Chloe Sevigny models UT T-Shirts
I picked up Uniqlo Paper No. 4 yesterday. It’s a free magazine produced by Uniqlo to showcase their wares. There are some interesting interviews including one by cover girl Chloe Sevigny, who is in my opinion, a very cute and talented actress. She is also well known for her fashion sense so I was a little surprised to see her modeling Uniqlo. It is surely a part of Uniqlo’s attempt to make their items seem more classy. Luckily they don’t make the prices more classy though. I scanned the Chloe Sevigny pictures from the magazine for your viewing pleasure. You can click the images for a larger view.
I had a look over the UT site and couldn’t see any of these particular t-shirts for sale. Though I saw several of the others from the magazine.
Uniqlock - Don’t Ask
I came across this on the Uniqlo site but I don’t really know what it is. On the other hand, if you are happy enough to watch videos of cute Japanese girls dancing then it doesn’t really matter what it is.
*Edit: OK, I did a quick check and found out a bit more info. I posted it below the video.
What is Uniqlock?
UNIQLO blog parts UNIQLOCK first appeared on our home page in June 2007 as part of our polo shirt campaign. UNIQLOCK are blog parts with an inbuilt clock function. A group of girls wearing UNIQLO clothes introduce their original dance with the screen changing in time with the clock. The overriding aim is to transmit UNIQLO’s global view to the world using our MUSIC×DANCE×CLOCK form of communication that can transcend any language barrier.
At the same time, our WORLD.UNIQLOCK has become increasingly well known in the Internet world. The WORLD.UNIQLOCK page on our website shows a world map displaying the number and location of users who incorporate UNIQLOCK parts into their own blogs.
When we launched our second cashmere version of UNIQLOCK in October 2007, we had 33,481 blog parts established in 73 countries around the world.
We launched our third version of UNIQLOCK blog parts, “20 COLOR T”, on April 28 in which we express a strange world where live pictures and animation merge.
UNIQLO is currently aggressively expanding its global operations in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, South Korea and China. We will continue to design promotions focusing on our key ”global” theme.
■ UNIQLOCK awards
|
Award Title
|
Section
|
Prize
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| One Show Interactive | Best of Show | |
| Microsite | Gold | |
| Integrated Branding | Gold | |
| NY ADC | Hybrid | Cube （First Prize） |
| Advertising Interactive | Intuitive Merit (Bronze) | |
| ANDY AWARDS | Interactive | Silver |
| AD FEST | INNOVA LOTUS | INNOVA LOTUS (Gold) |
| CYBER LOTUS | Silver | |
| TIAA （Tokyo Interactive Ad Awards） | Grand Prix | |
| Integrated Campaign | Gold | |
| Campaign Site | Gold | |
| Interactive Advertising | Gold |
Fully Customizable Shoes by Zazzle
I feel it has been a while since we had some news from Zazzle but this one is a doozie. Assuming doozie is a good thing. Zazzle have teamed up with Keds to make a pretty much totally customizable shoe. You can even choose the color of the threading. At the moment there are three ladies’ shoes and two kids shoes to choose from. They are literally a blank canvas and you are the artist. Don’t worry if you are not much of an artist though, there are some templates to choose from and you can expect the thousands of zazzlers to produces millions of choices soon enough.
Below is my first attempt which I made last night just before I went to bed and just after I heard the announcement. I think it turned out pretty well too. Next to it is a very cute number from our friends at the Spotted Olive. It is totally anime cute.
It pays to complain
Apparently it pays to complain at Cafepress, just not very much. Cafepress recently came up with a new way to skim the earnings from their increasingly less loyal shopkeepers as mentioned in a previous post. As can be expected there was an uproar from the Cafepress community and mud was slung. One major complaint was that we were only given eight days to deal with the upcoming theft of our income. In a surprise move, Cafepress have delayed the change by 30 days and reduced ever so slightly the conditions of the theft which won’t come into full effect until January. Read more here.
Since the original announcement Cafepress have a launched a few new products, the timing of which was surely an intentional ploy to get the shopkeepers to forget about being screwed financially. Anyway, while I don’t feel overly enthusiastic about what Cafepress is doing at the moment I have to admit the products are pretty nice. There are two new clocks to add to the collection, a sleek aluminium one and a large plastic clock. I purchased a clock from Cafepress before, not one of these, but the original. It was a piece of crap really and apart from the customization I don’t think it’s worth more than $2. Hopefully these are better. They look much better.
Cafepress also introduced a new ceramic travel mug. I believe the design area is pretty restricted though and that is why the Cafepress is filled with travel mugs with designs with the corners chopped off. Silly move Cafepress. You should have stuck with the rectangular image rather than an oval one. If someone wanted an oval image they could add that themselves. I did quickly find a very cute mug though from Yvonne’s Gift Shop.
More T-Shirt Sales
This must be sales season for t-shirts as there are bargains popping up all over the place. These three t-shirt stores focus on pop culture references and they are all reasonably priced. Of course during the sale they are even cheaper. They are Busted Tees, T-Shirt Hell and Random Shirts.
T-Shirts on Sale
A few places are having t-shirt sales at the moment so I guess I’ll start with the big one. Design by Humans has been mentioned a few times on this blog and they are selling some of their t-shirts for as little as $12. Sal ends Friday August 1st at midnight. You don’t have much time.
The folks at District Cotton were kind enough let me know that they are having a sale too. All printed tees $5-$9. Can’t complain about that. All of their 100% Organic Cotton T-shirts will be on sale for less than ten bucks. Including $5 for all of their printed infant apparel and toddler tees. Organic Hoodies and recycled Billboard Bags are also on sale. District Cotton also have a t-shirt design contest called Shoot Out which might be of interest to some designers out there.
