From the category archives:

Business

Mission: Vote For Winky Boo

by Amy_F on May 22, 2012

Winky Boo is part of Chase and LivingSocial’s “Mission: Small Business” for a chance to be rewarded with a $250k grant, but we need your help! In order for us to move forward, we need to get 250 votes (so you see, that’s where you come in but I’ll get to that in a second). First, let me explain to you a little about Chase and LivingSocial’s Mission.

They are rewarding 12 small businesses with a $250k grant towards our business to help us thrive and grow. There is a panel of judges that will be reviewing our information and our business plans and our plan on what the money will go towards. As I was sharing the voting information yesterday I was informed that voters aren’t able to view our business plans and only the judging panel can, so I want to just share with you Winky Boo’s plans for the $250k if we are lucky enough to win!

It’ll be slightly easier for me to speak in first person since I am Winky Boo and I am writing this blog (ha). I, Amy Fiedler, own and operate all aspects of Winky Boo. I am a one-woman company single-handedly running business out of my bedroom slash office above my parent’s garage. Aside from the psychological effects having your office in your bedroom does to you, being able to have this business grant would mean being able to open up an office space for Winky Boo and hire full-time employees. Currently my mother, who works full-time works as my assistant (for free) in-between working her very crucial job as a Nurse Anesthetist in an Operating Room at a hospital. I also (like most of a lot of the independent clothing company owers) work a full-time job as well every evening, so as some of you in similar positions can relate to, it becomes overwhelming and sometimes even can effect certain aspects of business when you’re a one-man/woman army doing everything.

Office space and employees are not the only reason at all why we’d be able to thrive and grow with this grant. We have much anticipated interest from retailers worldwide who just want “more” from us and currently we are unable to produce “more”. We can’t fulfill wholesale desires without funds to produce what would typically equal 1 years worth of printing for us in a month span. We also can’t successfully show to our interested larger chain wholesalers without the financial capabilities to do this and thus another reason why this grant would mean everything to Winky Boo.

So, what can you do to help? It’s simple.

Step 1: Head on over to Chase and LivingSocial’s Mission Small Business website. https://www.missionsmallbusiness.com/

Step 2: Click the login through Facebook on the main page in the bottom right side. (see below)

This will sign you in through your Facebook (you can only vote if you have a Facebook, and if you have more than 1 Facebook – EVEN BETTER)

Step 3: In the search boxes you want to search “Winky Boo” and for the State, plug in “New Jersey” (you do not need to put a town/city)

Step 4: Winky Boo will appear on the page and next to it you’ll see a blue button “VOTE” – click it!

Step 5: Now go to Winky Boo’s Facebook Page and comment with your name so we can place whoever votes for us in the running to win 1 or more free items from winkyboo.com. There will be more than 1 winner!

This literally takes less than 1 minute to do and will be so appreciated because every vote helps! We have 39 days left to get to 250 votes and we only have 20 votes – so please take a second to help my dream come true!!

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TshirtContest.com up for sale, anyone want a ready made design competition?

by Andy on May 22, 2012

When I write up the daily t-shirt releases in the morning I check over all the sites and see who has something new for us that day. Unfortunately today I found that Tshirt Contest have put themselves up for sale for an undisclosed price and are asking interested parties to contact them. I had wondered if something was up when there hadn’t been a release for a few weeks considering that they had typicaly been pretty reliable with their schedule, but I try not to tempt fate or get the rumour mill going by suggesting things on the site since it isn’t particularly helpful for anyone involved. I’d be interested to know what happened to bring them to this point, especially with the design competition world being as tough as it is, was this change caused by the marketplace or perhaps non-tee related issues?

I don’t have anymore details than you can gleam from the site, but they’ve got a decent back catalogue of designs (that I would presume to be part of the sale, though it’s not explicitly mentioned) and an attractive site so I’d have thought that there would be someone out there who feels that they can take the project on and make a success of it.

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Lion Roar Tee from Over Dose [Submitted - These guys may hate me after reading this]

by Edwin on May 15, 2012

I wanted to present this t-shirt that I have designed.

Over Dose (0ver Do2e). This brand is all about hidden massages with in the designs.
Like this design of a lion with its open mouth. It stands for these young teens feeling like the king.
The “0ver Do2e” in the lions mouth stands what these teens that over dose feeling like “the king of the jungle”.

Right now our tee’s are at a very low cost and a very cheap shipping price.
All our tee’s are up for pre-order.

Thanks for your time.

Andy: I don’t mean to offend you, but I feel you have a lot of work to do here. If you like the style of the graphic, that’s fine, but for me it looks like you’ve just put some generic text over the mouth of a lion, and that the text not only doesn’t add anything to the image but actually distracts me from the artwork.

