Some activities look pretty typical on Pitt students’ resumes. Volunteering, sure. An internship or two, definitely.

Starting your own T-shirt business, though? Only if you’re Karthik Dwarki and Austin Russian.

Last year, the duo started Good Lookin’ Clothing, a T-shirt design company that donates half of its profits to charity.

Dwarki and Russian met on their floor of Litchfield Tower A freshman year but quickly went from friends to business partners.

Dwarki said he always hoped his college experience would culminate into something like Good Lookin’.

“I wanted to do something crazy. I didn’t want to do the stereotypical college thing,” Dwarki said. “I wanted to do something that would give back to the community, so I thought hopefully making a T-shirt company would be a good idea. Then I met Austin, and he was like, ‘This is a good idea.’”

But first, the two — now juniors — needed a name.

“We were at the [Petersen Events Center] at Burger King last year, and Levance Fields was there. We’re huge basketball fans,” Russian said. “He was on crutches at the time and dropped his phone. His battery flew out and everything, so I went and picked it up for him, and he says to me, ‘Good lookin’.’ I didn’t know what that meant, so I just froze. Karthik made fun of me for a month for that.”

The phrase came up again soon.

“Karthik bought iced tea for a security guard in our dorm, and when he handed it to him, the security guard said, ‘Good lookin’.’ Karthik did the same thing — he just froze,” Russian said. “We figured out that it means ‘thank you,’ so we were like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably what we should name the company.’”

Good Lookin’ released its first T-shirt last spring.

The duo’s friend Tawny Duliba, another junior at Pitt, came up with the idea for a purple shirt with the word “Legit” across the front.

Russian said they were an update to the usual “College” T-shirts.

“I hate the ‘college’ shirts. They’re stupid.” Dwarki said. “I mean, I saw the movie, and it’s hilarious, but come on, there’s got to be something new for the new times.”

Their next big break came with the G-20 Summit chaos.

“When I was little, I was in Hurricane Felix, and they had shirts that said, ‘I survived Hurricane Felix,’” Russian said. “We were thinking we needed to put a new shirt out, so we called our designers the Friday of G-20. He made an ‘I Survived G-20’ shirt in a couple [of] hours and did a really good job. We didn’t even ask if anybody wanted them. We just bought 100. We got the shirts a week later and 100 sold in 45 minutes.”

The shirts got Good Lookin’ the attention it needed.

“When we sold G-20 shirts, people would come over to our table in Towers lobby and ask about our company and say, ‘Hey, I’m in this club. I want you to do a shirt for us.’ Our Facebook group doubled,” Russian said. “Our hope is now that more people know about us.”

Neither Dwarki or Russian had business experience entering this venture.

“We work with Joe Dopirak at Underground Printing. They make all our shirts,” Dwarki said. “He’s a real nice guy, and the first time we made a shirt, we talked to him for two hours about the spacing of everything, how to order the shirts.”

Anyone with a shirt idea can post the design on Good Lookin’ Clothing’s Facebook page.

They create whichever shirt generates the most attention. Organizations can also talk to Dwarki and Russian about making shirts.

“Clubs will say, ‘Here’s what we want, come up with a design and slogan for us.’ That’s what we do best. That’s when we flourish,” Russian said. “Karthik was involved with the Emerging Leaders program, so a lot of their organizations wanted to do shirts through us.”

Both Dwarki and Russian said they grew up doing volunteer work, so they made sure the clothing line had a philanthropic component.

“We made this clothing line just for fun, so we weren’t out to make a huge amount of profit,” Dwarki said. “We thought, ‘Why not give something back to the community and do something that no else usually does?’ So far, we’ve given to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, an all-girls choir in Maryland who needed money for transportation to a competition and the American Chemical Society, who teaches chemistry in high schools.”

With half the profits of each shirt going to charity, it doesn’t get more good lookin’ than that.