From the category archives:

Admin

HYA t-shirt and tank top prices reduced!

by Andy on June 13, 2013

I’ve reduced the price of every tee in the HYA store, why? Because it’s getting warm and I’d love to be shipping out some tees to all over the world whilst I’m shipping out camera straps all over the world with Rigu. The tees are all high quality using American Apparel blanks (except for the gold foil tee which is on Continental Clothing) and buttery soft discharge printing where possible, otherwise it was “soft as we can make it Plastisol.” The tees are now £11.99 until I change my mind, so who knows how long that will be, so you’d better get on it and take a look at the HYA shop!

{ 3 comments }

New necklaces released in the HYA shop!

by Andy on June 2, 2013

I love the HYA tees and hoodies, but I’m a humble enough guy to know that there are only so many things out there that you guys want to see the HYA logo printed on, so there’s no point me investing loads of money in stuff people don’t want, but I would like to have an active HYA shop that people enjoyed visiting and could find some fun and cute things in, which is why it will be diversifying over the next few months to offer a wider variety of items. Jewellery seemed like and easy place to start, after I kept finding really cool stuff on the wholesale websites that I frequent for Rigu, and there’s now a growing selection of fashion jewellery in the shop. I’m keeping the price low because the HYA store is meant to be a bit of fun to help complement the Rigu store, so the necklaces above are available for just £2.99 a piece, which is pretty darned cheap if you ask me!

{ 0 comments }

I’m off to Gothenburg for the weekend, but HYA will continue on a light schedule

by Andy on May 1, 2013

Photo by Dirigentens

I’m taking my girlfriend to Gothenburg, Sweden, for a long weekend, so obviously work will be the last thing on my mind, but I have written up a few posts to keep things rolling here that will hopefully keep you guys happy whilst I’m in the land of blonde people eating cinnamon laced cakes and pastries. If you send in a pitch or question between now and Monday please do not expect a reply before then, and it might take me a while to get back in the swing of things after I get back from the holiday.

{ 0 comments }

Flash sale on red HYA tees!

by Andy on April 12, 2013

I’d love to take some of these down to the Post Office today, so pick up a red HYA tee in the HYA store over the next half hour and get it for just £10, and it will be dispatched today, you could even be wearing it tomorrow!

{ 0 comments }

The brand new HYA store is live, and there’s new goods on the way!

by Andy on March 4, 2013

After a few years being hosted by a Big Cartel storefront I have brought the HYA shop in-house and it is now a sub-domain over at shop.hideyourarms.com built on the same platform as my camera accessories venture Rigu. I feel it gives more of a professional look and feel compared to the Big Cartel store (largely because I was using a stock theme, some amazing things can be done with Big Cartel), and gives more scope for expansion in the future. I do have more plans for the store in the future, hopefully branching out beyond the logo-based merchandise to offering a marketplace featuring items from HYA bloggers. That should be happening in the near future but does need the kinks working out as it is quite a lot of work compared to me running this shop.

There are also going to be four new items added to the shop in the next couple of weeks too, which is pretty exciting. I love white print on red so it was a no-brainer for me to have a print run of them done, discharge printed onto red American Apparel tees in sizes ranging from XS-XXL. The lapis blue tees are regular plastisol print so not quite as soft as the red shirts, but still a really nice classic colour choice and they will feel good too. I have done very, very short print runs of the vests, a few of my friends wanted them printed since they like vests, and thought I might as well get some extras done for you guys so you can still wear HYA with pride on those hot summer days. These items should be in the store within a couple of weeks, you can sign up for e-mail notifications on the product pages to be the first to know when they have been added to the store (and once you’ve been notified about the release, your address will be deleted, no repeat notifications and no spam).

As you’d expect, I would love you get feedback and comments from you all regarding what you like and don’t like. I know it isn’t perfect and that there are still things to be done, but this is an exciting development for HYA and I really want to push it on.

{ 1 comment }

Margin London Preview

by Margin London on February 4, 2013

Regular Hide Your Arms readers will have spotted our recent posts highlighting a few of the brands exhibiting at Margin London on the 10th & 11th February.

With just six days to go until the show opens to buyers and press, here’s a preview of some more of the labels making their tradeshow debut at the exhibition.