It would also really help you if you had a better product mockup as this type will do little to entice buyers to make a pre-order when they don’t know what it’s really going to look like.

I don’t really understand where you’re going with the ’0ver Do2e’ branding when you have ‘Over Dose’ on your website, it would probably be in your best interest to stick with one kind of branding so early on in the game since people don’t know who you are yet.

Why is the info you posted here not on your website too? It needs to be on the product page to explain the design. Speaking of the product page, listing the number of shirts you have in stock isn’t a great idea unless you just have one or two left, it doesn’t help generate demand. Also, product pages don’t need comment forms like you have, maybe re-style them to act as feedback/review forms as in the current state it just makes me think that you need to do more work editing your WordPress template.

Last thing, HYA readers are a savvy bunch, they’re all well aware that a shirt with a one-colour print on it (and not a jumbo print either) is not ‘very cheap’ when being sold at $15.99. We all know that you need to make profit on a shirt, but to claim that your shirt is ‘very cheap’ suggests you’re either paying too much for your product, haven’t done enough market research, or think that I and the readers have no idea about t-shirts and how they should be priced.

Like I say, I don’t mean to offend, but I can’t let a shirt like this pass without taking the opportunity to try and help you and also provide advice to others getting into the t-shirt industry.

This post was submitted by Edwin.

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Olli Apparel, vote for your favourite tee. [Submitted]

by OLLI Apparel on May 4, 2012

ONE LIFE – LIVE IT Apparel is a clothing brand in mid-establishment, we are going to make our first drop of clothing on the 1st October 2012, why so long away? because we want to make it perfect. OLLI Apparel wants the fans to make all the decisions, we will not do anything before asking them whether they like it! At the moment we are putting up proposed designs on our website and fans can vote for their favorite, the winners get printed first, simple! So check out the website and facebook page and let us know what you think.

Andy: Good thing these guys have given themselves until October to release anything because in my eyes there is still quite a lot that needs to be improved, not least that “One life. Live it” is a phrase that the Land Rover community has latched onto in the UK and can be found on stickers adorning Freelanders and Discovery’s. However, I do think that ‘O’ logo that they’ve got going on is pretty nifty, though I do give me usual advice that no brand should start out only selling logo t-shirts as they don’t have a built-in fan base to market their designs to, it’s much safer to create designs that will appeal to a wider audience when you’re first starting out. Also, no matter what stage of the brand you’re at, get a domain and your own hosted website, they’re both very cheap these days and give a much more professional look to any venture (and a cheap WordPress template from Themeforest can give you a pro-looking site with about a day of work on your part).

This post was submitted by OLLI Apparel.

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BigCartel completely revamp the customization area

by Andy on April 20, 2012

BigCartel must have been cooking this up for a while, because it is a big change, and for me a very welcome one. They have revamped the store customization area of the admin section to allow you to make on-the-fly changes to your store, with a handy preview screen that is updated in real-time (though changes won’t be visible to the world until you press save). I think it’s pretty neat, even though I generally leave the HYA store alone these days since Rigu is my ecommmerce venture now and that’s running standalone on OpenCart.

Here’s a rundown from BC explaining 10 aspects of the new customization area.

BigCartel store owners, care to weigh in with your thoughts on the changes?

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[SIC] Apparel need your help of Kickstarter

by Andy on April 1, 2012

I usually try not to post too many Kickstarter projects on HYA because there’s an awful lot of them on there and it’s hard to tell which of them offer good value to the consumer, and part of me often wonder why with a t-shirt company the Kickstarter route is needed anyway, since it’s very hard to be innovative in the t-shirt world, and I worry that brands starting with such a lot of starting capital and (for a tee company) and pressure (they’ll have a lot of orders to deal with initially) will be running before they can walk. That said, I think that [SIC] Apparel have some really cool tees and they seem like a good bunch so I want them to do well. Here’s what they have to say about themselves:

Simply put, [SIC] APPAREL is garage operation made up of individuals who enjoy creating art together. Fairly standard for a start up apparel company, but they seem to have an angle. The collective is made up of a group of talented and dedicated artists. These artists treat the shirts you buy like a canvas: each shirt you buy is a piece of art. The selling of these shirts benefits the artists by spreading their work far and wide across the world. The artists at [SIC] also work to support causes by dedicating the funds of many their shirt designs to particular non profit organizations. The [SIC] facility is an energetic and creative space for artists that works to develop unique and superior apparel.

