Design a Boot Competition
OK, so it’s not exactly a t-shirt and it is not a POD but for people into designing their own gear this is an awesome opportunity. Dr. Marten have a competition to design a boot. Probably showing my age here but when I was growing up Dr. Martens (Doc Martens) were not really cool. A few rockers I knew wore them but they were mostly seen as work boots. They were also pretty cheap. When I was in my early twenties though things started to change. They became more mainstream and started to provide a much bigger selection, both in shoe/boot styles but also in colors. They also became more and more expensive.
When I saw this competition I thought that Doc Martens truly have come a long way from their humble beginnings. With this competition they are allowing the public to submit ideas for new boots two of which will become Dr. Marten boots. An interesting thing about this competition is that while one of the boots will be chosen by industry professionals the other will be chosen by the public through a voting system. I don’t know about you but I am very curious as to which one will sell better.
Below are two boots that have been submitted by my friends who also have stores over at Zazzle.com so if you like the designs as much as I do you should head over to Dr. Martens and give them a vote. (you can click on a boot to go to their page) Of course if you have a great idea for a boot you should open up Photoshop and get to work. There is a £1000 prize. I can’t see when the competition closes though.
Review: Modern Gamer T-Shirts
Even though I play video games occasionally I don’t think you could call me gamer. It’s probably only within the last year or so that learned what leet or l33t or 1337 meant. That said, I did know some of the 1337 speak, I just didn’t know that it had been classed as 1337 speak. Hey, I’m in my thirties. A few weeks ago I received a request from Modern Gamer to review their t-shirts so I asked my gamer friend and he selected the Noob Slayer t-shirt. Of the five shirts (there were only five at that time) it was probably the only one I’d wear either. Not because of the type of design though. I liked their logo shirt but I don’t want to be a walking billboard and the other shirts, I didn’t really understand. I know that Lord of the Three Rings must be a Lord of the Rings parody (Doh!) but I just don’t get it.
The shirt itself as seen in the picture worn by yours truly is a Gildan. When I tried it on I was pleasantly surprised. The design has a pretty cool vintage effect to give it that well worn look. To be honest I think that if I caught a gamer wearing this shirt I would think he truly was a nerd but because I am not, the irony lets me get away with it. But hey, what do I know about what gamers want to wear.
Modern Gamer Shirts currently has only six different designs including a Modern Gamer logo t-shirt but they are trying to add a designs bi-weekly. They said they see “modern gaming shirts with a vintage / grunge twist” and that is the theme of the store. They use POD Printfection to sell their shirts and they are selling them very cheaply with a $5 discount at the moment. That comes to about $15 dollars plus shipping, so if you want a good value, good quality gamer t-shirt get over there now while the discount is still being offered.
While you are over there too, if you are a gamer they have something interesting going on behind the t-shirt store. I don’t know what it is because it is still in beta but they say in 94 days the face of gaming will change. If you just can’t wait you can try get an invitation to Modern Gamer Beta but hurry or you might just have to wait.
Cafepress Update Sales Report
I feel I don’t usually have good news regarding Cafepress but today I do. Cafepress has made an improvement in an area where Zazzle is already far behind: sales reports. The availability and accessibility of this kind of data should not be underestimated. Sure, if your store is new and are only getting a few sales a week you can analyze the data quite easily no matter what the form but if you are selling large numbers of items over a long time period we need more options. Of course it is good to compare month to month but we also want to see what kind of designs are selling in which period etc. The new layout makes it easier to access the information. (Click the image to see larger version).
The new Sales Report is still being tested I believe so it may not be visible in your control panel. There are also some reports in the Cafepress forums of it being buggy but mine seemed good for the most part. A little lag but the reports displayed.
Maybe this is not a new feature but it is new to me. There is a section called designs where you can view the designs you uploaded in any given period and, I think, the amount of sales they made. Well done Cafepress.
