$50,000 T-Shirt at Zappos.com

I’m pretty sure that this was just created to drive more traffic to Zappos.com, an online clothing store. Well, it is working. I visited there for possibly the first and probably the last time. Anyway, they are selling this t-shirt for $50,00o. The t-shirt is pretty plain as you can see below and the message of the t-shirt tells all what they money really pays for: It only cost me $50,000 to stop my wife shopping at Zappos.com.

They are available in five different flavors, wife (black), husband (red), boyfriend (pink), girlfriend (blue) and well, it’s complicated (white).

There are a few comments by satisfied and unsatisfied customers below. Here is one woman who is not happy with her husbands purchase.

You know what really kills me? The betrayal. And I am not talking about from my soon to be ex-husband. Zappos how could you do this to me? I have spent so much money with your company and this is the thanks I get? The passion and joy that we have shared over the years… the business I’ve helped you to grow by raving about you to anyone who will listen… obviously it meant so much more to me than to you. Am I hurt? Am I mad? You better believe it! I won’t be calling your Customer Loyalty Team because they have been like family to me over the years and I don’t want to pull them in the middle of this “divorce” we are going through. I WILL be calling your legal team.

I would take it all with a grain of salt but here is the product information. I marked the parts I liked in bold.

• Buy this rare collector’s t-shirt and we’ll make sure your significant other never shops at Zappos.com again! When you purchase this limited edition t-shirt, we will permanently disable your significant other’s Zappos.com account for the rest of his/her life.
• Within 30 days of purchase, a Customer Loyalty Team (”CLT”) representative from Zappos.com will arrive to the location of your choosing in the United States to break the news in person to your significant other.
• The CLT rep will also be a shoulder to cry on for up to 1 hour (60
  minutes) for your significant other. As time permits, the CLT rep will also be available to share tears of joy with you.
• The CLT rep will be happy to frolic in a field of daisies with you or do anything that is mutually agreed upon to not be morally or ethically objectionable.
• Should you exceed your 1-hour time limit, additional time is available, billable to your credit card or PayPal at $3.99/minute. The CLT rep may elect at his/her discretion to barter his/her time, such as in exchange for a home-cooked meal or for permission to borrow your cat for up to 24 hours provided that the feline is returned in the condition it was received.
• Certain restrictions and disclaimers apply:
• Disclaimer 1: Zappos.com, Inc. is not responsible or liable if your significant other creates or uses another account using a different email address. It is your responsibility to monitor how many email accounts your significant other creates or uses.
• Disclaimer 2: Due to the incredible lifetime benefit of this product and service, we are unable to honor our standard 365-day return policy. Our 365-day return policy is valid only if you are permanently divorced or separated within 365 days. Any separation of less than 15 days, “taking a break”, or equivalent does not count. Should you remarry, get back together, or “realize that you made a mistake and can’t live without him/her”, you are no longer eligible for a refund. If you have already been refunded, we will hunt you down for the $50,000 that you owe “the company”. Also, in the event you are eligible for a refund, please note that our free return shipping applies only to the t-shirt. (For example, please do not ship us your wife.)
• Disclaimer 3: Some people like to shop because they like nice things.
  Some people like to shop because they want to be fashionable. And some people like to shop because they like to shop. We like all these people and will generally help them in any way possible. However, we can be bought for a price to make the shopping stop.

If you are worried about the cost don’t forget to factor in free overnight shipping on clothing.

We Will Not Be Silent T-Shirt

This t-shirt cost JetBlue a lot of money and they didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt. JetBlue have had to cough up $240,000 to pay for their since which in this case was a racial profiling issue. Raed Jarrar was prevented from boarding the plane unless he covered his t-shirt which had the words “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic printed on it.

I don’t want to make light of this issue because it is a serious issue but it makes me think that perhaps a the passenger from last year who wasn’t allowed to board because of his Transformers t-shirt should sue for discrimination because they didn’t let a guy board just because he was a geek. Below is a video interview with

You can order the shirt at The Critical Voice and they are pretty cheap but they do encourage paying more.