To be frank, their angle isn’t that unique, but that isn’t really too important as far as I’m concerned, the t-shirts are the most important aspect and from the photos we have up top they look good. I do question whether they need to get $18,000 in startup funding though. I understand that the majority of this will be going on tooling and equipment, but if I were doing this I would outsource the printing initially to cut costs and then when they have gained popularity switch things over to their own equipment. They have an eco-conscious ethos, so I can see why they want to do everything themselves and ensure that everything is above board, but I do worry that setting themselves a target of $18,000 needing to be raised within a month is going to put off quite a lot of people from making a pledge.

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How To Professionally Prep Your Files for Screen Printing

by Andy on March 30, 2012

Matt from Seventh.Ink has written a great guest post over for the Real Thread Printing Co. explaining how people can best prep their artwork before sending it off to the printers, making the whole process easier for everyone involved.

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How NOT to get your band sponsored with free t-shirts

by Andy on March 29, 2012

If you’re in a band and you’re playing to crowds, then your chest can be seen as an advertising space, especially with the way teenagers view people in bands as borderline-deities that they want to emulate. Thus, bands want to get sponsored, they want to wear free t-shirts, and they want to give brands ‘exposure’. I received this e-mail recently (names and places altered to save them embarrassment):

My name is Cornelius, I’m the frontman for the band The Arm Hiders based out of Unknownville. We are in search of a company to work with to sponsor us on our upcoming tour this Summer. We came across your company on line and have check out your site and feel like we would love to rep your company on tour this summer. If you all endorse bands, we would love to help you all out and get your name out there on the road. Feel free to email us back if you would like to work out something with us. Thanks for your time, and we look forward to hearing back from you. Cheers.

That was it, that was the whole thing. Let’s leave aside for a second the fact that I don’t even really have a line (the HYA store doesn’t really count, does it?), because I wanted to look at what was wrong with that e-mail and how it would be a poor way to approach a clothing brand (or any other company) if you were looking to get yourself, your brand, or possibly your sports team sponsored.

1. The sender doesn’t say hello, or address me by name, a clear sign that it’s a copy pasted e-mail and that they are contacting several people with the same message. Take a second to find out someone’s name and you’ll be a lot more likely to receive a response.

2. There’s no link to the band’s website or music. I’ve never heard of The Arms Hiders (what a silly name!), but maybe if I heard their music I’d really like it and think it was worth sending them some t-shirts. The lack of a website also suggests that this band may be quite small and not yet have any web presence. Bands need to make it as easy as possible for a t-shirt company to hear the music, if that takes more than one click then it’s going to really reduce the response rate.

3. Your band is going on a tour this Summer, so what? Tell me when and where you will be (maybe I can meet you at one of your shows), how big the venues will be, if you are the headline act, what merchandise you sell, if you will be performing at any festivals, how Twitter followers and Facebook likes you have, if your tour will be advertised and if so, do the sponsors get exposure from that. Clearly, the e-mail sender recognises that there is value in terms of exposure for the t-shirt brand, but there’s not enough info to back that up. What the sender needs to do is give a t-shirt brand reason to stop and think if there is enough value for their brand to give the band free t-shirts to wear on the tour.

4. “If you all endorse bands” ignoring the strange wording, this is again another sign that the sender has sent a copy/paste e-mail, and also proves that they haven’t taken the time to look at your site properly. T-shirt brands that do sponsor bands will often like to showcase the bands in some way on their website. Sponsoring a band can be a mark of pride for a t-shirt company, it’s a good way for them to associate themselves with a style of music and also a lifestyle, which quickly gives potential customers and fans something to identify with. So bands should take a good look at each brand and make sure your music fits with their style, and if they do sponsor bands then you already know that it’s something they might be interested in with your band.

5. Copy/paste e-mails are the devil. It is easier to send a copy/paste e-mail, but it’s also easier for someone to delete one, they’re impersonal and almost always sound like adverts. If you want to get a reply from someone you talk to them like a person, create a connection and give them some respect, especially if you’re hoping for them to give you hundreds of dollars of clothing in return. It’s okay to have a general template of an e-mail, some bits of blurb will always be the same, but edit and personalise each e-mail to maximise the chance of getting a response from each brand. Oh, and t-shirt brands talk, so if you e-mail lots of similar brands, they’ll probably know about it.

6. Make sure your spelling and grammar are perfect, or at least the best you can do. There are a few errors in the e-mail I have shown above, and there are parts which aren’t just typos too, which suggests that it was rushed and not re-read to check for errors. If this e-mail is a bands first point of contact with a t-shirt company, what kind of impression does that give? Not a good one in my opinion. If English isn’t your strong point then get someone to write your general template for you and then you can add in the personal stuff that you’re comfortable with on a case-by-case basis, no one is expecting you to be Shakespeare, but brands want to know they’re dealing with professionals. If you are trying to contact someone in a non-native language, make that clear too.

