WHY IS SWELL-O-PHONIC IN JACKSON?

 WHY IS SWELL-O-PHONIC IN JACKSON?

Because It’s home!

Chane was raised in SouthWest Jackson and spent 16 years in Brooklyn, NYC. Swell-O-Phonic is that perfect collision of the two.

When we landed in Fondren in 1998, Chane had basically been living out of his car for 6 weeks driving around the country selling tee shirts anywhere he could. Upon passing through from Memphis to go back to sleeping on couches in Pensacola Beach, Florida, Chane stopped at a shop in Fondren called Shakedown and sold to them. The Chinese restaurant next door had just closed down and was the perfect spot to open for us and let the dreams begin.

…and wallah - Swell-O-Phonic started in Jackson/Fondren on March 17th, 1998. We chose Fondren for the grit and the affordable spaces it had to offer. Jackson is home for us. We get asked a lot why we are still here. Yes, it has its challenges and it’s an easy target for people to poke fun at us for being a Jackson business, but if we didn’t like the challenge, the convenience and the folks, we could surely go elsewhere. We feel like we are part of a solution as are many of our Jackson-based business relationships. None of us individually are a “fix”, but collectively we are all hope for the future.  

We love our Fondren sidewalks full of normal folks and complete weirdos side by side coexisting over coffee and supporting each other.  We get it that it’s us (Jackson) vs everybody and that drives us to be a community strength… even when the idea of being in less chaos somewhere else tries to tempt us.  

We are in the City we love and for the City we love through the support we have chosen to give from scholarships, to aiding the homeless community, to supporting our local schools, art community and citizens with our event Fondren Block party.