Torsopants Close their Doors

Torsopants is a sister site of the more crude T-Shirt Hell. It opened just this March, I believe.  T-Shirt Hell is famous for its offensive t-shirts and I imagine the humor and imagery turned away as many people as it attracted so I surmised back in March that TorsoPants was an attempt to grab another market sector with tamer, less offensive tees.  Anyway, I got an email the other day saying that it’s all over.

It is with great sadness that I announce, at the urging of Bilderberg, that I am closing the doors at TorsoPants.com at midnight December 23rd, 2008. I cannot get into complete details, but my higher masters have told me that my mission will be changing over the next few months and this is the first step in a series of movements I will make in my life to fulfill the prophecy that is Sunshine Megatron.

There seems to have been big changes in the T-Shirt Hell family recently too. I guess all is not well. As I have just mentioned, Torsopants is about to close its doors for good. I notice that BandGeekHero.com, a Torsopants spin-off focusing on Guitar Hero parodies, is also gone, with the domain redirecting to TorsoPants.com. I think it launched in July of this year. That’s a short life. And also Hell Jr. seems to have disappeared from the radar less than 3 months after its launch.

I have no idea what happened over there but if I had to guess I would say that the makers of Guitar Hero sued them for copyright infringement and they are selling off assets and streamlining their business in order to raise capital to pay. Just a wild guess though.

I don’t think TorsoPants really added anything to the t-shirt industry though and I imagine it will be quickly forgotten. The success of T-Shirt Hell will probably ensure that Torsopants won’t even remembered as a failed business idea.

Important: Also, I have been informed that any Torso Washingtons that are left unusedby December 23rd will be lost forever so if you have some you better get over there soon and don’t let them go to waste. Affiliates with Torso Pals will get paid on that date.

New POD: Ninja Zoo

There seem to be new PODs opening up almost as often as T-Shirt Competition sites these days (slight exaggeration). I think breaking into the POD market will be much tougher though as the service expected from a POD is huge. Zazzle and Cafepress which seem to dominate the market already provide so many features and functions but keep adding more and more at a seemingly accelerated rate.

A few days ago I received an email from a friend of Ninja Zoo saying that it is a better alternative to Zazzle for UK sellers because according to my previous article “uk sellers are still being paid in US Dollars and items are delivered from the US”. (I think Zazzle will pay the UK sellers in Sterling though the items will still be shipped from the US.) So, I thought I better check it out. To be honest I had already come across it and bookmarked it for future mention but this email made be get my skates on.

Ninja Zoo is a pretty small site but it is in beta so I won’t hold that against it. They seem to have only 9 styles of t-shirts with from 2 to 8 colors each. Mostly on the lower end of that range. All except one of the items available to sell in your store are Hanes products. I was going to do a similar test to the one I did with Yerzies but there are so few options with Ninja Zoo that I decided to upload one of my images that I designed to sell on Zazzle. The first thing and perhaps the only thing that really impressed me about Ninja Zoo is the print area. It is huge compared to what Cafepress, Zazzle and probably nearly every other POD has to offer.

The designer itself gives you the option to add text, your own images and, for a fee, images that other users have decided to share. I think the fee will be added to the commission when you put your t-shirt on sale effectively making your t-shirt more expensive, but hey, it’s not your art. The add text function is pretty lame with only 9 fonts to choose from.

I think the fact that you can add other people’s images to products and sell them in your own store adds a new dimension that can’t be seen in other PODs. I think it is risky though as you don’t know if those people really own the rights to those designs and you might unknowingly land yourself in trouble. (I saw people have shared images of Audrey Hepburn and Snoopy.) Also, imagine you build your store around other people’s images and they decide to unshare them (I assume this can be done). I also notice that they recommend charging between 10p and 25p when you share your images because if you charge more other people might not use them but I say if you are only getting 10p or 25p when someone uses your image it is not worth it. I would charge the same commission for the shared design as you would charge for the design on a t-shirt in your store. It is to me the same thing in both cases. You are selling someone the right to print your image on a t-shirt and sell/purchase it.

We would suggest you set your charge between 10p and 25p - if you set your charge too high do not expect anybody to use it!

They have it set up so you can create a store (a type of widget) that you can use to promote your t-shirts on MySpace, Facebook or on your own website. When you click an item on the widget it will take you to the product on the Ninja Zoo website. You can test it below with my Vintage Tokyo design.

