisherman who loves walleye … I’d like to bring that person into the brand in celebration of like, ‘Hey, we both have a reverence. We have a love for the Great Lakes.’”
Meikle, who sells his brand online and at farmers markets and festivals, also is concentrating on his social media channels, which feature Meikle’s fiancé, Korie Fleischman, owner of Klear Bliss in De Pere. Meikle recently completed a social media challenge in which he swam every day from Memorial Day to Labor Day — 99 straight days. His aim is to build awareness for his brand, but also for the outdoor offerings in the region.
“There’s always been that coolness; there’s always been that sophistication; there’s always been that beauty in our region,” Meikle says. “I just really want to package that up and show that to the world.”
Visit Door Born
Meikle will be selling Door Born clothing at the Christkindlmarket On Broadway in Green Bay Thursday, Dec. 4 to Saturday, Dec. 6 and Thursday, Dec. 18 to Saturday, Dec. 20.