We thought we’d better not post any more in-depth profiles otherwise the Hide Your Arms crew wouldn’t have any exclusives to report on when they visit the show!

Here are some images to whet the appetite and look forward to the Hide Your Arms reports after the show.

For information about exhibiting at or visiting Margin, get in touch via the website.

LATIN LOVER, a new t-shirt label from Columbia for men & women, with great illustrations & graphics:

latin lover at margin london1 480x367 Margin London Preview

latin lover at margin london 480x744 Margin London Preview

EVIL, the first-season from this new menswear range will be debuted at Margin. The collection features a whole range of clothing (shirting, trousers, chinos, denim) and printed tees & sweatshirts:

evil at margin london1 480x603 Margin London Preview evil at margin london2 480x720 Margin London Preview evil at margin london3 480x720 Margin London Preview

SLANG, a new men’s and women’s t-shirt brand from Portugal, drawing influences from art, music, and skate, and making their debut at Margin:

slang at margin london3 480x309 Margin London Preview slang at margin london2 480x309 Margin London Preview slang at margin london1 480x309 Margin London Preview

NETTY RATTI, adorable cross-stitched designs in this range of ethical women’s tops and tees:

netty ratti at margin london2 480x362 Margin London Preview netty ratti at margin london 480x369 Margin London Preview netty ratti at margin london1 480x723 Margin London Preview

OUT OF PRINT first made their debut at Margin in August 2011 and have exhibited at every edition since. They’re back again in February 2013 to unveil their latest tees featuring artwork from classic books:

out of print at margin london2 480x309 Margin London Preview out of print at margin london1 480x309 Margin London Preview

{ 0 comments }

What do you want from Hide Your Arms?

by Andy on February 3, 2013

Honesty time. The traffic to Hide Your Arms has been dropping over the past year and it’s getting to a worrying point for me. I know that splitting my time between HYA and Rigu is partly to blame for the fall in traffic, but I’m putting out as many posts as ever so I feel that there has to be something else that is the problem.

After seven years I’d like to think things would be steady but clearly the internet is changing and Hide Your Arms needs to change with it.

With that in mind I am asking a question that I’ve asked before: What do you want from Hide Your Arms

If you read this blog but you’ve never left a comment, now is the time, I read loads of blogs that I never comment on, so I know how easy it is to just lurk, but if there’s anything you’ve wanted to say about the direction of the site then please do leave a comment or send a message via the comment form.

There’s no need to worry, I have no intention to close the site, I’m just wanting feedback and ideas for how we can move forward and bring the site back to where it was a couple of years ago.

{ 24 comments }

Admin-y stuff: Join #TeamHYA! Like us on Facebook! Follow me on Twitter!

by Andy on October 6, 2012

I thought I’d finish the week of regular posting (there may well be a couple of hands-on reviews coming up over the weekend) by reminding you guys about a few boring things with the site. Firstly, the HYA Facebook page crossed the 5,000 likes barrier earlier this week, I think that’s pretty huge and I’m proud to have that many people supporting the site. If you haven’t liked the page yet please do, I don’t post too often and it’s a great way to discuss posts from the site.

You can also follow @hideyourarms on Twitter. Since Hide Your Arms is tied so closely with my personality this is my personal account as well as serving up the professional side of things like new post announcements and messages trying to get you to buy advertising space. That means it has a bit of a different tone to Facebook, much more conversational, and you hear a lot about what I ate that day.

Lastly, I’d like to put out my regular call to remind people that I’m always looking for people to join the team as writers. It’s all very casual and I’m told that I’m a nice boss, well that’s what I tell them to say (see? see all the zany fun we’d have if HYA had an office?). You can write about what you want when you want and occasional you’ll get free clothes for review, and it can be used on your CV and good work experience. Get in contact if you would like to be part of #TeamHYA.

Have a great weekend everyone! Buy stuff from Rigu!

{ 2 comments }

Check out Doug and Leah in their HYA tees!

by Andy on September 5, 2012

HYA bloggers Doug and Leah sent over some pictures of them modeling their shirts from the HYA store. I’ve struggled to sell tees to women in the past, I’m not sure if that’s because you ladies don’t trust the sizing or perhaps there just aren’t many of you reading the site, but hopefully the above pics will prove to you that HYA shirts do fit women (Leah is shown wearing size small, Doug is in a large).

