T-Shirt Advertising With a Twist

Now I don’t normally put the terms “genius” and “marketing” together in the same sentence, but if you’re after something a little different, no matter what your business, t-shirt related or not, here’s something out of the ordinary for you. Essentially Jason Sadler of Iwearyourshirt.com is renting out the upper-half of his body for the next year. You will be disappointed to find out that just about every day for next January (2009) has been sold out, and in a moment you’ll understand exactly why.

The beauty of Jason’s idea is simplicity, unlike the awful multi-level marketing scheme EyeEarn.com (I won’t even link to it :/) which seems to have a master plan of forcing the world to wear it’s grotty logo, yes everyone, the same shirt, (isn’t that more communist than capitalist?), Jason is prepared to do the modelling and marketing for you. Read more

T-Shirt Scammer

If you receive an email written in BOLD CAPITALS from Nigeria without any proper contact details you should most likely throw it in the trash. Take a look at this latest example of the dodgier side of the t-shirt industry. As I’ve mentioned before in this recent post if you’re running an independent t-shirt store and you happen to find your inbox filled with the following kind of urgent requests for stock ignore it, it’s just the latest scam, to be filed in your never to be read again trash, along with all those offers of a percentage of millions of dollars from Nigeria and other regions that need you to place their incredible valuable cheque in your bank account (for a small fee) before their king, president, or oil tycoon is shot by rebel forces. Read more

T-Shirt Printer Spam

I’m always getting spam from Far Eastern t-shirt printers, at least I don’t get spam from fake trading outposts in the middle of Africa anymore (mainly the Sahara as I recall)) who’d suddenly want to order 5000 t-shirts. Something for all you newbie independent t-shirt stores to look out for there.

Anyway what makes me laugh is, apart from the bad English, is the fact that most of these spammers don’t even check out my blog, they just read the word t-shirt and assume I’m in the market for importing a few thousand tees from, where is it this time, oh Hong Kong , oh no the name mentions Hong Kong but they say they are a Chinese supplier.

Anyway my point is spammer or not, I’m not in the market for buying/importing/printing a truck load of tees, so please take my email off your list and move along.

Thanks

Paul

Anyway read this…

The Third Reich of Social Bookmarking - Stumbleupon.com

I’ve just had my Stumbleupon.com account frozen and accused of spam, I was informed I shouldn’t stumble my own blog’s stories a while back, and so I didn’t, although I would still proceed to stumble t-shirt blogs, t-shirt designers, and other sites both artistic and otherwise and yet what the hell happened today?

Here’s the standard bumpf email I received:-

Your StumbleUpon account privileges have been restricted and the account is under review. Read more

ShirtSeek.com - Redressing The Balance

Paul Grzymkowski has poured his heart into the creation of ShirtSeek.com and I must admit that his Email pulled a few heartstrings too, reading the all too familiar story of yet another net visionary stumbling at the first hurdle. I’m hoping I can pull something inspirational out of the proverbial hat to recharge this guy’s batteries, but I have a feeling this review is going to be a long hard slog.

It’s true we have similar services out there, there’s Rumplo.com for instance, a very popular t-shirt voting site, although I’d say it was a lot thinner in the ‘t-shirt community’ department, it’s still a mainstay with many t-shirt designers to get their works out there. Paul’s biggest gripe is the competitor site PleaseDress.me which turned up a few months later with a virtual ticker-tape parade as it arrived on the scene, compared to the rolling tumbleweed reception that ShirtSeek.com has received. Read more

Do You Twitter? Then Twellow!

I’ve mentioned the advantages of Twitter before, but just to make life easier I thought it’s worth mentioning a new directory site called Twellow. If you’re a member of Twitter you’ll already know the advantages of this free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users (also known as twits) to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. There are over 2.2 million members now and to make it easier, Twellow has taken the platform one stage further.

Essentially sign up at Twitter.com (if you haven’t already), then use your login details at Twellow to search for like-minded ‘twits’ be it for networking with fellow businesses in the fashion industry, or simply to meet and discuss ideas with fellow designers. If you’re more a fashionista than a designer then this is still the perfect place to find new and undiscovered designers to make that little extra impact and originality for your wardrobe.

Right now there are only a few of us on Twitter specifically in the t-shirt industry, but I think this format and simple networking model could be the making of many designers out there. It’s fast and friendly, and the ability to pass instant updates could be potentially enormous with the right following. Plus you’ll find that Twellow will speed up the process of others finding you, i.e more prominence for your twitter page on the net (remember to update your categories at Twellow to get full exposure). Read more

Forget Facebook. Linked In is for Fashion Professionals!

I’ve just spent the weekend testing the absolute limits of my Macbook, attempting to develop some of my most complex and extravagant designs yet, and no matter what I do the processor is struggling. So whilst I wait a while for my graphics suite to groan into action I think this would be an opportune moment to introduce you to LinkedIn.com - the Facebook for professionals, and in this case t-shirt professionals.

I am not really one for social networking as it happens, I have joined many, I submit my posts to quite a few social bookmarking sites and even drum up a little support for Threadless votes on a few of them, but when it comes to the t-shirt industry it’s all boiled down to pot luck so far. The thing is many networks paint a rather broad stroke when it comes to niche markets and industries, I’ve even found myself starting t-shirt related groups (with few takers) because most systems inherently avoid specific niches and favour communities such as ‘fashion’ or even ‘celebrity fashion’ over designer t-shirts. Read more