Scott Cable, who co-founded Kanawha Valley-based apparel company Balzout in 1986, died on June 21 at the age of 54.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1962, Cable moved to Charleston in his youth, graduating from Charleston Catholic High School in 1981. He graduated from West Virginia University and started Charleston-based S&E T-shirts with college friend Eddy Layne in 1986.
Cable was 23 at the time and worked gaining new business, contacting small surf and skate shops across the country with offers to make T-shirts with their logos on them.
With a shop in the Charleston Town Center Mall, the company hired an airbrush artist and set up a studio so mall-goers could watch him at work. At this time in the company's infancy, it provided mostly West Virginia-themed apparel before Cable and Layne branched out, expanding the market to sell custom skateboard designs, as skateboarding culture was one of his inspirations, according to reports from the Charleston Gazette.
Then, Cable and Layne hit their big break. Spencer's, the national chain gift shop famous for its adult novelty and gag gifts, called Cable after he sent along some samples, and placed an order for 18,000 T-shirts.
With the money from the order, Cable and Layne invested in an automatic silk-screen press instead of a manual one, and large orders kept pouring in.
They signed several more deals with Spencer's, creating T-shirts with snarky and sarcastic sayings, then with WVU as the 1988 Mountaineer football team was looking like a national championship prospect.
In 1994, Cable and Layne bought a plant on Charleston's West Side and retired their working name of S&E T-shirts as they looked to incorporate the business to qualify for a credit line.
Noting the place they'd made for themselves as an edgy company that fit well in the '90s niche of skateboarding and extreme sports culture, Cable came up with the name "Balzout" - because, he told the Gazette, that's how their business operated.
In 1996, Cable moved from the West Side to a 92,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Nitro, where Balzout ran a now-national operation after receiving its first country-wide license for Miller Brewing Co.'s Red Dog.
Cable and Layne's company soon became a house-old, national brand, providing apparel for bands like The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead. In 2000, Cable bought Layne out of the company through "an amicable break," Cable told the Gazette at the time.
The company held contracts with household brands like Guinness, Jack Daniels, Comedy Central and MTV, and at one point, Balzout was one of just a few apparel companies licensed to produce SpongeBob Squarepants printed material.
In September 2010, Balzout filed for bankruptcy according to court documents, and the plant in Nitro was put up for sale.
A memorial service for Cable is scheduled at 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Agnes Catholic Church, 4807 Staunton Ave., Charleston. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Sacred Heart Needy Student Fund, or a charity of your choice.