{ 0 comments }

Gold on black and white on black HYA logo tees available now!

by Andy on July 31, 2012

These three shirts actually went up in the HYA store on Friday afternoon, but between getting the photos taken, it being me and my girlfriend’s 3rd anniversary, and the Olympics opening ceremony in the evening I didn’t get a chance to write up a post letting you guys know that I took the plunge once again and had some more HYA logo t-shirts printed.

Since I started Rigu last November I’ve really been enjoying packing orders and sending them around the world, and with the HYA store being a bit empty with various sizes of items sold out I decided it was time to get back in the game, and more importantly, I wanted to wear a HYA tee with gold foil on it, and the classic white print too. I won’t print anything that I won’t wear, there’s no point in me investing in stock of tees that I see every day if I’m not going to enjoy seeing them, and I am really, really happy with how these latest tees have come out.

White print on black is a classic colourway and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to having them printed. They’re white discharge ink on black American Apparel 2001 t-shirts, so we all know it’s a good quality t-shirt and with that discharge print it’s started out soft and it’s only going to get softer over time resulting in a really nice vintage feel. Limited quantities of the shirt are available now for £14.99 + shipping.

When I put in the order for the gold foil shirts I did wonder if they were a little bit silly. I’m not exactly a ‘bling’ person, I don’t even like the word bling and I never wear jewelry, but something about gold foil tees has always intrigued me, especially when you’re using a black blank, and I had a feeling that the HYA logo would look good in gold. I hadn’t even considered that there was something of an Olympic tie-in with the gold foil, but as I watched Team GB walk around the track during the opening ceremony on Friday I realised I may have missed a trick with marketing there. The gold is pretty shiny, but it isn’t thick so doesn’t feel heavy on the shirt or feel like it will flake off. A brand (who I suppose should remain nameless) that I like use the same printer and shirt for their gold foil tees and sent me one of them a few year, and whilst it isn’t very gold now it did take many years of washing for that to happen, so I do feel that this shirt has a long life in it if cared for correctly. The shirts are from Continental Clothing, who make very nice shirts with a size chart that is very similar to American Apparel, who are members of the Fair Wear Foundation and go the extra distance when it comes to ensuring that their products are made in fair and ethical conditions. The gold foil tee costs £15.99 + shipping and is available now.

Lastly, I have restocked the grey print on grey AA tri-blend tees since they sold out in medium and large a while ago. The grey print this time is slightly lighter (Pantone 7540C) to reflect the true colour of HYA grey. Please note that in XL and XXL the darker grey print remains as I only restocked the M & L sizes, but the dark grey print looks cool so it’s all good. You can pick up this American Apparel tri-blend shirt for £15.99 plus shipping in the HYA store.

I do have it in mind to add to the store over time and slowly build what we have on offer, likely more logo-based stuff, but it’s possible that we’ll be branching out in the future, likely with a couple of cool posters a local artist-friend of mine, and we’ll see how it goes from there. If there’s anything that you’d like to see the HYA logo on let me know and I’ll see if it’s possible.

{ 4 comments }

Meanie joins Team HYA [Submitted]

by Meanie on May 16, 2012

Andy,

Thanks for adding me as a contributor to your site.
I look forward to saying things about things I may have not had a chance to say about those things other wise. AND, I promise to use spell check every chance I get.
Also, go to Face Book for my latest adventures.

Again, Thanks!
Meanie

Andy: Nice idea for a new contributor to introduce themselves this way, though I would have thought they’d do it by testing out the regular post system rather than the submission form!

This post was submitted by Meanie.

{ 1 comment }

Say Hello to your Hide Your Arms writing team!

by Andy on March 18, 2012

Back in the early days of HYA the thought of letting other people write on HYA scared me, I didn’t want to lose control of what was being put on the site, and heaven forbid something was posted that wasn’t on the schedule! These days I’ve become more relaxed about the situation and realised that for the site to grow and appeal to more people it’s important to have more than just my viewpoint on the site, and to provide all your readers with a wider range of t-shirts and clothing.