7. If the t-shirt company responds, so do you, quick. Replying to e-mails quickly shows that a band is serious about the sponsorship opportunity, this isn’t a flirty text message with that girl from last night, you don’t need to wait 3 hours to respond. Think about what the t-shirt company wants, a band that will wear you stuff on stage when photos are being taken and tell people about the t-shirt brand, replying quickly to a response is the first step in proving that you’re conscientious and trustworthy. I sent a response to the person that sent me the e-mail above, two days later I haven’t heard from them and I doubt I ever will, potentially I could have been a fan of their brand and suggested them to t-shirt brands for sponsorship, as it stand they’ve lost both those opportunities by not replying to an e-mail.

If you have any suggestions or feedback please leave me a message in the comments, or on Twitter @hideyourarms. In a few weeks I will take a look at whether there really is value for brands sponsoring bands and if the exposure bands provide can help with getting a t-shirt company more fans and customers.

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Looks like GraphicLab had a great time at WonderCon

by Andy on March 28, 2012

/12.jpg”> 12 480x642 Looks like GraphicLab had a great time at WonderCon

GraphicLab sent over some pics from their recent trip to WonderCon. With a lot of the daily (and in their case weekly) sites leaning heavily on the nerdier side of the t-shirt spectrum it’s hardly surprising that they wanted to have a presence there, and it sounds like they had a blast meeting people that were interested in their artwork. It would be interesting to see how much of an effect that this had on their sales over the next few months, if this kind of up-close contact with people seeing the shirts printed up would have a big effect on their traffic and overall health of the business.

T-shirt brand owners, do you see a lot of benefits in attending conventions like WonderCon, or is it something that you do more for the experience?

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Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing

by Sleepy Dan on March 19, 2012

An inspiring night requires an inspiring shirt design… The theme of this year’s Vinyl Thoughts event was Next Level. A retro video game tribute, so I had to create a shirt using one of my favorite games growing up, the classic Donkey Kong! With the help of Alexa Machine this shirt printing went perfect.
6849174102 2b546172fd Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
To line up a four color print on the press, you gotta tape one of the films to the pallet in the same spot you want all the prints. So you can line up all the screens in the press to that film, this is the basic registration of the print.
6849173898 7cdc509f5d Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
You will be able to see the film thru the negative space of the emulsified screen, and just gotta line them up perfectly and tighten the screws on the press…
6995296643 62c0964bf8 Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
Once all four screens are taped off on the back and loaded with the correct ink color, the printing begins!
6995296841 a8ed78ccfd Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
This four station, six color manual press is perfect for two people to print at once. Just gotta print the colors in the correct order and communicate so no mistakes are made. Check out the final color printing
6849175168 298990e10f Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
Then you get perfect prints like this! I wanted to design something with huge letters, so the levels of the Donkey Kong board were a perfect large surface area.
6995296393 4c2ba97078 Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
Hot off the press, I picked up the shirts and rushed over to the event where all the shirts sold out that night! I am reprinting some more shirts now, so they will be available on my Sleepy Dan web shop this week.
6995297025 3dce294794 Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
The two color back design showed off all the sponsors for this year’s event. The show was packed all night and has become such a hit for the up and coming Dallas vinyl arts culture.
6995297279 15e5bf7bea Sleepy Dan : Vinyl Thoughts Event Shirt Printing
I’m so proud to be part of this event and becoming a contributing vinyl designer. If you check out pics of the event and custom vinyls, I created a tribute to Mike Tyson’s Punch Out by creating two vinyl characters Bald Bull and King Hippo!

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Tee Madness is back, submit your brand now!

by Andy on March 15, 2012

Tee Madness will be entering it’s 3rd year and is now accepting signups for the competition. From the looks of things the annual popularity contest has grown once again, with an impressive prize pot and what is sure to be a lot of exposure for all the brand involved. Here’s the prizes:

Prize List for this Year

-1st place Grand Prize: $250 credit to Threadbird, $100 credit to Stickermule, $50 credit to Cheapest Buttons, a custom Storenvy theme (by Storenvy), and $50 cash from LaunchHype!

-2nd Place: $200 credit to Stickermule and a $50 credit to Cheapest Buttons!

-3rd & 4th Place: $100 credit to Stickermule and a $25 credit to Cheapest Buttons!

-5th, 6th, 7th, & 8th Place: $25 cash from LaunchHype!

