Every Christmas it’s the same story: Your mother or some aunt gives you an awful-looking and oversized wool sweater that you accept with a big smile.
Three guys in northwest Indiana decided to make lemonade out of those oddly colored weaves, and started throwing Ugly Sweater Parties.
The kitchy idea was so much fun that the guys started decided to take thier idea to the masses.
Adam Paulson and his friends Brian Miller and Kevin Wool (yes, Wool) started the website UglyChristmasSweaterParty.com, which specializes in selling ugly Christmas sweaters so that people can have their own Ugly Sweater Parties.
Business is booming.
“We recently received an order for 28 ugly sweaters from a Wall Street firm that was organizing a party,” says Paulson.
They've even supplied the troops.
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“We’ve been providing sweaters to soldiers in Afghanistan,” says Paulson, who recently received a thank you note from a sergeant in Afghanistan.
These guys sell some really ugly Christmas sweaters, too.
The three are constantly looking for ugly sweaters, and they've enlisted friends and family to help rummage through garage sales and resale shops for truly awful knit jobs.
“We’ve been trying to keep up with the high demand,” says Paulson, who has a full-time job as a financial advisor. “We do this for fun.”
Their sweater parties aren't completely tongue-in-cheek. They actually give some people warm happy feelings.
Like Sgt. Nancy Maldonado, who's on tour in Afghanistan and feels right at home around putrid sweaters.
“I am grateful that even during these times when we are away from home and our families we can still have some sense of normalcy by having an ugly sweater holiday party,” Maldonado, currently serving in Afghanistan, wrote in an e-mail to Paulson.
The company also has a Facebook page full of nice comments. Who's following them? Ugly Christmas sweater lovers, of course.