I’ve been slowly adding to the writing team over the past few months and I really like it, it feels good to have lots of people dropping in with something they’ve found or to cover the latest news, it feels like HYA isn’t just about me anymore and I like that, I want it to be a bigger part of the t-shirt community and become something that can be a real force to help and support t-shirt brands grow.

To show that Hide Your Arms is no longer a one-man operation (sure, I do most of the heavy lifting, but the load is getting lighter) I have put together a contributors page to recognise the people that make up the HYA writing team. Each writer has a little bio and a couple of links showing you where you can find them around the web, their posts on HYA, and also a picture so that we can put a face to the name that you seen in the byline on each post (like this one, but you guys probably know who I am already).

If you would like to join the team and write on HYA then I am always looking to take people on who have a passion for clothing of any kind (it doesn’t have to just be tees, this site started out being about hoodies, remember?). Please get in touch via the contact form or send me an e-mail (info@hideyourarms.com) letting me know who you are, what brands and kinds of clothes you like, and anywhere I can find your writing online if possible. Experience blogging is definitely not a requirement, though it would be useful.

{ 2 comments }

HYA is on Pinterest, just like everyone else.

by Andy on February 18, 2012

I joke in the title, but Pinterest is a really cool social & visual bookmarking system and I can see it being quite a lot of fun to use.

As you would expect, you can find Hide Your Arms at pinterest.com/hideyourarms, my boards are a bit sparse at the moment but they will be filled in time. I’m pinning more than just t-shirts and photo gear (yes, a lot of it is from Rigu), just generally interesting things that I see during my day on the internet.

Feel free to follow me and I’ll probably follow you back.

Of course, if you’re into the old school social media you can still connect with HYA on Twitter and Facebook.

{ 0 comments }

T-shirt news for January 24th

by Andy on January 24, 2012

Can you imagine if you walked into a house and there were this many cats… it would be terrifying. $10 at TeeFury today.

I know what you’re thinking, this is just yet another t-shirt about imaginary Pinata companies, and when with this pinata meme die? Well, at least this one at Shirt.Woot is based on the 1986 film ‘Three Amigos’.

The Muppets meet Futurama with this Hypnokermit t-shirt at RIPT today.
[click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

Hide Your Arms is Six Years Old Today!

by Andy on January 21, 2012

Funny how much in my life has changed because I semi-spontaneously decided to write about t-shirts and hoodies one day when I should have been studying for my exams.

Thank you very much to anyone that has ever blogged for HYA, visited the site, linked to an article, commented, advertised, followed on Twitter, liked on Facebook, anything. Anything that anyone does to help this site helps keep me behind these monitors doing something I love instead of some soul destroying job in a cubicle or outside in the cold, and I truly do appreciate it all.

{ 11 comments }

Rigu Competition, win a £10 gift voucher with 1 simple tweet!

by Andy on December 12, 2011

Sure, this is off-topic, but it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

My other website, a camera accessories site called Rigu is holding a little competition, and I would love it if you would enter. The competition runs from now until Friday at midnight and to enter all you have to do is follow @RiguPhoto on Twitter and send out the following tweet:

RT @RiguPhoto: Follow & RT this message before Dec. 16th to win a £10 camera accessories voucher. http://rigu.co.uk #competition

That’s all there is to it, the winner will be notified before the end of the weekend. Why are you still here? Go, tweet!

{ 1 comment }

Black Friday is upon us, here’s how it’s going down on HYA

by Andy on November 22, 2011

In the past on HYA I have written individual posts for individual deals on Black Friday, and frankly that was a lot of work and made the blog very messy, even if it was probably better for traffic. This years I’m going to be creating a single post that I will continually edit and grow throughout the week. As I update the list I will post tweets to notify you all, and also put reminders into the daily news roundup.

Store owners, if you want to ensure that your deal is included please be sure to tweet me, leave a message on the HYA Facebook page, send an e-mail using the comment form, or use the news submission form, and it will be included, no matter how much your brand sucks, we’re going for quantity over quality this year!

I will also be duplicating the list over at ShirtDeck for companies that have released coupon codes for Black Friday, ensuring that it is as easy as possible to find t-shirt deals.