For the first time Adam (from IAMTHRETREND, and organiser of Tee Madness) has chosen to charge a submission fee of $20 for each brand in the contest. I can see why he has felt this is necessary since he does essentially spend a month promoting brands and getting them exposure when the contest probably doesn’t pass on a massive amount to IATT, and whilst he loves t-shirts he probably also loves not being hungry and enjoyed the modern conveniences of electricity and running water. Also, $150 of that cash will be going straight back to the winners anyway, so he definitely isn’t gouging entrants. It’ll be interesting to see who signs up and I will be following along with the event.

Matchups will be announced live on Friday, with the competition beginning on Monday March 19th, expect to see lots of tweets and Facebook updates about this as brands clamour for your votes.

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Sleepy Dan : Customized Hood Sweatie

by Sleepy Dan on January 29, 2012

Sleepy Dan hood sweaties released in December, I had to release one cut n sew project for the first year so you can be sure there will be some more customized designs for the upcoming years! I can not emphasize enough, process is the most important part of any project. The rugby style hoodie is a design just recently hitting trend so I had to make some comfortable enough to bear the Sleepy Dan brand! In my day job as an apparel designer, I have learned how to work with embroidery shops to create apparel patterns, but sometimes several of the finishing steps have to be done on your own to save on cost. That’s how I was able to make these hoodies so affordable.

Coming from the manufacturer, I had to make some custom modifications past adding the logo embroidery appliques and the new custom neck labels for outerwear… This hoodie has several exposed cover stitch seams, so you can easily see it’s custom made, but the excess seam fabric had to be trimmed up a little more to be finished.

After finishing, the logo embroidery appliques are hand stitched to the garment, then the size labels are machine stitched into the neck seam. What makes this hoodie so special is the herringbone cotton twill neck seam, rugby placket, and hood seam edge. The time invested to this project is longer than a t-shirt design, but the fan and blogger reviews of the hood sweatie are amazing for the first cut n sew design. Research and development are a key role in the process of a successful project, so don’t overlook your process at any stage! Hope you got one before they sold out…

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T-shirt news for January 26th

by Andy on January 26, 2012

Very nice argyle Star Wars t-shirt today at TeeFury.

Seems to me like this is the kind of design that Shirt.Woot should have been selling in the run up to Christmas.

RIPT drop a Milton Glaser-inspired Doctor Who t-shirt.

Harry Potter Muggle Ale shirt at Qwertee.

Those troublesome Tribbles are at Shirt Punch today.

Skyrim is the inspiration for this Nowhere Bad shirt.

I have no idea what the inspiration is for this design at The Yetee.

Star Wars meets Firefly today at OtherTees (who have a snazzy new site).

TeeRaiders have a Doctor Who design as well.

24tee go for the niche with one of the stars of the (surprisingly enthralling) King of Kong coin-op games documentary.

DBH love owls. On that subject, I saw a man walking down the street with an owl yesterday. Owls are great.

Hey look, Tilteed are selling one of their lesser seen designs again.

I have no idea what the kanji (presuming it’s Japanese) on this shirt says, so buyer beware at TeeMinus24.

Tee Gazette have put together their 10 favourite tees from the Storenvy marketplace for January.

Sock Monkee have released their Ampertastic Mr. Fox design as a print.

Adam over at IAMTHETREND busts six commonly held myths about his employer Storenvy.

Wrongwroks have released a parka with a faux fur trim.

Threadless have made some tees available to be put on Xbox avatars, and they cost about $1 each, but here’s the real kicker, if you want a hoodie you have to pay $2. They’re pixels, just because it costs double in real life doesn’t mean that they should cost double on the Xbox marketplace!

Glennz has made some more designs available as hoodies.

Mashable have a guide to building a strong online community around your brand.

Everything is on sale at Myth Clothing.

This Rihanna ‘thug life’ tattoo picture has been doing the rounds, but it’s her John Lennon t-shirt that interests me the most.

Here’s Katy Perry wearing a pretty cool hoodie (and I suspect a cool skull-based all over print t-shirt too).

Buy one get one free (on tees, not hoodies) at Eleven Eleven.

Typography Shop have put all their hoodies on sale.

Sehubabe have released a hoodie and t-shirt for Transardentes 2012 (a Belgian electro rock festival).

TanDan have been added as a brand store at A Better Tomorrow.

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Details sell tees (get free hem tag samples for your brand) [Submitted]

by Michael on January 25, 2012

I just wanted to drop you guys a line to let you know about our new range of stitch tags, that we are producing for smaller independent clothing labels.

We are currently sending out sample packs to labels owners and managers around the world to demonstrate how adding stitch tags to your tees can be affordable and bespoke to a single release and really lift that drop.

If you run a clothing label and would like a sample pack just contact Michael: printtees@hotmail.co.uk
with STITCH TAG SAMPLES as the subject.

