Speech Bubble Shirts for UpdateMeTee

20 Jun

When I originally came up with the UpdateMeTee writable/erasable shirt idea, I always thought I would eventually branch out to other designs aside from the social networking style.  Well, now I’m finally doing it!  The next set of shirts under the UpdateMeTee brand will be a line of political “speech bubble” shirts featuring iconic photos of President Barack Obama, as well as everyone’s favorite former Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin!  With a completely writable/erasable speech bubble hanging over Obama and Palin’s heads, you’ll be able to make them say whatever you want!  No matter what your political leanings are, you’ll be able to put words in the mouth of these political titans.

I just need to finalize the images and decide on how I want the speech bubble to look.  Once that’s set, it’s just a matter of printing the shirts, which shouldn’t take too long.  I kept the colors to a bare minimum to save on cost, but future shirts may feature more colorful designs.  For now, I’ll probably just offer the shirts in black so the speech bubble stands out, but perhaps I can do blue as well.  Stay tuned!

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Mini Steins Going to Ebay and Etsy

3 May

I did a small production run of mini beer steins nearly a year ago, and have kinda just been sitting on them since.  I’m not really big on the whole idea anymore, so I haven’t been motivated to try and  move them.  I don’t know if it would be worth it to set up a website, get all the shopping cart stuff integrated, email accounts, etc… However, I decided to at least take a few pics today and get them up for sale on Ebay and Etsy.  It’s so easy to simply put up a product on those sites, I may as well see if anyone finds the listings and wants to buy a mini stein.  At the very worst, I’m out a few bucks in listing fees.

The fun thing I got to do today was take some product shots with my new light box/tent (pictured above)!  I got this setup online somewhere for $40…pretty good deal for the light box, bag, two lights, and a mini tripod.  Overall, I think the pics came out pretty well.  I probably could have gotten them better if I took a little more time to set up the lighting…maybe next time.

Anyway, the mini steins are now officially on sale!  I’m offering them for $10/ea…less than I originally planned on selling them for, but I just kinda wanna be rid of them right now.  If they somehow catch on and sell well, maybe I’ll become more motivated to build out the business a little more.  Who knows…maybe I can actually make this whole thing work once Oktoberfest rolls around.

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Beard Head Keeping Me Busy

20 Apr

I haven’t made any updates recently, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working.  It’s just that nothing is launched quite yet, so I’ve held off on posting anything until some of the projects I’ve been working on are complete and public.  Buutt…I’m getting a little antsy, so I thought it would be nice to post a quick update on some of the things in process.

1.  The Beard Head stickers I made a few posts about earlier are done!  They aren’t available for sale or anything yet, but I did a little announcement and giveaway last week on our Facebook page and got a ton of responses.  A 4-pack of stickers (one of each color) + one Beard Head logo sticker is going to be available for sale on our Website soon.  Like I mentioned in earlier posts, I’m not really looking to make a profit with these…just using them for branding and promotional purposes.


2.  The Beard Shirts I’ve also been posting a lot about are nearly complete.  I had the first sample run printed, but after seeing the final product and trying the shirts on, I decided to alter the designs a little bit.  I ended up making the mouth/teeth area larger, and I had to play around with the placement of the design on the shirt.  The new shirts should be ready early next week, so hopefully I can have the final product for sale in 10 days or so.  Once they’re ready to go, I’ll probably go live with…


3.  …all the changes I’ve been making to www.beardhead.com.  Nothing drastic in terms of major design changes, but I’ve been working on a lot of little things that have been bugging me for a while.  The ordering through our shopping cart is a little more sleek (check out the new quantity box we got there!  awww yeaaa!), and we have a better gallery on our product pages.  I also added new sections for the aforementioned stickers and beard shirts.  The most noticeable change hasn’t even been implemented yet though…new photos!