{ 0 comments }

Get cool & colourful camera accessories at Rigu, my new site!

by Andy on November 17, 2011

I’ve been talking about this new project quite openly on Twitter and Facebook over the past month or so, but things never really feel official until I’ve talked about them here on the main blog. Hide Your Arms is my passion, and it’s practically my job too, but when I say practically a job I mean that it doesn’t generate enough income to maintain my expensive lifestyle of eating one takeaway a week and swimming in cold lakes. Fortunately I like more than just t-shirts, so I thought it was time to do something else, and that’s where Rigu comes in.

Have you ever noticed that no matter what your camera looks like, the things that come with it tend to be grey or black or generally boring? I have, I have a white DSLR, clearly it’s a cry for attention, but looking at it made me wonder why there weren’t people out there selling colourful and interesting accessories for cameras. Why do we all accept that there are millions of t-shirts out there to suit your style but we have to stick with what Canon or Nikon put in the box as an afterthought?

So instead of thinking about it I did something about it, and I’ve opened a shop selling cool and colourful camera straps and a few other accessories. The selection isn’t massive at the moment but will be steadily growing over the next few months. In time I hope that Rigu will be able to offer straps and camera bags that have been designed in collaboration with artists. That’s something that’s never been done before (as far a I know), and I am looking into making it happen, it sure is exciting to be a pioneer.

I don’t want to go on about it too much but if you have questions then you know how to get in touch with me (contact form, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, comments on this post). I of course would love to receive any and all comments about this new venture of mine, I want/need it to be big, and to do that I will be needing help and support from others. Take a look around and let me know what you think. Please note that in spite of opening this shop HYA should not be effected too much, I still intend to post just as much as usual, I believe that I can balance the two.

Check out the main shop at Rigu.
Find it on Twitter.
Like it on Facebook.
Rigu is also sharing cool photos and news on Tumblr.

{ 2 comments }

Let’s help the T-shirt Subreddit grow

by Andy on September 12, 2011

Reddit is rapidly becoming my one of my favourite websites, if I’m bored I know exactly where to go to waste an hour, or to make sure I don’t get to sleep early, ever, and just lie in bed staring at articles and comment threads on my iPhone.

Reddit is a huge site, so I presumed that it would have an active subreddit (if you aren’t aware of Reddit, a subreddit is basically a sub-forum to the whole site) dedicated to t-shirts, yet the largest one I found had less that 100 people that had subscribed to it, and it wasn’t very active at all (there were posts on the frontpage that were over 6 months old). I think that’s a bit of a travesty as Reddit could be a great place for t-shirt lovers, sellers, and designers, so I’m trying to make a concerted effort to get the place a bit more active and hopefully boost the number of people that subscribe to it. It’s a fairly self-serving aim since if it becomes popular I will be able to get HYA content seen by more people, but I think that it’s okay to help myself if I’m helping other people too.

Please check out the Tshirt Subreddit and subscribe if you’re a member there, if you’ve never visited Reddit before, my apologies, you won’t be getting much else done today.

{ 3 comments }

Your Big Cartel store isn’t restricted to percentage discounts anymore

by Andy on September 11, 2011

The HYA store is powered by the Big Cartel storefront platform, so I keep an eye on developments coming from the BC team, and this latest update is pretty nice. Previously, if you wanted to give a discount on goods you had a blanket discount of a coupon code that applied to a whole order and every item in the store. That changed last week when they introduced a few new, welcome, features:

The new discounts feature (in your admin under Promote > Discounts) gives you the ability to build a collection of unique, creative deals to reward loyal customers and entice new ones. To that end, we’ve packed this feature with a handful of highly requested goodies.
What’s new with Discounts?

Discounts now come in three flavors: percentage off, flat-rate off, and free shipping
Require customers spend a certain amount, or buy a certain number of products, before the discount can be applied
Have your discount apply to the full order, only to products in a certain category, or even just to one specific product
Give your discount a friendly name that is shown to your customers when they enter the code
Get a random code for your discount with the push of a button (or roll of the dice)
Specify a date when your discount can start being used, perfect for midnight sales or product releases
Discounts can now auto-expire after a certain number of uses, or on a certain date
You no longer need to delete discounts to expire them, and we keep a full history of your expired discounts
Quickly share discounts with your Facebook and Twitter communities

All mighty handy I’m sure you’ll agree. Now if they’d add a ‘Europe’ shipping option I’d be a happy man.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries

Admin

Recent Posts