Andy: Personally, I’m a fan of a hem tag, it certainly makes a brand seem more professional somehow, and if it keeps the branding off the body of the design then I’m all for it. P-Labs charge £49.99 for 50 hem tags, I have no idea if that is cheap or expensive, but if you’re in the market for hem tags it’s probably worth getting a sample pack from them to check on the quality.

This post was submitted by Michael.

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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…]

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T-shirt News for January 19th

by Andy on January 19, 2012

I realised that this TeeFury shirt was about Breaking Bad, but having only seen a couple of episodes the Los Pollos Hermanos aspect of this shirt is lost on me.

I think that this might be my favourite design that Shirt.Woot have released.

Goonies-inspired t-shirt from RIPT today.

“The Marvelous commute to Wonderland” is up at Qwertee.

It’s Back To The Future vs Bill and Ted at Shirt Punch today.

Here’s another 24tee shirt that goes over my head.

I know that Community isn’t for everyone, but the paintball episode was truly fantastic, so I’m glad to get the reminder from TeeRadiers.

Two new shirts from DBH today (including one that is fighting SOPA that will only be available for a couple more days).

BustedTees have some wrestling pandas for $13.99 instead of $20 this week.

Hey look, Tilteed are selling ‘The Eternal Struggle’ again.

This error greeted me when I visited TeeBlitz this morning.

Adam has some advice over at TeeJunction on creating a t-shirt brand.

Save up to 20% on your order at Wrongwroks, providing you spend quite a lot.

Raygun Robyn is aiming for global domination, and to do that she’s going to offer free shipping to the first person from countries that haven’t yet made an order in her store.

Johnny Cupcakes shares a little story of how he put a plastic skull into a random customer’s order for a hat to try and add some mystery and magic to the online shopping process. It might give other store owners ideas about how they can make their shopping experience more interesting.

Obscure Printing are going to start offering a complete fulfillment service for brands (printing, packing, shipping, and stock holding). They’re also collaborating with a company called Judda distribution which will make brands available to 3000+ stores across Europe, which could be a great opportunity for a lot of brands. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

Mila Kunis wore a vintage-styled Pepsi t-shirt, super-duper!

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Daily T-shirt Roundup for January 9th

by Andy on January 9, 2012

I’m not too excited by the Sloth & Crossbones Goonies shirt at TeeFury today, you?

Very cute illustration style on this Shirt.Woot tee, maybe this shirt will perk you up to stick with your New Year’s resolutions?

Not the kind of Star Wars t-shirt that I’d wear, but a pretty cool concept from RIPT nonetheless.

Can anyone explain to me why The Yetee are describing this felines as pizzacats?

Very cool Fantastic Mr. Fox inspired t-shirt at Shirt Punch today.

GraphicLab have a shirt that is a little lost on me, it’s a mashup of The Impossible Man from the Marvel universe and Magnitude from Community.

Star Trek inspired visual pun from TeeMinus24 today.

I’m fairly sure that this TeeRaiders design is the first Warehouse 13 shirt that I’ve seen.

Stupidhurts.us give this well worn phrase another run out.

OtherTees have a Doctor Who shirt that I’m sure I’ve seen before.

Qwertee make a connection between Portal and zombies.

We don’t have Fresca over here in the UK, so this 24tee shirt is wasted on me.

Cool new shirt at DBH today.

There’s a couple of new shirts up on pre-order at Goodjoe.

Loviu reiterate their ‘barbie is a slut’ stance.

Tilteed have their boomerang-based design up again.

Catch of the Day Tee have nothing for us, again.

Tee Gazette has an update on the Boston Tee Party event being held in the summer.

I saw this t-shirt on Flickr months ago and it’s taken me until now to remember to post it.

Co-Tee TV Episode 88: Moustardche, Javaboi Industries, and Hot Dogs from Coty Gonzales on Vimeo.

Coty has a new episode of Co-Tee TV up, featuring Moustardache, Javaboi Industries, and Hot Dogs.

The selection process may have been unscientific, but it’s nice to see HYA at the top (the position may or may not mean anything) of this list of the “21 Most Important t-shirt blogs of 2011.“

Tee Hunter take a look at the A Bathing Ape x Star Wars collection.

Fuel Your Creativity have an article about starting a clothing line with no money. It does make it all seems a little easy in my eyes, but there are worse stepping off points.

Here’s another t-shirt from PalmerCash I bookmarked ages ago but never got around to posting about.

2sickbastards have got up to 50% off their art prints until January 13th.

Snapback hats are now in store at Glamour Kills.

Did you know that howies was part of Timberland? I say was because as of the start of this year they bought themselves out and are now an independent business again.

Terratag‘s up to 50% off sale has hit it’s final week, ends on Friday.

