Selling t-shirts was not part of Mike Draper’s post-graduate plan, but after he was rejected from a master’s fellowship, the 2004 Penn graduate found himself with a history degree and nowhere to go.
Draper had been selling t-shirts on his campus, so he decided to keep his operation going after commencement. He hung around the east coast, until a friend from Des Moines told him the city was renovating some buildings on the east side, suggesting he could come back to his home state and open up a store.
So, in 2005 he packed up his belongings and moved back into his childhood home in Van Meter. That fall he opened Smash, which later became RAYGUN, the self- proclaimed “greatest store in the universe.”…