Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I really, really wish that I could give this the thumbs up, I am sincere when I say that, but I’m afraid that I just cannot hide the fact that I am disappointed by the way that the Fifty Thousand Shirts project has concluded.

When I first wrote about the project back in May I thought that the idea of selling 50,000 t-shirts to raise a million dollars was a pretty lofty ambition, but I was really hoping that they could spark something in the public’s imagination and reach their goal. Clearly, that has not happened, on ‘The Wall‘, a list of people that pledged to buy the tee, there are 749 names, and there’s no way of knowing (yet) how many of those people actually went through on their pledge and placed an order for the tee.

I placed my order a few days (September 9th) after the shirts went on sale in late August. By this time the Chinese earthquake was a fairly distant memory for most people, especially after the incredible spectacle of the Olympics in Beijing. People may have been wondering “why should we be giving money to the Chinese to help with disaster relief when they can afford to spend billions on the Olympics?” And that combined with the length of time between the event and the tees going on sale may have discouraged a few people from buying the tee and from them encouraging others to place an order as well.

Of course, placing an order did not mean that the tee would be on it’s way to you quickly. It wasn’t made particularly clear during the ordering process, but I was aware that it was a pre-sale, but I didn’t realise quite how much of a pre-sale. It was only when I received the confirmation e-mail for my order that I found out I wouldn’t receive my tee until they had received 2,000 orders, so that they could print in bulk, save on costs, and give as much as possible to charity in the process. That’s understandable, but I would have liked to know that earlier in the process and surely by late August they must have realised that with 749 names on The Wall that reaching 2,000 shirts for the first print run was going to be an uphill task, especially considering the marketing campaign had lost most of its steam.

Then I didn’t hear anything from them for a few months, I actually forgot all about them for a while, but e-mailed Steve from FTS on December 30th just to ask how things were going and see what happened to the project after hearing from Rude Retro that the store closed down and the shirts had been shipped (which explained the mysterious e-mail I received from MerchSquad in mid-December which said I was receiving a tee, but not where it was coming from. I haven’t received a reply from Steve yet, but I did receive my tee the very next day on New Year’s eve, and some of you may have noticed a little preview on my New Year’s post.

I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality from the tee, I believe that they were selling the tees for $25 and the aim was for $20 of that to go to charity. I may not know much about the production of tees, but I know $5 doesn’t go particularly far. The tee was pretty thin (you can judge these things quite easily when you’re as hairy as I am), and the printing had a few errors on it. It was as if they were attempting a vintage look, but weren’t very successful. At least one other person wasn’t impressed by the tees either, judging by the Fifty Thousand Shirts Facebook group.

The tee isn’t the most important aspect of this whole project though, obviously the money going to help with disaster relief in China is the focus, and I’m afraid that I struggle to find good news there as well. Steve had struggled to find a big-name charity to attach to the FTS project from the start, it must have been very disheartening to be working towards a noble goal and not have other people want to lend their name to it.

The latest update (December 15th) on the story page of the site says “we needed to end the project before reaching our goal, but it looks like I simply bit off more than I could chew.” It goes on to say “please check in after the Holidays, as I’ll be posting a little info about how much, and to whom we’ll be donating the profits.” I’d be really interested to find out where the money, some of which I contributed to, ends up going, but I can’t help but feeling that for all Steve’s efforts, it would have been better for me to have just given the money to a charity closer to the time, but I certainly do admire him for trying to do something beyond just putting a few dollars in a bucket.

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