Queer people cherish visibility—in the bars we party at, the destinations we vacation in, the clothes we wear, and the communities we embrace. But for Kevin Joseph, feeling seen was as simple as the straw he drank from.
Although Pride Month has unfortunately become a marketing tool for corporations prioritizing queer profit over long-term allyship, in June 2019, Kevin and his friends still wanted to channel their gayness in every aspect of the celebration.
Kevin tells So.Gay he couldn’t find Pride products that felt made for and by LGBTQ+ people. The problem stemmed from companies producing goods for the occasion without capturing the soul of a community they neither belonged to nor hired people from to understand.
After all, queerness can’t be manufactured in a factory. However, Kevin believed it could be empowered through entrepreneurship, which led him to create Andy for Pride.
“Andy for Pride launched as Pride Straws with rainbow paper straws being our first product,” says Kevin. “We now make so much more than rainbow paper straws (pride banners, shirts for allies, queer nail stickers, queer hats, etc.) and Andy for Pride is my way to uplift fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community and bring representation into how LGBTQ+ pride products are imagined, produced, and distributed.”
Naturally, newcomers to the company might be curious about who Andy is. The company underwent several name changes before landing on the most authentic one.
On the surface, Kevin liked that Andy is “non-gendered” and feels “nostalgic yet playful.” But the stars aligned for it to stick permanently when someone named Andy went out of their way to remake essential materials the day before his wedding.
Nowadays, anyone looking for colorful straws—among a medley of other queer products—will be delighted to discover Andy for Pride. Still, many items on the platform are not so different from what could be purchased on Amazon, including in 2019.
So why is it essential to ensure the creators are queer?
“Focusing dollars on companies that support your values is an easy change to an everyday activity that will have a compounding effect on building the world you want to see,” says Kevin. “Imagine if just 10% of your annual expenses went to supporting minority-owned businesses; you can vote with your dollars!”
The founder says even e-commerce giants like Amazon, Etsy, and Walmart have programs to help the LGBTQ+ community purchase from queer-owned businesses (Andy for Pride sells on these platforms).
“It just takes a few extra minutes of applying filters when online shopping or reading labels in store to understand if your purchase supports an LGBTQ+, BIPOC, DOBE, and/or Women-owned company,” says Kevin.
At face value, it’s not that different from supporting a local coffee shop instead of Starbucks. Do you want your neighborhood (or the country) to be filled with humanity’s colorful ingenuity or corporate America’s blandness?
Kevin only works with suppliers who create high-quality products that he’d feel comfortable using himself or offering to his family and friends. He personally tests all products through the most rigorous experiments. (He says next time you see him at a Pride event, just ask how many uses it takes for their paper straw to dissolve—it’s a lot!)
“My view on Pride has expanded – I know so much more about our diverse community and the problems we face than I did prior to starting Andy for Pride,” says Kevin. “I remember being a community member wanting to have my voice heard, and now I am a business owner who is using my platform to elevate the voices of queer people across the world.”
