Student-Founded Apparel Brand Crew Dog Arrives at Harvard

Crew Dog, a student-founded collegiate apparel company known for its minimalist mascot designs, is beginning to make its way into Harvard’s merchandise sales. As the brand prepares for its first retail appearance in the COOP starting Nov. 24, its founders say their goal is simple: to offer college students apparel that feels intentionally designed rather than mass-produced. At a moment when elite Ivy League career pipelines overwhelmingly favor finance, consulting, and tech-centric startups, Crew Dog positions itself as a counterculture, hoping to exemplify a student entrepreneurship rooted in craft, design, and community identity.

Founded two years ago, Crew Dog began with a simple idea. “The first design was to fulfill this sort of want and desire for more chic collegiate wear, especially collegiate wear that was more subtle and had a strong affiliation to some sort of club or organization,” Kiernan Liberman said, one of the company’s early executive members and a 2025 Yale graduate. 

In three words, Liberman described the brand as “playful, timeless, and nostalgic.”

Liberman and founder Constantino Polychronopoulos—another member of Yale’s Class of 2025— started with pieces for their alma mater’s men’s rowing team.

“We started using the Bulldog mascot and repurposing [it] into this humanized form and making it really cute,” Liberman said. “What began as a niche idea quickly evolved into a formal business, one that now works with dozens of organizations and campus bookstores across the country, including Boston University, Georgetown University, and Harvard University.”

“If you can make every student feel seen and wanted within your collection,” he said, “that is the success in itself.”

Crew Dog now operates with three major revenue streams: direct-to-consumer collections on its website, custom group orders for student organizations, and partnerships with university bookstores. 

Crew Dog’s arrival in Cambridge has been spearheaded by their recent Harvard-Yale line, which launched just under two weeks ago and immediately took off. “The feedback has been tremendous, ” Liberman said. Their velour sets—according to the executive team—have been a top seller of the line. “It’s a very fun game day piece!” Liberman added. 

Apart from Harvard-specific apparel, their fastest-growing segment is custom group merchandise, where student clubs can request original artwork or adapt Crew Dog’s existing mascot designs. “Groups and clubs will reach out, and they’ll either ask to make their own from-scratch design or utilize the OG design…and customize it,” Liberman explained. “This customization has become a cornerstone of Crew Dog’s campus presence.”

Catering to the needs of every student type is a main priority of Crew Dog. In addition to more trendy styles like the velour track suit, there are more preppy pieces, like “long sleeve button up polos and more normal t-shirt graphics, sweatshirts,” as Liberman describes. 

Trying to find a consumer that wants sort of all these different pieces is the biggest priority,” Liberman said.“If I can make every type of person want a piece from the collection, that’s a success.” 

Working with students, Liberman said, is remarkably different from dealing with corporate clients. 

“With students, it’s pretty clear,” he said. “They know what they want.” 

“I think because there’s such a niche in the market of collegiate wear, everyone is so willing to just have anything that represents their creation…There’s not too much back and forth between us and customers with design edits, but I think that just goes to show how much people really want something that represents them and their community.”

The ease of working with students allows Crew Dog to deliver products to consumers quickly. This is a necessity when working with student groups that often operate on tight budgets and even tighter timelines. Many collaborations begin with a club treasurer or student leader submitting an online request, after which a designer follows up as soon as the next day. 

“You submit a design request, you get in touch with our team of designers, you go back and forth with designers for a few changes and edits for what you want, and then from there, we design the pieces, get them made, [and] get them delivered. So it’s a pretty easy and simple process,” Liberman explained.

The brand is also gearing up for even bigger projects. “We have a huge Army-Navy collection coming right after Harvard-Yale,” Liberman said. And though he declined to share specifics, he hinted that the team is already identifying their “new hero product” based on the performance of the past few weeks’ sales.

While the company has grown, Liberman believes Crew Dog’s strongest appeal lies in its origins. “Crew Dog represents an idea that came from students, for other students,” he said. “It wasn’t really about reinventing the wheel; it was about using something as a vehicle for community, which was clothing.”

Liberman hopes that Harvard students can see Crew Dog’s successful business model of authenticity and creativity as one they can emulate in their own lives. “I just advise everyone I know, especially these schools that have such an intensive career, [almost] corporate-like pressure, to just follow your heart and lead to where you truly feel the most, the most fulfilled, the most enlightened, and the most energetic.”

As Crew Dog launches at Harvard in person in just a week, Liberman underscored the values that drive the company through each new chapter. “I think I would say to the Harvard community, our brand, and sort of the message is just to follow with love and do what you want.”

Natalie Cooper ’28 (natalie.cooper@harvard.edu) will be wearing Crew Dog’s new Harvard Velour tracksuit at Harvard-Yale.