Filth T-Shirt
There was some recent news in Australia about a boy who was arrested for wearing an offensive t-shirt. I admit being very curious about what kind of t-shirt could be so offensive as to warrant an arrest. I’m not easily offended and am all for free speech so it was hard to imagine. Well, the t-shirt was pretty offensive especially to Christians. But let’s forget about the offensiveness of the shirt for a second and just look at the content. The t-shirt states that Jesus is the 4 letter word beginning with c. I really don’t think this word should be seen as a bad word but in modern society it is seen as one of the worst. So even without reference to Jesus this t-shirt would anger a lot of people. The shirt also contains an image of a mostly nude woman touching herself suggestively. She is wearing the headgear of a nun.
This t-shirt is a band t-shirt for a metal band, called Cradle of Filth, and you can find selection of their t-shirt at this store. If you are into that kind of thing. A quick google and you will find that this is not the first time that someone has been arrested for wearing this shirt. A few years ago in England a boy was fined and sentenced to community service. Cradle of Filth frontman was quoted as saying:
It is with some concern that poor Adam’s plight is acknowledged. Defaming organized religion openly in public is now a crime? What is wrong with England? Still, the litter problem on our city streets should improve dramatically if they keep handing out 80-odd hour community punishment orders willy-nilly. The country will be spotless in no time, a sure sign that God works in mysterious ways, even through us!
I think the main question here though is: did this boy deserve to get arrested? It is hard to say really. On the one hand he’s just a teenager trying to stand out from the crowd by doing something stupid. If that’s a crime we all would have been arrested at some point. I’d be doing life. On the other hand his stupid act angered and offended many people. If he had my friend or family’s name on his shirt I would have been pretty angry and it might have ended up with violence. Now some people love Jesus more than I love my family and may have less control over their temper (Christian though they may be) and the result could also have been violence.
For this reason, I think it was OK to ask the boy to stop wearing his t-shirt and to arrest him if he didn’t. It was a preventative measure. I don’t like the idea of losing my right to free speech but I do believe in compromise. Recently I was in Las Vegas with my brother. We are Irish. My brother was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and the hotel staff politely suggested that his t-shirt was not appropriate. To be honest, I was shocked when my brother told me. My brother on the other hand thought the fact that this would happen in America, the land of free speech, was very funny. He didn’t agree with them but he didn’targue either. He checked in and changed his t-shirt.
Cafepress Announce Contest Winners
On the same say Cafepress announce base price increases they also announce the winners from the Design Contest. I did think that the prize was unusually generous. Perhaps Cafepress have an amateur psychologist on their team advising on how to take the attention away from the base price increases. Oh, you tricked us all Cafepress. LOL. Anyway, the main purpose of the contest, I imagine, was to increase the no. of Infinistitch products in the marketplace to make use of the new facilities. The winners were not so bad. Nothing to get excited about either though and I’m just now trying to figure out why Cafepress have decided to enter into the embroidery market when a simple printed patch might have looked just as good, if not better.
Well, below are the winners from left to right, first prize to third. They are all patriotic caps for Americans and fans of the USA. It is interesting that the military caps were chosen for this contest. At least the winning design is giving off the right message. The other two designs show off famous American symbols - the Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam.
There is more information on the Cafepress blog.
Sale at Glennz Tees
Glen Jones AKA Glennz is a New Zealand designer whose work was often seen over at Threadless. He has submitted a huge amount of designs and many of them have become Threadless bestsellers. I think I have featured a couple on this blog already. He recently decided to open his own t-shirt store where he sells a great selection of unique t-shirts which often have a pop culture reference. A couple of examples below show that his work does actually rock. I believe his store is based in the US and the sale is from June 25-30 with all t-shirts at $13.95. Now is your chance to get one of these awesome tees at a bargain price.
Cafepress Increase Base Prices
Just days after POD Printfection announced an increase in base prices Cafepress makes a similar announcement. The increases are not all that big so I doubt they will have a huge effect on sales. Well, not the t-shirt sales. Magnets and buttons on the other hand have had dramatic increases in price (up to almost 100% in one case) which I am sure will affect the sales. In this regard I expect many shopkeepers will suffer but I imagine that Cafepress will make much more money than before. In the short term at least. During election season buttons are surely a hot item but come November, when Barack Obama is elected president (crossing my fingers) there will be a big downturn in button sales.