Ninja Zoo is a very cute and well finished website but I don’t think it is well designed. They are selling t-shirts but on the front page they are only promoting one artist. It is easy enough to find the marketplace but when you get there it seems so empty that you are not sure you have found it. I guess they are leaving it up to the shopkeepers to promote their own t-shirts and attract their own customers which I don’t think is a great strategy. Ninja Zoo should promote their users work and then create incentives (like Zazzle recently did with the introduction of the Zazzle Incentive Program) for their users to do promotion.

The widget is OK but I don’t think it replaces the need for a store. Savvy shopkeepers do all they can to keep the customers in their own stores by tying to entice them to look at various t-shirts and designs. With this widget you are taken directly to the Ninja Zoo website after clicking. You have a designers area but as I created only four items with one design I don’t really know how it will work for shopkeepers with hundreds or more designs. To conclude, I don’t think this is really an attractive POD compared to the big dogs but there is potential. I recommend that they invest more time in CEO and make their site more intuitive, make it so the visitors can’t help but find the products. That will increase the chance of a sale and if you provide a source of sales shopkeepers will come knocking at your door. I know ninjas move unseen and unheard but they probably don’t sell too many t-shirts.

Buy a T-Shirt Help an Orphan

Hopefully coming up to the holiday season people are feeling a bit charitable and will be more than happy to fork out a bit of cash to help out some people in need. Of course this is not restricted to holiday season but as holiday season is coming up I thought that I might tell you of how purchasing one of these t-shirts as a gift for a friend or loved one will also benefit an orphan. According to the website:

- Every T-shirt you buy feeds an orphan for 1 month in Africa. Learn more.
- All of our T-shirts are Fair Trade
- All of our T-shirts are super-soft American Apparel; no stiff shirts here!
- The back of every moju shirt reads “This T-shirt fed an orphan for 1 month.”

At the moment they have five different unisex t-shirts in sizes xs to xl. Check out the Moju Project store to get a closer look at the designs. Unfortunately there are no photos of the actual shirts themselves. They all cost $25.

Nordstrom Pulls Offensive T-Shirt

After receiving a complaint from an upset customer Nordstrom removed the offending t-shirt and several others from the Affliction brand from their shelves. The image on the t-shirt depicts a rather hideous vision of Mary and the baby Christ. To be honest I am not all that offended by the picture but I can see why some would be and I totally understand this woman’s reaction to what she saw. You can see a video below.

TeeFury does Charity

TeeFury have released a shirt where designer commissions will go to Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW). I wonder why TeeFury didn’t throw in another dollar or so from their profits. Below are some details about OIWW from the TeeFury site.

Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW) was founded by former investment banker Jim Luce in 1999 as a response to the global crisis facing orphaned children. OIWW has established a network of locally incorporated homes to house and educate children orphaned and abandoned after the Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and the 2004 hurricane in Haiti. OIWW provides aid to the world\’s most disadvantaged children with the donated services of 100 volunteers, on an annual budget of less than a half-million dollars. OIWW is associated with the United Nations Department of Public Information and is headquartered in New York City. OI America is a 501(c)(3) not for profit corporation.

Find out more at www.oiww.org/

Organised by Tom Burns, he and 19 other artists, including Wotto, contributed to the design. TeeFury sells all t-shirts for $9 but they are only for sale for 24 hours (just over 21 hours left at the time this was posted.

Ink-Hound.com

Ink-Hound.com is a new t-shirt competition site. They say they are going to release a new t-shirt and cap (yes they do caps too) every two or three days and these will be selected from the top rated designs submitted by users of the site. They already have a few well known names from the t-shirt competition circuit such as Wotto, Mathiole and a.mar.illo involved. The designers get $2 for every item sold and when that print run is over the designer gets the rights to his artwork back. Pretty sweet. It’s like a cross between Design by Humans and TeeFury.

There are a few excellent design competitions out there, but we are aiming to achieve something different. We will not only allow the community to help choose the art that gets printed, but we will have a focus on very limited runs, artists’ rights, and sustainability.

