Designs fit to a T

While most of his peers are hanging out at the beach or wandering around downtown this summer, Laguna Beach resident Nick Gross, 18, is busy negotiating manufacturing deals with Chinese companies.

This year, he and his partner, J.C. Ruffalo of Newport Beach, are putting up their own money to launch their new clothing line, Undrmine, a line they say is going to be the next hot company.

Ruffalo, also 18, has long had his head stuck in the world of design. At 4 years old, he submitted a design to the Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters, winning a competition that led to his art being made into a postcard.

The two teens estimate they’ve pumped about $10,000 into the project, which includes a line of T-shirts, with hooded sweatshirts and hats coming soon.

Wally Friedman, a 55-year veteran of the apparel industry, signed on to help the pair when he heard about the company.

“That was the best day of our lives,” Gross said about their meeting with Friedman, of Newport Beach.

The 80-year-old Friedman said he is just there for support and to tell the guys about the mistakes he made during his career, which included taking three companies public and marketing in the industry as the president of JJ & Winslow.

“These two guys have the ability to take this company to the top,” he said. ‘It’s not going to be easy, but they have the ability and the talent.”

Before school starts — Gross will be attending USC in the fall and Ruffalo will start his senior year at Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School — the teenagers have been working with designers, creating catalogs and pitching their line to retailers.

“I always hated that — people who don’t really take initiative to do anything — I’d rather be doing something,” Gross said. “It feels good to be productive, and it’s stupid to sit at the beach all day, even though sometimes we are jealous.”

“Our main thrust is to get the name out,” Friedman said.

Gross is also busy playing drums for Open Air Stereo, which he said just inked a deal with a division of Sony. The band was featured on Wednesday’s season premiere of MTV’s reality hit show “Laguna Beach’s” third season.

“We’re definitely looking into something more musical in sponsorship,” he said. “We want to grab the attention of artists.”

The company’s logo, Poncho the mole, alludes to the concept behind the line, which the guys said is about digging and thinking deeper. Each shirt features the character with a different saying, including “uncatchable” and “undefeated champs ’06.”

“The great thing about Poncho is he has a little speaker box inside, and we can say different quotes,” Ruffalo said.

With turntables, mixers, subway cars and messages like “from here to fame,” the two are channeling their love of music, skateboarding and surfing into the line, which they hope will soon rival clothing giants like Quiksilver, O’Neill and Hurley.

Friedman emphasized they are not skimping on quality to whip out inexpensive and poorly made shirts.

“The taste of poor quality remains much longer than the sweetness of” inexpensive prices, he said.

Gathered outside of the Ruffalo family’s Newport Coast home, the two young entrepreneurs went through some of their shirts, surrounded by family members and “groupies,” including 10-year-old Josh Roossin, 10, who is on an unofficial skate- boarding team for the company.

“It’s great,” the curly-mopped Josh said as he watched Ruffalo and Gross talk about their line. “It’s the new thing … we’ve got a lot of kids in my class begging me to get them shirts.”

The pair plans on pitching their line to retail stores soon and think their shirts will sell for about $25.