I have read the arguments that Cafepress haven’t increase their prices in 9 years with some exceptions but I don’t buy that as a reason to increase them now. Cafepress has been growing and growing and economies of scale dictate that their costs have been falling. Of course after 9 years purchasing power has decreased and increased fuel prices are affecting everyone so that does have to be taken into account. I suspect the reason for the increase is that growth at Cafepress has slowed due to increased competition from other PODs and t-shirt companies which are popping up all over the place. See List of PODs. If this is the case it may be better to decrease the prices to attract more and more people to Cafepress rather than other PODs but it is ver rare in my experience to see price decreases.
All Rainbows at Threadless
Today’s new t-shirts from Threadless almost appear to have a theme. I won’t tell you what that theme is but I’ll give you a hint, there are unicorns, rainbows and err … gay lions. The first t-shirt, Making Mythology, here is very sexual and the artist here definitely has talent being able to make unicorns look almost human in the chosen sexual position. It answers not only the question about where these mythical creatures come from but also probably where they have gone. Today’s social mores prohibit this kind of inter-species relationship.
The other two designs are reprints and I especially like the Gay Pride T-Shirt. It is hard to notice what is going on in the picture at first but with a basic understanding of leonine attributes you will quickly notice something out of the ordinary - a pride of lions with a difference.
The third design is a simple melting/dripping rainbow design entitled Rainbow Worrier. I don’t get it but I like the design.
Uneetee T-Shirt Review
We ordered two shirts from Uneetee a while back (June 1st) and it took about 10 days to arrive in Japan. No complaints there. It arrived in a plain white plastic envelope with no branding. The t-shirts were folded tightly but neatly.
Both t-shirts are American Apparel and you should all know by now that they produce good quality t-shirts produced with sweat-shop free labor. I chose the green Foster Family t-shirts and my equally good half chose the navy Paradise t-shirt. I love my shirt. It looks even better in reality than it does on my screen. I’ll be wearing it for years to come as long as I don’t put on any more weight.
Unfortunately we are less than pleased with the Paradise shirt. We do take some of the blame as the design looks dark on our screens but we didn’t imagine that it would be so dark that it would be difficult to make out what was going on in the picture. Below you can see what I am talking about. In the photo with the model it is very difficult to see the image details while in the design image you can see lots happening. Unfortunately, even with the actual t-shirt, you almost have to squint to see what’s happening on the t-shirt. The only thing you can really see is the moon.
So, we decided it would be better to try exchange it than to keep another unworn t-shirt in the closet. Checking out Uneetee’s returns policy though I was a bit surprised. It seems that to exchange the t-shirt we would not only have to pay to return it but also pay to have them ship us another. They also recommend insuring it. We got these tees in the sale for $13 apiece and shipping to Japan set us back $10.89. Now to return it I will have to pay about $6 to ship from Japan to the US, plus the cost of insurance and shipping cost back to Japan. I had a feeling that this was going to cost more than $13. It just wasn’t worth it so I contacted Uneetee to confirm this situation.
Contacting them was a good idea as here was their reply.
Thank you for contacting us regarding your order. No problem, please send
us back the item and we’ll send a replacement at no cost to you. Please let
me know what design you wish us to send and also make sure to include this
email when you send the item back to us.
It is still costing us a little bit but at least we get a t-shirt that we will wear. When we get the new tee we will of course post a review.
T-Shirt Blog List
Andy over at Hide Your Arms, a great resource for finding some great t-shirts and hoodies, has created an updated list of t-shirt blogs from around the world. Literally from around the world. There is even a Russian site included. Of course this blog, The T-Shirt Review, is based in Japan. There are 133 blogs in this list and I guess that makes 133 reasons not to visit this one. Don’t forget about us here at the T-Shirt Review. Please.
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