What started out as an idea to make summer T-shirts for their children evolved into a business plan in less than two weeks.

Less than a year later, Slick Sugar, a children’s clothing line started by Michelle Hanson and Dana Steele, has been featured in Parents magazine’s November issue, been chosen to have an agent show their clothing line to wholesale buyers in the California Market Center in downtown Los Angeles and received orders from almost every state in the nation.

“It’s an industry that’s completely new to both of us,” said Hanson, who also works full time in Meredith Corp.’s consumer marketing department. “Our jobs are not involved in this, so it’s a challenge saturating ourselves into the industry, but a great challenge.”

After a year of long hours designing a clothing line and beginning to market it, the business is starting to pay off. The two women have sold more than a thousand shirts in nine months and Steele said she hopes to triple or quadruple that figure this year now that they have their 2007 spring/summer and fall/winter lines complete.

Steele, who handles the design and production while Hanson focuses on marketing and public relations, has created a line centered on a rock-star image with a touch of vintage. The goal is to be cool, not cute.

Slick Sugar now has 10 designs for each season, including a simple one-color image of a vintage car, bulldog, guitar, drum set and boom box. Designs are primarily on T-shirts, but the company also offers a baby bag, a razorback dress, long-sleeved shirts, and sweat shirts, in addition to a T-shirt for mothers. The T-shirts sell for about $24 to $36.

Although there are many competitors in the almost $17 billion clothing and footwear market for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, according to Packaged Facts, a market research firm based in Rockville, Md., the two friends don’t seem too concerned. They believe they have created a niche in the market by focusing on the music angle, which could eventually create recognition for their brand.

Plus, they are not afraid to hear, “No.” Hanson has been aggressively marketing the product by sending packages to celebrities and renowned clothing markets. She’s even written two letters to Oprah Winfrey.

The biggest break for Slick Sugar could come in March, when its fall/winter clothes are featured in the California Market Center. An agent will show Slick Sugar products to potential wholesaler buyers, along with products from famous designers, such as an MTV executive and a woman who made a rock lullaby CD.

Steele would like to be featured in two more national magazines this year and eventually have representatives in New York and the Midwest, in addition to Los Angeles.

She and Hanson hope these goals will lead to more boutiques picking up their lines. Urban Belly in the East Village and Jitterbugs in Illinois currently sell their shirts.

Although most of their business comes from New York and Los Angeles, the two women said people in Iowa also have been interested in their clothing line, as they have attended several events throughout the area.

“There is definitely a market in Des Moines for this rock-star thing and not just puppies and kitties,” Steele said.

The rock-star angle stems from Steele’s love for music. She sang backup for Poison’s Iowa tour in 1992 and has shared her passion with her two children.

She developed her fashion talents by making her prom dresses in high school, designing her bridesmaids’ dresses and learning from her mother, who made her own clothes in high school.

“I always know what I want to see and if I can’t make it, I always have had someone else create it for me from scratch,” said Steele, who works full time as a corporate paralegal for a company in Chicago.

To create the shirts, Steele takes an idea to Broken Arrow screenprinting and works with a designer to create a final image, which is then printed on shirts purchased from a Los Angeles company.

Although Steele would eventually like to cut and sew her own shirts, she said the boutique-quality brand they purchase is well respected in the industry.

The two women have some fear that the business may receive more orders than they can handle in the near future, but they have agreed to consider hiring more employees or rethink their business strategy when it gets to that point.

“We can take a risk,” Steele said. “We’re not going so far into something that there’s no way out of it.”