For many students, college life is a challenge. Students are balancing classes, joining student organizations, working and trying to make time for a social life. But for four ambitious University men, college life was an opportunity to start a business known as Boss Up Clothing.

On a Thursday evening, students bustled to the Bowen-Thompson Student Union to be a part of a photoshoot for the University homepage acknowledging the work and exertion of junior political science major Jauntez Bates, senior accounting major Dion Brooks, senior geography major Brenden Foulks and senior Kovone Hunt. With the hashtag #BossUpClothing, the four members flooded Twitter with tweets and polls asking everyone to come out and be in the photoshoot.

“We are all about what the community wants and being able to give back to them because that’s what is important,” Foulks said, running around providing everyone shirts who wanted to be involved in the photoshoot.

Boss Up offers a variety of clothing such as legacy T-shirts (black power fist), custom T-shirts and crew necks, sweat pants, tanks and baseball jerseys donning the Boss Up logo with the options of different city names, allowing people to support their hometown while being away at college.

“We are continuing to develop and think of different ideas that would incorporate the community,” Bates said.

The clothing line started with the intention of developing the concept of everyday clothing. The clothing produced is representative of a large array of cities, beginning with Detroit and Cleveland.

“Jauntez came to me and asked me if I wanted to start a clothing line. I was skeptical at first, but then I agreed,” Brooks said. “For about a week, we were trying to come up with names and we wanted something that was meaningful, something that related back to our home, so I threw out the idea of Boss Up and he liked it.”

Since each founder is from Detroit, the clothing line is more than just designing and selling clothes. These students have taken a term of endearment from their city and turned it into a message for everyone to know and take pride in. Boss Up Clothing instills an appreciation for their hometown as well as customer’s hometowns.

Wearing a Boss Up white shirt with a raised fist known as the Black Power fist centered with the Boss Up logo over the Detroit skyline, Brooks explained the phrase Boss Up is a term of endearment in Detroit meaning to elevate and better yourself.

“Say you did bad on a test, go ahead and study hard, boss up and get that ‘A.’ The term is so broad that we can use it for not just Detroit, but for any city,” Brooks said.

While the Detroit skyline is on most of the Boss Up apparel, they also change it for other cities such as Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta and Oakland.

With the crowd of people coming to be in the photoshoot getting larger and more ecstatic, the four founders guided everyone outside toward the University Oval where a hill stood right in front of Eppler education building, greeting Marketing & Communications Director of Photography, Craig Bell, to begin the photoshoot.

The four were front and center during the photoshoot, snapping videos and enjoying each other’s company and having a fun time asking anyone who walked past to get in the photo, tossing shirts their way and admiring the strong support from the Bowling Green community.

The support of this small black business in Bowling Green was evident by the amount of people who came to snap photos and videos of the photoshoot and proudly sported the attire.

“Our business has a positive impact on small black businesses because we are all black, educated men and with the experience we have in the business world at the ages of 20 and 23, we are doing well, business is expanding and we are still learning how to become better in the future,” Hunt said. “With the more sales we have and the increasing support in what we do, we can only go up from here.”

The photoshoot ended with over 20 students leaving proudly “rocking” Boss Up attire.

One thing that makes this business stand out is how big-hearted and generous the founders are. Boss Up donates a lot of their clothing to fashion shows and photoshoots. The business also designs and sells attire to organizations on campus.

“A lot of the profit we make goes back to the business. We give away a lot of shirts so people can represent the line and that’s where the profit comes from, we make money off shirts by selling them to people who can afford them that still want to represent the business,” Bates said.

With the business operating only through their website, the members of Boss Up discussed their hopes to have a store location in the future.

“That’s in the plan,” Bates said. “Us being college students, it’s kind hard to even run the business, so once we gain more capital and resources we might be able to open up stores in the inner-cities hopefully all over the United States.”

With everything from juggling a prospering business, classes, work and being a part of various organizations on campus such as Black Student Union, Black Intellect Group, The National Pan-Hellenic Council and the ROTC program, their work of giving back to the community has not stopped.

“We have a lot of community service events coming up that we take part in during the holidays,” Foulks said. “We are going to Flint on Black Friday to donate jugs and bottles of water and on December 3, we are going back to Detroit to do Meals on Wheels to be able to go back home and help out.”

During community service events, the group gives clothing to community members to give back and thank them for the support.

“A lot of times in those settings we just want to give back to the community that we live in. During community service, we don’t even want to create that environment of buying things, we just want to give it away,” Bates said.

Foulks agreed adding, “All we want is a picture of everybody and of us giving back to the communities that gives us support in the business and impact that we do.”