And finally the good folk over at Lapicerdo.com have provided a coupon for The T-Shirt Review Readers. Add the code SHIRTREVIEW in the message box during checkout to receive a 20% discount. I’ll probably talk about this store again at a later date.
Badashell T-Shirt Contest
Charles from Badashell Clothing contacted me to let me know about this new t-shirt store and ongoing t-shirt design contest. I know. They are popping up everywhere. From what I can find, this site was launched on July 11th to a select few and officially opened on July 25th. Already seven designs designs have been chosen and are for sale in their store for the reasonable price of $19. I’m pretty sure there was a $300 prize but I can’t find the information at the moment. I think they are going to change the prize are there is a message to that effect on the homepage.
The designs they chose were very good and I think the standard of submitted designs is pretty high too. Below are my two favorites.
itself Announce First Winner
I mentioned itself before so if you are wondering what the hell it(self) is check out this post. They have recently announced their first winner and it is a pretty cool shirt. It is called More Tape? by Tang Yau Hoong who hails from Malaysia. Congrats on being the first ever winner of the itself t-shirt competition!
As you can see below, the design is a very simple but fun concept and even works as a pattern t-shirt. You better get over there quick if you want to get one though as the first batch is a limited print of only 3000 shirts. LOL. $21 and ships from Turkey I believe.
Star Wars Election Center
Filed under: Funny Stuff, Movie T-Shirts, Political T-Shirts, Zazzle
It is election year and that means that a large no. of election and political t-shirts are being sold. Zazzle along with Star Wars are taking advantage of this fact by putting together a great collection of spoof election gear for Star Wars characters. To be honest I was never a big Star Wars fan, probably one of the few of my generation but these t-shirts are very cool and they are sure to be a hit. If you are going to buy one I’d say buy them now so you can say you were one of the first.
I think that it’s great that this company has decided to go the spoof route because I think that the Star Wars t-shirts that were originally on sale at Zazzle are really only aimed at kids or fanboys. People of all ages would wear these. My favorite so far is the Chewbacca t-shirt but as you can see below the designs are pretty simple vector like images with two to four colors. I have to wonder if they are screen prints.
Cafepress gets Greedy
I should probably say that Cafepress gets greedier because they already make a ton of money per item they sell. Cafepress is a POD service that allow users to create and upload designs and sell them online as t-shirts, caps, mugs etc. The designers then fix the commission they wish to receive from the sale of each item and Cafepress deals with the rest. It is a great opportunity for people to make money sitting on their asses in the comfort of their own home. As a reward for selling large quantities of items Cafepress pay a volume bonus. It is a great incentive for the shopkeepers to actually make more sales.
There are three main avenues to get sales. One is through the Cafepress marketplace which seems to account for about 80-90% of sales if you believe what you hear. Another is from your own marketing efforts either to your own off Cafepress domain or to your Cafepress hosted store. The third is the elusive and much maligned affiliate sale.
Currently any sales made through affiliates were not included in the volume bonus which is calculated using the base sales. In the new system the marketplace sales will also no longer be included. If you are one of those shopkeepers who make a big volume bonus and most of your sales come through the marketplace you have a lot to lose. It’s not quite as bad as it seems though as now there are lower thresholds for getting the bonus as can be seen in the chart below.
It should be noted too that affiliate sales which are directed at the shops rather than the marketplace will now be included in our volume bonus calculations as well as framed prints which were until now also excluded from our volume bonus. So no, the sky isn’t falling but it is raining pretty hard on some people with scattered showers here and there.
What’s really happening here? This is only conjecture but I have experienced a similar situation before. I worked for one company where almost everybody was a contract worker. When the contract was coming to an end for some of us one of my co-workers, who was a total apple-polisher btw, asked how much of a raise she could expect if she renewed her contract. She was told that she would get paid the same but would have to work longer hours. Funny? Kind of. They continually stripped away things that made the company an attractive place to work at and cut costs in as many ways as they could think of, mostly related to the employees unfortunately, while at the same time increasing charges to people using their services. The worst came when, like at Cafepress, they told us that the bonus they had been paying all along (this time for working on public holidays) was a mistake. Of course, like at Cafepress, it’s total and utter BS. This company actually took it one step further though and subtracted the bonus that we had already received from our next paycheck. It was amazing really. We couldn’t understand how they thought it could continue until they sold the company, lock, stock and barrel and then we realized they had no intention of continuing. They were just trying to increase profits in the short term to make it look more attractive to potential buyers which maybe is what Cafepress is doing. Or perhaps they are preparing to be listed.
I think that the POD market is pretty saturated at the moment and the only way to increase revenue is to eat into the competitors market and this is difficult when you are already the top dog with the other PODs already tearing chunks out of you. And it is not just the PODs either, everybody and their dog is selling t-shirts online now. So Cafepress is taking money back from the shopkeepers who made them money in the first place. It’s pretty mean but I don’t think it will hurt CP at all. I know lots of shopkeepers will head over to Zazzle and I believe Zazzle is taking some of CPs customers but Cafepress will continue to have new designers and designs at a rate that is more than enough to sustain itself. I’m not saying that Cafepress is going to do well because of this strategy, I just don’t think it will have much of an impact. I don’t think how Cafepress deals with the designers matters that much unfortunately as there is an almost unlimited supply. What will affect Cafepress though is the action of the competitors. Maybe CP understands this and are just desperately trying to grab cash while they can.
Who knows? Comments welcome.
More info: Cafepress
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