Buffalo boasts a veritable panoply of apparel entrepreneurs who yield seemingly endless bumper crops of crewnecks. This Graphic Tee-Industrial Complex is almost bewilderingly prolific. After all, who needs more than one Buffalo T-shirt?

The Buffalo expat effect accounts for the purchasing power that props up this industry. Buffalonians have loved Buffalo even when it didn’t love them back, and they are scattered across the country chasing opportunities. The biggest players in the T-shirt game rely on sports-themed designs to drive sales to fans all over the US., though general Buffalo pride captures some customers.

Whether Buffalove T-shirts can be produced by only BuffaLove Apparel’s Patty Watson, who is seeking federal trademark registration for exclusive use of the word on clothing, may not affect the Bills and Sabres shirts, but smaller designers could be pushed out of the market.

Patricia Struckler, a fourth-year student in Buffalo State College’s communication design program, set up a shop on Redbubble.com as a side project. Among the designs she offers for sale is a buffalo silhouette paired with a stylized “Buffalove” that can be printed onto shirts, wall art and accessories. Struckler grew up in Western New York and has warm memories of exploring art shows and festivals with her parents. For her, Buffalove is shorthand for connecting with local artists and clients.

“I want to create designs that I know others would love, and the term Buffalove really gets across how the community here feels about our city,” she said. “It’s full of love, culture, art, music.”

Struckler said she has made about 75 sales through the online shop she created about a year and a half ago, so “not enough for it to impact my finances.” Still, after graduation, she plans to make more Buffalo-inspired designs and said, “Buffalove is the go-to term when describing how [local artists] all feel about where we live.”

Born in Buffalo is one of the graphic tee companies in Buffalo for which Buffalove plays but a small part in their designs and bottom line, with sports motifs dominating business. Owner Dave Hassett said his best-selling design is a Bills-inspired “1 B4 I Die” shirt, closely followed by a Sabres iteration of the fan lamentation.

Hassett’s social media practices and Born in Buffalo’s web presence help to account for the popularity of his shirts. Many of the T-shirt heavyweights have developed online communities that are willing to buy a product as an expression of their engagement.

Born in Buffalo has more than 65,000 Facebook followers and, Hassett said, “Most typical Facebook posts are an attempt to keep expats connected to the city where their heart beat first.” That audience is a business asset, but “I am still way more passionate about promoting Buffalo than simply selling it,” he said.

Born in Buffalo has run a Buffalove shirt design in the past. “Ours was released in 2012 and simply replaced the ‘o’ in Buffalo with a heart symbol. Nothing fancy, a good selling shirt but not one that I run on a regular basis,” Hassett said.

Born in Buffalo has used a lawyer to challenge a competitor’s knockoff design only once, and Hassett said the design community self-polices for intellectual property violators.

“I think almost everyone who runs a T-shirt company in Buffalo follows the same rules of respectfully being aware of the designs of other companies and avoiding overlapping whenever possible,” he said. The costs of formally registering a trademark or copyright and then litigating infringement are generally too high.

“But if a company felt the need to invest in a slogan or trademark I would respect that,” Hassett said. “Buffalove has been a thought, slogan, design and store name long before the prominent resurgence it has enjoyed based on the excellent T-shirt design that accompanies the slogan. And based on how much I like BuffaLove Apparel’s version, I think I wouldn’t run ours again without requests.”

Running a T-shirt shop requires savviness about trademark, copyright and fair use. Joe Kontrabecki is the owner of Retro Buffalo, a company that creates nostalgic items, several of which reproduce defunct logos for businesses such as Hills department store, Bethlehem Steel, and Melody Fair.

One of Kontrabecki’s designs depicts “Buffalo Talking Proud,” but he doesn’t literally represent the current booster slogan. “What I do is more symbolic of Buffalove than producing a T-shirt that says Buffalove,” he said.

Kontrabecki creates more contemporary designs for his andBuffalo imprint, including civic- and sports-themed shirts. Many of the “Bruce& Thurman& Andre& Jim” format designs featuring local motifs can be traced back to andBuffalo, though Kontrabecki doesn’t claim to have invented the style. He reiterated that Buffalo designers know each other and most are mindful of others’ creative work. The Buffalove shirt is nothing new, Kontrabecki said, though Watson’s design may be.

“She’s doing it, and it’s been done before. It’s covered,” he said. “She has one very specific design, and it’s proliferated.”

Store716 uses Buffalove for marketing copy and as an online store category, but doesn’t sell Buffalove merch, said co-owner David Gram. Store716 has just under 8,000 followers on twitter and engages mostly with sports fans to create and sell designs.

To ensure that Store716 is selling designs that are “original expressions” inspired by the Bills and Sabres but that do not infringe on the franchises’ intellectual property holdings, Gram has had to learn about trademark and copyright. 

The standards enforced by the upstanding T-shirt design community protect most of Store716’s designs, though Gram said there are occasional imitators. “At first it was aggravating, then it became flattering, and now it’s, eh? What are you going to do?” Many of Store716’s topical designs lose their appeal over time, and Gram said, “We’re always focusing on the next thing.” 

Besides, making moves to formally trademark or copyright a design could be seen in a negative light and affect business, Gram said. “People who are really protective and greedy about things, at the end of the day, it’s going to show through their brand and not work with the customers anyways,” he said.

At the end of 2013, the Washington Post declared with an out-for-2013/in-for-2014 listicle that “Keep Austin Weird”—the litigation-tinged slogan for the Texas capital—was over and “Buffalove” was fresh. That era was “peak Buffalove,” Gram said, and at least for his business, “at this point, I think, it’s not something we would want to get into.”