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Daily News & Tees for January 6th

by Andy on January 6, 2012

Very cool Space Invaders shirt from TeeFury today.

‘The birthplace of inspiration’ is up at Shirt.Woot today.

8-bit Back To The Future? Yes please, RIPT.

Fairly obscure Terminator design at Shirt Punch today.

Nowhere Bad reminds of another badass facet of Lincoln’s character.

TeeMinus24 bring out a pop art inspired Admiral Ackbar shirt.

24tee have a shirt for hipsters.

Shirt with a wolf on it at DBH.

I’m sure that TeeBlitz have sold this design before, and it’s a little odd that the time remaining for the design is “-359 days”, but hopefully that doesn’t mean there’s trouble at TeeBlitz.

Loviu wheel out this older design.

Oldie-but-goodie at Tilteed today.

Get 30% off at Seventh.Ink this weekend with the coupon code NEWYEAR2012. [via TeeGazette]

Labyrinth Clothing have a page on The Fancy, and if you ‘fancy’ (the equivalent of ‘like’ on Facebook) any item in their store you’ll unlock a 20% off coupon code.

OMUNKY have added prints to their lineup of goods.

Jeff has shared a few teasers of the his design process on Ugmonk‘s next design.

The UTee just launched a new design. Feel free to go and check it out, but don’t forget which is your favourite tee blog!

Mashbale has a post on how to maximize sales with your ecommerce design.

Here’s Miley Cyrus wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, I’m sure that will annoy no one.

Tonka Park are selling two of their popular Big Cartel themes at $25 off, making them $50 each for a limited time. Use coupon code THELBL2012 to get $25 off The Label, and DECMBR2012 for $25 off the December theme.

May I suggest that you advertise on HYA? Options available to suit all budgets.

And that’s the news for today!

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Sleepy Dan: Creation of the Pillow Monster

by Sleepy Dan on December 16, 2011

After the inauguration of the Pillow Monster character at Artopia for the t shirt battle with Fur Face Boy, the design has been getting great reviews. Dallas Observer sponsors this annual event as their birthday party and I was proud to have their help bringing the Pillow Monster Lightning Strike design to life in the true nature of Frankenstein! So continuing with the success of this behind the design column, I decided to share the whole design process for this new character. The Pillow Monster will be involved in another design this coming year, so I am going to show how the idea began from concept, then sketching, then inking the layout, then vector the art for production of the printing.

The first step of the process is creating the concept. The Sleepy Dan branding has been so much fun to design for because there is a wide range of possible ideas that fall in line with the sleep theme. The Alarm Clock character was the beginning of the character side of the branding, reminding fans of our youthful side that used to be afraid of the dark and the possibility of things coming to life when you are unable to see them… Remember the clown doll from Poltergeist under the bed? Thanks, now I can’t even look at clowns any more!
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Illustrating a complete character design for the brand, is a more complex project than people realize. But it’s the passion for the brand that keeps me going! Pencil sketching the concept takes several attempts to get the look right. Keeping in mind that the design needs to have more of a vertical layout to take advantage of the printable surface area of the shirt.
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Making friends in the arts community is easy when you are giving back at the same time. Having friends with ill skills like Rico Ultraelectromagnetico to help with the character style was the first step to the Pillow Monster. I want to make sure that all my characters have the same appearance so they are easily understood to be a Sleepy Dan character, even if the design has no displayed type.
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After making several sketches, better parts of the character will be remade in the next sketch. There is a constant improvement for the problem areas, till the whole design has the perfect layout. This is the fun part of the process but usually takes the longest, so you can’t get frustrated with levels of failure. Just gotta work thru them till you find successful revisions. Ask friends for constructive criticism, you have to learn to take the good advice with the bad, create a thick skin for necessary revisions cause this is the best time to make them…
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I am sharing less than half of the sketching process for this project, so you can understand there are so many versions of progression for this design you can almost look at them like a flip book! Eventually you get to a sketched layout that best suits your concept vision from the start. All parts suddenly fit perfectly into place, then you can move onto revising the smaller details thru the inking process and using Adobe Photoshop.
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Inking over the sketch allows you to see a clearer design layout, while creating deeper levels of detail. Usually after the first inking designs, you are confident to almost be there. But treat this stage just like the sketching stage, revision is still easily done now that details are clear, so get some more constructive criticism from your friends that you know will not leak the secret just yet…
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Making final inking revisions gives you goosebumps! You wind up staring at the design for a couple days, 30 minutes at a time to make sure there is nothing else that needs to be changed. Then you can decide how many colors you want this design to be printed with, then create color layers of detail for the character scene. Inking new layers can be done in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, I prefer to use Illustrator because it makes the color separation so much easier to manipulate and revise.
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Usually I start this stage, not by looking at the color I want, rather looking at the color details I want to involve, so use crazy contrasting colors… The Pantone colors used can be revised after the levels of detail are finished. The best way to decide colors of the print is to decide shirt color first. Figure out the background color of the design, then the character colors can easily be picked knowing what shirt trends are most successful. Research shirt brands over the web, see what colors are selling best for the season. You’d be surprised what a little research can tell you!
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Printing shirts for your brand in this economy means planning out the profitability of the design. The more color you print, the more the shirt will cost, and shirts just don’t sell well the closer to $30 each you get. I advise to keep even the most complex designs to a maximum of four printed colors. There is no reason for you to use more color than that, also fans will have a harder time matching up their gear to the shirt, secretly all guys love to do this…
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Any printer you use, will appreciate you color separating the art before you give to them. This means separating each color, so the printer knows what colors to put on each film layer they print, which will be used to make screens for your printing. Remove the questions from the process for the printer and your project will turn out the same way you give it to them. I prefer to have a design with the darkest color as the top detail. It’s easiest for the printing process to have the color layers beneath the darkest layer, that way the bottom layer edged are covered with the darker layer, insuring there will be no offset printing problems.
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Give the printer the exact Pantone colors you want used in your design, they will be mixing ink to match the Pantone colors you give them. If you don’t give them exact colors, then you are opening the possibility they will not mix the right color you want to use. For the Pillow Monster design, I had to see the shirt color to pick printing colors since there is one tonal color specified in the shirt. The print might have looked weird if the navy color was too much of a red tone rather than a blue tone…