These are a few points that make them stand out from the crowd:

using clean printing techniques with organic inks and offering organic tee options. Also, a portion of each sale will go to charity.

offering a wide variety of apparel options: fitted hats, mens and womens fitted tees, traditional fit tees, mens and womens organic tees, long sleeve tees, and hoodies. T-shirts will sell for $12 and hats for only $16!

They have many great points and features but their website is confusing and quite frankly looks amateurish. The image quality of even the t-shirts is pretty low which is not ideal for a site that is basically trying to sell images. There seems to be no uniformity but rather a hodge podge of design ideas thrown together without much thought. There is a low-res flash panel at the bottom that  makes the submissions look worse than they are. The designs are available on several types of apparel but you can’t see what most of the other items look like even without the designs on them. Normally I would be wary of using my credit card on a site that looks like it was put together in ten minutes but as I am familiar with the designers I can trust it. It’s a new site though and apart from the fact that it looks like a site that was created before before people heard of css I like what they are trying to do. Hopefully they will re-plan and redesign the site before they scare away too many potential customers.

To celebrate the launch everything is on sale and you can get a tee like the following a.mar.illo design for just $6. (You have to add to cart from the shop page before you click on the design.) This is a time limited offer though so don’t wait.

Cafepress Goes International Too

It just seems like yesterday when Zazzle announced their .co.uk site (it was yesterday) and now it seems that Cafepress are also going to do the same thing. This is great news again.  I just received the following information from Cafepress and I am guessing it is because of Zazzle’s announcement about their UK site as Cafepress almost never tell us what they are going to do during system maintenance.

We have a few things happening in this System Maintenance we’d like to share with everyone:

* Teddy Bear upgrade - no price increase. This will be automatic.
* Product Thumbnail update for: Organic T-Shirt and Hoodie
* Keep Shopping link will be fixed
* Upload button on sections will be fixed
* We will be releasing the following localized sites: UK, Canada, and Australia. (More shipping options and currency conversion - more information after launch)

I made the last line bold but I thought it was quite funny the way it was just added to the end of the list very casually, like “Oh yeah, and we almost forgot, and I’m not too sure if it’s really even news, but just incase you are interested, we are going global.”

Three more domains. I have no real idea how this will affect us but I suspect it will result in a greater number of sales for shopkeepers.

Zazzle.co.uk Opens its Virtual Doors

Zazzle have opened up their UK site but there announcement leaves a lot of questions on the table. I am guessing that the products will be produced and shipped from the UK to all EU countries. I base this assumption on the fact that the FAQ says they will use the Royal Mail. If this is true it will save money on import duties that the British would previously have had to pay if shipped from the US.

For shopkeepers it seems to be a great new source of income as I’m sure many British people will be happier to buy from a store that sells it’s items in pounds rather than dollars. I noticed that for each of my .com stores there is already an equivalent .co.uk store so I don’t even have to do any extra work to set them up. You can check them out below. From what I have read in the forums our tracking is already included.

I also note that the sites are treated as one in terms of visits, tracking and such. My Analytics code is already entered for me on the UK site - the same as is tracking my US pages - and the number of visits is about the same.

http://www.zazzle.com/ruderetro
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/ruderetro

The UK stores are almost mirrors of the originals. I have noticed a few differences apart from the currencies though. For a start, you can pay for your items with PayPal which I don’t believe is possible with Zazzle.com. On the other hand it seems that you can’t get you commission paid by PayPal even though you can with Zazzle.com. It’s very confusing but hopefully these are just a few kinks that will be ironed out soon enough. It is a little worrying though as I really don’t want to receive cheques if possible. It looks like our royalties will be in separate accounts too. It means that I have more accounts to manage.

The sooner Zazzle consolidates the financial aspects of our accounts the better as they are already getting out of hand. If you had five accounts to monitor before you now have ten. If, as rumour has it, they open up even more domains it will become ridiculous. The volume bonus reports to still seem to be working from one account though.

It is nice that the volume bonus is combined with my US accounts (although the currency conversion seems to be off, unless one pound is all of a sudden equal to exactly one dollar - you never can tell these days).

Anyway, it’s all good and to celebrate the launch of Zazzle.co.uk Zazzle have announced a design contest with 5 prizes of £500 (notice the £ not $). It is only open to UK residents. Find out more at Zazzle.co.uk.

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