4.  I’m in the process of finding a photographer to take new pics of all our stuff.  I posted an ad on craigslist and got a TON of responses within a few hours.  I’ve narrowed my choice down to about 5 different photographers, and will probably choose one within the next few days.  We’re looking to spend about $500-$800, which seems to be pretty reasonable.  The goal is to get standard catalog shots of all our products, and also a few “fun” editorial shots.  I’m pretty excited to work with a photographer to get some new product shots!  Here are our candidates:  http://www.stevenbarston.com/, http://www.brentdundore.com/, http://www.daryl-henderson.com/, http://corinamarie.com/, http://www.sockivision.com/

5.  New Beard Head products are also always top of mind.  I’ve recently been working a lot harder on firming up our new designs for this coming fall season.  I don’t want to spill all the beans quite yet, but I’ve got several new ideas in the works.  A lot of the products are still in the development phase, and some won’t make it out.  Hopefully we get at least a few of them done in time for this fall though!

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Wow…Wall Decals Cost…Like…Nothing.

31 Mar

So you know all those trendy wall decals you see if hipster lofts and urban condos and stuff?  You know, the ones they sell for $30 – $50 at www.whatisblik.com?  They cost about $1 to make.  Maybe $2…  Know what minimum orders for doing a mass printing run overseas for some custom wall decals is?  500 to 1,000 pcs!  Lulz!  I’m going to draw some random beard-related stuff and try selling some wall decals.  I only need to sell a handful (at a reasonable price…certainly not $50!!!)  to make my money back, and it just adds another fun product to promote our overall brand.  easy peasy.

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Raarrwww! Monster Skin Rug!

31 Mar

I had this idea to make “monster skin” rugs a little while back…then completely forgot about it. Basically it would be an area rug, similar to a bear-skin rug, but instead of a bear it would be a monster of some sort. The rug would be made with faux/synthetic fur, with vinyl accoutrements like claws and whatnot. When I say “I had this idea to make….”, I really mean “I saw some cool monster skin rugs on some random blogs and thought it would be a good idea to make…” The fact is, there are probably one or two monster rugs being sold already. And when I say “one or two”, I literally mean ONE OR TWO. No one actually produces these things…they just make them individually and sell them for thousands of dollars (the one above is $3,000). I think if the price is brought down to something reasonable ($100-$170), there’s some opportunity for the product.

Case in point, thinkgeek.com actually has something very similar to what I would like to make…and it’s only $99! They’re selling a Star Wars Wampa Rug (pictured above), and it looks pretty good! The fact that their price point is in the area I was hoping it to be means the materials and cost of production couldn’t be anything outrageous.

I’m going to look into manufacturers and see if I can find someone that makes similar products.  If I can find a good one, I may want to design 3 or 4 different rug styles and get some samples made.  A lot of blogs already wrote about monster skin rugs over the past 2 or 3 years, but they were never actually products you could buy…or they weren’t anything reasonably priced.  I think if I came out with a product that was actually available for sale, I could get some decent ink.  I can also see a lot of kooky stores want to carry something like a faux monster skin rug.  Stores that carry products like cardboard animal trophies (www.cardboardsafari.com), for example (pic below).  And judging by Cardboard Safari’s retailer list…there are a lot of them!

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Beard Shirt Update and Advice for T-Shirt Printing

29 Mar

I had to make some slight modifications to the Beard Shirt design so the beard would look a little better when actually raised to your face while wearing it.  As you can see, I made the design wider with hair that will cover the “jaw line” a bit when raised to your face.  I tested the new design with printouts taped onto my tshirt and it seemed to look a lot better.  I also shrunk the overall size of the mustaches and added some “toothiness” to the smile.  My t-shirt printer received the designs and should make me a sample soon.   Once I have the actual sample in hand and can confirm the size/placement of the designs, I’ll print out a small trial run of shirts…maybe 150 or so…and see how they do on our site.

The shirts I’m using for this design will be standard American Apparel tees.  American Apparel shirts are pretty much the gold standard in t-shirts at the moment, and while they’re a little more expensive than a Hanes Beefy Tee, or a Gildan shirt for example, they’re plenty worth it.  Why skimp to save $1.50 – $2.00 and have a substandard, less comfortable shirt (imo)?   I don’t think I’m supposed to post the exact cost of American Apparel shirts online, but if you have an American Apparel wholesale account, you can get the shirts for a great deal.  Considering a standard AA t-shirt costs $18.00 retail, it’s pretty amazing how much cheaper they are if you’re a wholesaler.  It’s also quite easy to apply/get accepted.

