With his beady eyes and twitching nose one can instantly see why Sammy Seeds made the Ten Most Wanted list.

His mug shot, which indicates he was prisoner No. 51913 at the Mercer County Jail, is testimony to his lengthy rap sheet. Now on the lam, he probably can be found stuffing his mouth in any backyard in America. He joins the likes of Frankie the Feeder, Jimmy the Mole and Mickey Snake Eyes on the list -- comprised of the most wanted squirrels for birdseed crimes.

This roster complete with mug shots of all 10 squirrels still generates a smile from Nathan Depew. It's not just the quaintly eccentric look of the squirrels that has him chuckling. As owner of Earth Sun Moon Trading Co. it's his company's top selling tee shirt.

"We have another shirt which has the Ten Most Wanted dog list but we've found people are more breed sensitive when it comes to dogs,'' Depew said.

Other quirky shirts tee shirts sold by his Grove City company are geared for garden and nature lovers with sayings like: "May the forest be with you,'' "Weed 'em and Reap'' and "Campers have S'more fun!'' His most daring shirt is emblazoned with "Endangered Feces'' showcasing droppings of imperiled animals such as the Florida panther and Wyoming toad.

Other shirts have sharp artistic drawings of various birds and for the indoor types he offers such shirts as "Coffee Snob'' with a small cup of hot brew featured in the center and the newly created "Handyman'' shirt for men -- a Superman-like character clad in jeans and work shirt with a power saw in one hand and an electric drill in another.

Employing 20 housed at a former beer distributor shop which has undergone extensive remodeling, the spectacled 33-year-old comes up with most of the ideas for the shirts. His concept is to start with a cutesy idea and work it into a quirky but cerebral concept.

"The thing I always shoot for is a sophisticated fun design,'' Depew said. "I think that's played a lot in the success of the shirts.''

Selling at retail for $16.99 to $19.99, Depew's tee shirts are made of heavy cotton and are pre-shrunk.

All but 1 percent of the business is geared to the wholesale market. Although willing to sell directly to consumers online, Depew said he doesn't promote that part of his trade. When he does sell to consumers he doesn't undercut his own customers on price.

"If you put something out on the market and undercut retailers by $5 that's not very good manners,'' he said.

His target customers are catalog companies, retailers, gift and nature stores.
Customers include Sears Gift Catalog, Burpee Seed Co., Cabelas, The Discovery Channel and the American Museum of Natural History. Retailers alone account for 5,000 of his customers.

On this day the soft-spoken man sports a three-day-old beard while talking in his office filled with drawings of animals. He draws upon animals for much of his tee shirt art work.

"I love watching animals, I've always had pets,'' Depew said.

Depew sold 250,000 tee shirts last year but his beginning in the apparel industry was hardly glamorous.

His first stab was in 1996 as a sideline to his construction business. Using century-old drawings found in a German encyclopedia and an old animal print book he crafted a dozen tee shirt designs.

"They didn't sell,'' he relates. "I suffered along just being another tee shirt company.''

At a trade show he saw one salesman plying small wicker baskets. An idea clicked in his head and he decided to create wicker bird cages and place one of his bird shirts in them for sale. That proved to be a hit with retailers and mail order companies and launched his business into a new level.

In the fall of 1997 he ditched his construction company and went full bore in his tee shirt trade.

"By 1999 it started to look like it might work,'' he said. "There was a good three years of doubt.''

With one in-house artist he also avails himself of six freelance artists to draw designs he imagines in his mind.

Each year the business ditches a dozen or so slow-selling pieces of merchandise in favor of new items. He finds kids under 10 and middle-age women are the most likely buyers of his shirts. To attract men he began adding "guy stuff'' themes such as shirts for fishermen.

Also, to attract a wider audience he's begun selling baseball hats and pairing tee-shirts with appropriate containers such as a canning shirt that's sold in a mason jar and bug shirts for kids with a plastic container for them to catch bugs with.

But rather than constantly ratcheting up the number of products Depew likes to keep his item mix at a manageable level -- currently 70.

"Our idea is to have as few products as possible and sell as much of each one as you can,'' he said. "I probably wouldn't want to have more than 120 products.''

Buying blank tee shirts from manufacturers Depew also had farmed out the printing process. But recently he bought printing equipment so that Earth Sun Moon will have more control over the production process. Adding printing into will enable the company to fill custom orders.

"I think we'll be able to do quite a bit of it,'' he said of custom orders. "Places like museums who have new exhibits coming in should be really interested.''

Phone: (888) 458-1687. On the Internet at: earthsunmoon.com