Local News
Jim Cox beats the odds with new Wolfpack logo
MOULTRIE — The “Rocky” movies had “The Eye of the Tiger.” Now, North Carolina State University will soon have “The Eyes of the Wolf” — thanks to the efforts of a Moultrie businessman.
Jim Cox graduated from NC State in 1966 with a degree in industrial arts and industrial management that shaped a lifelong career in manufacturing.
“I’ve always had a lot of loyalty to NC State, and that college education did a lot for me,” said Cox in his office at Heritage Embroidery, the business he and his wife, Harvie Ann, started in 1993.
Cox’s approval of his alma mater, however, didn’t extend to either of the college’s two official logos: a strutting wolf that dates back to the 1920s and a large S with a smaller N and C imposed on it. Since he was in the logo business himself, Cox thought he could design something more … intimidating.
“People said, ‘Jim, you can’t really design a new logo for a college,’” he said. “I said, ‘Well, maybe I can.’”
The solution came in a painting called “The Eyes of the Wolf” by Arthur Armstrong. The vaguely rectangular image shows only a wolf’s face from the brow to the tip of the miuzzle. Yellow eyes seem to burn amid the gray and white fur. Struck by the painting, Cox bought the original. Then he bought the copyright.
It took him a little while to figure out how to incorporate the image into a logo, but the result was simply adding the school’s name above the lupine face with the mascot name — Wolfpack — below.
“It’s interesting, it’s neat, it’s attention-getting,” Cox said.
Designing the logo was the easy part. Next, he had to “sell” the idea to the college before he could legally begin to market merchandise with the logo on it.
“I got so accustomed to stone walls,” he said. “I’d burrow under them, I’d go around them, I’d find a door, something.”
He echoed NC State basketball coach Jim Valvano’s famous quote: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”
“I knew I had something good, and I wouldn’t give up,” Cox said.
A friend, Colquitt Regional Medical Center President Jim Lowry, urged Cox to get an advocate, so Cox set about gathering support for his design, starting with the Alumni Association, which said they liked it.
Then came the Wolfpack Club, which said, “We don’t change things around here very much, but we really like that,” Cox said.
With those influential groups behind him, he went to NC State’s trademark office. They were the ones he had to convince.
“Had I not been an alumnus they probably wouldn’t have been interested,” Cox said.
But once he got his foot in the door, a grudging five-minute interview turned into 45 minutes and ended with “Can you be ready for football season?”
That deadline was tougher than it sounds. First, the License Resource Group (LRG) had to approve Cox’s company to do business with the college. Then the trademark office could consider and approve the logo itself. Then the trademark office would consider, one by one, any merchandise Cox sought to produce with the logo on it.
North Carolina State University gets a royalty from each sale, as does the original artist.
Cox emphasizes his logo doesn’t replace the longtime emblems of NC State; they’ll continue to be used just as they have been. The Eyes of the Wolf logo has appeared on T-shirts and sweatshirts for a few months, Cox said, and recently he added golf shirts, dress shirts, three-quarter-length-sleeve tees and hoodies. Soon, he’ll add tumblers, baseball caps, license plates, director’s chairs and car flags. He said he has a list of 50-60 items under development.
He said it takes one to two months to get an item from development to approval to the online store at www.eyesofthewolf.com.
The NC State campus bookstore indicated it would begin carrying Cox’s merchandise in January, he said.
Cox buys the undecorated merchandise then adds the image either through embroidery (in the case of the dress shirts) or silkscreen (pretty much everything else). Embroidery is done right here in Moultrie; silkscreen is subcontracted to a company in Albany.
“Even if I didn’t make any money at it, I’d still want to do this,” Cox said. “I’ve really enjoyed working on the project. It’s been a lot of fun.”
