So things have been moving somewhat slowly as of late. I’m not sure if it’s because sometimes things just take longer than expected, laziness, or just a busy summer schedule. Probably a combination of all three. Thankfully, the busy summer schedule has finally slowed down. With only a short vacation in Hawaii on the horizon, I finally have more free time to dig my teeth into finalizing some of these new projects.
UpdateMeTee
This freakin t-shirt has taken so long to get going, but we’re finally just about there. After countless samples, I’ve come to the realization the shirt cannot be perfect. Unfortunately, we will not be able to create a shirt that you can write on and erase completely no matter what. Due to the nature of the many materials we’ve used to create the “writable” surface, ink will always seep in and stain the surface if left on for extended periods of time. However, this doesn’t mean the shirt won’t work. People just have to erase their writing within a few days. I don’t think that’s quite a deal-breaker. The other problem is washing/drying the shirt. It seems the shirt isn’t holding up very well in the washing machine. Our printer is pretty surprised by this, and is going to run some tests. Apparently the method/ink they’re using should hold up very very well, and they’ve never had any problems with it in the past. I think the problem has something to do with the large amount of ink used for the light blue comment box, since that’s the only area giving us problems. We’ll either fix the problem with the printer, or we’ll just have to have the shirts hand-wash only. Again, not a deal-breaker…just kinda annoying.
Anyway, little problems aside, I still think it’s a cool shirt/idea. I just ordered a small run of American Apparel shirts (about 500 total), and we’ll start printing on them once our printer is done looking into the problem I described above. The site should be going up within a week or so, and then we’ll get going! We’re about 3 weeks behind schedule, but it’s not the end of the world. We’ll still catch back-to-school buyers.
Oh, and kudos to Misa for coming up with the name “UpdateMeTee”. I really like it! We actually have a little logo and placeholder site up for the time being at www.updatemetee.com. You can see it there I guess.
Mini Steins
I received my mini stein samples about three weeks ago, but have just been sitting on them. The samples look perfectly fine, but I’ve been hesitant to move forward on the project. The main reason is I just bought a new car…cash…and now I’m not quite as liquid as before. Since I’m already investing in UpdateMeTee right now, throwing another few thousand $$$ at Mini Steins wouldn’t exactly be ideal. I also would prefer to launch with at least three different stein designs, as opposed to just one. However, with the minimum order quantities I have purchase, I can’t afford/wouldn’t want to risk investing in three designs right off the bat.
Despite all the wishy-washyness, I actually just put in the order to move forward. What finally pushed me to go for it was two of my entrepreneur group colleagues giving me a kick in the pants. I had a meeting with them last Thursday and they just said to do it. Good enough for me I guess. =P
It’ll still be at least 2 months before the steins are done, so that gives me plenty of time to make a site, think of packaging, work on some collateral materials, contact potential wholesale customers… hmm, that should keep me busy. Hopefully I’ll have everything in time for Oktoberfest celebrations.