Printing is also going to end up being around only $1.75 – $2.35/shirt as well (depending on quantity)…that’s polybagged and everything!  Turnaround time is about a week.  From what I understand, that’s a VERY good price.  I’ve worked with some other smaller t-shirt printers before and they’re usually 2x-3x that much!  Additionally, I’ve found smaller printers’ capacity somewhat limited (i.e., 5,000 shirts would be tough for them to deliver in a short time period).  I’m using the same company I used to do my UpdateMeTee tshirts, Instagraph.  My rep at Instagraph is amazing and I absolutely love working with this company.  If you’re ever looking for a t-shirt printer, I would highly recommend checking Instagraph out, especially if you’re down in SoCal (they’re local).  Shoot me an email and I’d be happy to make an introduction.

Now, I’m not t-shirt EXPERT…I’m constantly humbled by the sheer amount of knowledge people at www.t-shirtforums.com have…but my experience dabbling with shirts over the years tells me AA shirts + Instagraph printing is a great way to go.

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New Beard T-Shirt

21 Mar

I finally got around to drawing some beard designs for a “beard t-shirt” I’ve been wanting to make for a while now.  The idea is the person can lift up their shirt slightly, raising the beard design to their face, creating the illusion they themselves have a beard.  Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for the idea, but that doesn’t mean I can’t profit from it.  T-shirts are simple enough to make, and the product seems to fit in well with our existing offering.  I’ve been wanting to expand our product portfolio a little bit, and since I’m still in the (long) process of coming out with new Beard Head designs, adding some fun t-shirts felt like a good idea.  It probably shouldn’t take too long to get these things out on the market, once I finalize the design.

Part of the reason why it took so long for me to get these shirts made is that I was having a tough time designing/drawing the beards.  I considered hiring an artist to do the shirts for me, but it turns out people want to get paid a LOT of money to make a design for a shirt!  Not only do they want cash up front, but they also want royalties!  WTF?  Seriously?  …for a simple line drawing of a beard??  I don’t mind paying up front, but I wasn’t ready to offer royalties…mostly because that would just mean extra work on my part to keep track of all that sort of stuff.  Anyway, I ended up just drawing some beards myself this afternoon.  I think they turned out pretty well!  They’re better than the sample beard shirts on the right up there, right?  Pfft…screw you designers.  They didn’t name me “Most Artistic” in high school for nothing.  t(‘.’t)

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Enjoyable Guerrilla Brand Building

20 Mar

I had a fun idea back while I was back in Denver for the SIA tradeshow last month.  While walking around the show floor, I noticed someone had drawn on a restroom sign, giving the little “men” icon a yellow jumpsuit.  All the reps at Lib Tech, a snowboard company, happened to be wearing similar yellow jumpsuits, so I assumed someone had done a little guerrilla marketing on the restroom sign.  I thought it would be pretty fun to do something similar for Beard Head, but using Beard Head stickers instead.  The thought was to create a simple sticker that people could stick up on whatever image they thought would look cool.  No logo, no company name or anything like that…just a simple iconic sticker that would cause people to do a double take.

We’ll give out the stickers for free to anyone that wants them, with the hope that they throw them up in interesting places and grab a little attention.  Will that attention translate into Beard Head awareness?  Who knows.  But I think anyone who sees the sticker will be a little curious at the very least.  Maybe once someone sees a real Beard Head, they’ll recall the sticker and have a little “aha” moment.  I think Beard Head fans will appreciate getting free stickers to play around with as well.  Since it’s important to create a strong connection between our customers and our brand, little things like “guerrilla stickers”, which promote fan “participation”, can be quite valuable.

The stickers are going to be 1.7 inches x 2.1 inches and should be ready in a few weeks.  Find some cool places to stick them and let me know if you want some.  ;)

FYI, if you’re ever looking for a good place to print stickers, check out www.stickerrobot.com.  They have full color, all-weather stickers, and are very reasonable price wise.  They take a lot longer than a normal sticker company because they do their orders in big batches.  This allows them to have prices about 50% lower than anyone else, but it usually takes a few weeks to get your stickers.  If you’re not in a rush, I would highly recommend using www.stickerrobot. com.

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