After the Artopia event, the extra shirts were added to the Sleepy Dan web shop. Check out the Artopia event blog posting and friends links on the posting to see lots of pics of the event! Maybe we will see you at Artopia 2012?

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Life Offline for Online Brands (Part Two)

by LadyUmbrella on December 15, 2011

LadyUmbrella at the Pop Up Style Swap Shop

Andy: Here’s part two of Rob from LadyUmbrella’s column about ways that t-shirt brands that are more used to online business can extend themselves in the real world.

Something to try look out for in the offline world of t-shirts is pop up shops.. I don’t know how it is in your town but right now Ireland is thriving with pop up shops..The idea of a pop up shop is simple – a group of brands or retailers team up together, pool resources and acquire a premises for a very short term let.. All the brands involved then work together to promote the life out of the pop up shop and they can be quite beneficial.. We’ve done a few pop ups in the past and I’m currently working on another one, The Blind Tiger Collective, which hopefully might become a more long term thing..And, therein lies the other advantage of doing pop ups..You get to meet lots of other brands in your area and I’ll tell you what, when you put a bunch of motivated dreamers together ideas can flow..

Another avenue for an offline t-shirt life is doing fairs..Now, these can be hit and miss, some of them might be good for your brand and some just might not work..We’ve done a few of them in the past and have sold in random places like Microsoft and a hospital here in Dublin, as well as in pubs and festivals – not all of them were homeruns but they were all enjoyable..And they do spur your on to “double down” your efforts, both online and offline..

The other thing I really like about the t-shirt life offline is that it gives you great online fodder like this video or the picture below to the right.

Elena in Microsoft Life Offline for Online Brands (Part Two)

Elena Selling in Microsoft

Every event you attend will give you a photo opp to showcase your t-shirts – like the picture from Project 51 above..It’ll give you something to let your facebook/twitter friends and followers know about which will ultimately feed into you online activities.. Also, attending offline events should go some way to help build up the “trust factor” for potential online customers..I don’t know about you but I’m still apprehensive about buying online and so it’s logical to assume that some potential customers might also be..Now, if these potential customers see that you’ve been doing X, Y and Z and realise that you’re not some dodgy site your chances of getting a sale have just shot up dramatically.. Or, that’s my take on it anyway..

And so, to conclude, if things aren’t going as swimmingly as you want online don’t box yourself into maniacal tweeting (believe me, I’ve done it) but take a step back and see if there is anything that can be done offline.. There are lots of options out there like pop up shops, fairs and wholesale deals and by just partaking in them, even if they aren’t homeruns, you’ll get a renewed umph and motivation to push on and keep going.. And, ultimately, I think that pushing on is what is vital – nothing happens overnight ..Maybe a little flirt with life offline might give you the pep in the step you need to keep going until you get to where you want to go..

Anyway, thank you for reading and I want to hear your thoughts..Are you at times fed up with online life too? Have you been a part of any offline events? If so, any do’s or don’ts to share? (Um, that could be another blog post maybe if anyone is interested?) Speak freely…Ole!

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