Our Story
The ASTRO 9 Story: Teenage Entrepreneur
ASTRO 9 was created in Iowa by high school senior, Grady Walston.
Fall of 2023, Grady began creating his own clothing and wearing to West Des Moines Valley High School in effort to offer encouragement and support to those struggling with mental health. Teen suicide seemed to be at an all time high. It all started with a shirt with a homemade vinyl patch. On the back is said “Mental Health Matters.” The front was designed with a cartoon astronaut sitting on a 3D yellow sticky note that read, “When the pressure to be a 10 is out of this world…. just try to be a 9.”
Entrepreneurship found him.
After having a dozen or so classmates ask how they could get his shirt, the reach of ASTRO 9 soon began to spread across local high schools, and particularly, the soccer community. As the word spread, Grady quickly fell into the role of business owner, with the help of his Mom assisting him with ordering sizes and heat pressing. A fun extracurricular to accompany a busy senior year and intense travel schedule for elite club soccer, but he made it work! The home kitchen was doubling as an operations hub and gathering center, while the families sunroom spawned overnight into the “Astro 9 Pop-Up Shop!”
Dad, (Chris) helped continual restock of the racks of shirts while Grady was at school. A fun family adventure, with one goal in mind. Keep up with demand to help Grady be ready when kids stopped by after class or weekends.
Grady went on to sell over 600 shirts within the first two months. All handmade. He invested back into his small business and took his proceeds to hire an attorney to obtain an official United States Registered Trademark & officially formed his LLC. ASTRO 9 was born!
Adding designs, Grady more than doubled sales again, hitting the 1,000 shirt milestone by June of 2024!
This would land him an invitation to be cast on a reality television series. Grady traveled to Tulsa, OK to film “The Blox” in July of 2024. ( Produced by Creator, Wes Bergmann, Star of MTV’s The Real World/TheChallenge). It was during this live-in business accelerator and incubator competition when connections and opportunities really started to present themselves!
It didn't take long to realize there could be a greater purpose in the Astro 9 patch. Each shirt wI’ll continue to support mental health awareness, with a portion of proceeds pledged to local youth crisis services.
Outside of ASTRO 9, Grady is a 5X State Champion Soccer Player and a National Runner Up. Soccer has been his life from a very early age. ( West Des Moines Soccer Club, Sporting Iowa, Iowa ODP & VSA/Rush- ECNL)2005 age group.
ASTRO 9 is soon to be offered in a few retail locations in Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania. If you happen to know of any retail spots of boutiques who would maybe like to offer ASTRO 9 in their stores, we would love to explore!
Fall of 2024
Grady is playing college soccer and studying entrepreneurship and business. Custom orders still being created at home, and online offerings now fully manufacture, cut and sewn specifically by design with private label and sewn in logo tags. All designs and artwork still created by Grady with the same vision from the beginning.