Tommy Washbush
A display at Raygun's new store on State Street.
Madison has been in Raygun’s sights for a while.
Madison can be a funny place. There’s the pink flamingo that serves as the city’s official bird, lakes with names many people can’t keep straight, rules about tall buildings and that isthmus thing right in the middle of it all.
But the thing is, every place can be a funny place if you get the joke. A Des Moines-based shirt and gift shop called Raygun knew that when it found success as, yes, a sassy Des Moines-themed shirt and gift shop and its attitude has spread across the Midwest and beyond.
At the end of September, Raygun made its Wisconsin brick and mortar debut with a shop at 670 State St., in the former Paul’s Book Store space. The brand thrives on decidedly hyperlocal references, and the wheels have already been spinning in the brains of Raygun’s creatives to create Madison- and Wisconsin-centric swag for people who are in on the joke.
“We wanted to open in Wisconsin for a long time,” says Mike Draper, who launched the business with a store in downtown Des Moines in 2005. “Wisconsin’s always been the biggest state for us, in terms of online sales, that we don’t have a store in.
“And we like the word ‘isthmus,’” he adds. “We are working with that.”
Indeed, Raygun already has a design that says “MADISON IS THMUS” over three lines, the kind of absurdist take that, along with a signature font and simple design, makes up the bulk of Raygun’s swag. (A similarly absurdist design for its hometown says, “DES MOINES: FRENCH FOR THE MOINES.”)
Shirt designs from Raygun.
Local designs pay tribute to the space’s previous tenant as well as Madison’s most significant geographical feature.
Raygun already has had a merchandise presence in Wisconsin. Since 2021, the union shop has produced merchandise for Minocqua Brewing through Raygun’s custom business, including a hoodie bearing the slogan “Drink Beer & Don’t Be Racist.” Raygun has also produced merchandise for the Madison Teachers Union and the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
“We added more and more Wisconsin connections and kept building this base of connections,” Draper says. “So we wanted to open somewhere.”
Given its partners, there’s definitely a theme to the causes Raygun amplifies. Stores are chock full of merch beyond shirts — including mugs, stickers and postcards — that support progressive causes and some of the more beat-up parts of our culture right now: public schools, the LGBTQ community and public media.
Courtesy Raygun
Raygun founder Mike Draper.
Founder Mike Draper: ‘It’s not a cookie-cutter store.’
Because printing is in-house, Raygun staff can turn around a new idea within hours. A popular shirt/mug/postcard this summer came when Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst made a comment at a town hall about cuts to Medicaid by saying, “Well, we’re all going to die.” The next day, Raygun had shirts that combined the image from the Iowa border welcome sign with the words “Iowa: We’re All Going to Die.”
The seed of Draper’s business began when he was a college student at the University of Pennsylvania selling T-shirts on the street that said, “We’re not Penn State.” After graduating with a history degree, he moved back home to Des Moines and connected with a friend whose dad had a shirt-printing press. Draper learned the craft and opened a store. Raygun was the store's second name (the first, Smash, was hit with a cease-and-desist from a company in California with the same name) and Draper chose it because the word “raygun” seemed retro and futuristic at the same time. Beginning as a one-man shop, he used his same irreverent approach from college to sell shirts with Des Moines and Iowa themes (including “Iowa: 75% Vowels 100% Awesome”). People lapped it up.
“When I was first starting, that was like the real rise of local beer, local farmers markets, locally sourced ingredients,” Draper says. “So I think local pride was just one of those things that rolled into it.”
The business has grown enough that its 11 stores can have their local themes as well as national and universal ones. Employees throughout the company’s stores are encouraged to pitch ideas based on what is going on in their community. Morning meetings on the company Slack channel include reports on what’s going on in their cities, with the locations serving as much as mini news bureaus as retail outlets.
“It’s not just a cookie-cutter store dropped in a city and then you put up pictures of local sports teams,” Draper says. “The interaction with the community is part of the business plan.”
Draper says Raygun doesn’t have a merchandising deal with the University of Wisconsin, but has signed name, image and likeness (NIL) deals with individual athletes, including members of the Badgers’ volleyball and women’s hockey teams. In addition, Raygun is also working with The Onion for Madison-only shirts featuring the original Onion logo.
The commitment to local even connects the company to its building. Raygun worked with the family of the late Paul’s Books founder, Paul Askins, to produce and sell merchandise that celebrates the store that had been in the location since 1954.
“For me, as somebody who studied history, there’s the idea that this space exists because of so much work that people did before,” Draper says. “It’s good to acknowledge how many people have made the neighborhood great.
“It’s our job to be part of that community.”
