Alexander McQueen Tee for Charity

I have never bought anything by Alexander McQueen and now that he has shuffled off this mortal coil I am even less likely to.  I believe the brand will continue though. I have nothing against this type of fashion (by this type I mean way out of my price range) and if I were younger and richer I no doubt would spend some of my silver spoon money on it. At this stage in my life though I am pretty sure that I will never spend $150 on a t-shirt which is what I hear an Alexander McQueen tee goes for. I am not likely to spend $65 on a t-shirt bearing his image either even if 30% of the proceeds go to charity which is what this tee would cost cost you.

Let’s break this down a little though. How much of this t-shirt price is actually going to charity. It says 30% of proceeds on tonic.com although when I asked hintmag.com they didn’t reply. We’ll take it that tonic.com know what they are talking about. That could be 30% of the profit or 30% of the sale price. Let’s say they are generous and base it on the sale price, that means that for every shirt sold they will donate $19.50 to charity. It’s a one color print on white American Apparel t-shirts so lets say they print 1000 of them that could cost as little as $5 per shirt but again lets say it costs $10 per shirt. So that leaves them with $35.50 profit. If my calculations are correct that means they are making more profit from these t-shirts than they give to charity. That doesn’t seem right does it.

I know there are a  few other factors here. They have to pay the designers I guess. But that means the designers are profiting from this charity tee. I know that they don’t have to give any money to charity and you could see them as being very generous but you have to admit that many people will buy this tee because of the charity side of it. So basically their sales are piggybacking their charity efforts. The charity is driving their sales. If they were really generous they would give all profits to the charity not just 30%.

This is what I think in this case. If you want the t-shirt, buy it. If you want the t-shirt and want to contribute to this charity, buy it. If you just want to contribute to this charity, do it directly it will be much more appreciated. Although you won’t have the t-shirt to demonstrate what a charitable person you are.

The proceeds go to the Terrence Higgins Trust, the largest HIV/AIDS organization in the UK. You can buy the t-shirt online at hintmag.com.

Adopt a Pet T-Shirt by Shepard Fairey

When I first saw this I thought to myself: another Shepard Fairey knock-off. But it turns out that this design was actually knocked out by Shepard Fairey himself. Imagine that! Anyway, the tee is cute enough if you can get over the whole Shepard Fairey thing and it’s for a good cause. All profits go to Adopt-a-Pet.com.

It’s available in various styles. Check them out in the Obey Store.

T-Shirts for Haiti

I haven’t had time to post recently but I have been keeping up on things. One of the big things in the t-shirt industry in the last month or so has been the support for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Here are a collection of t-shirts or sites that are doing their bit.

1. Flying Mouse is contributing all profits from this tee too Unicef.

2. Local Celebrity collaborate with Yele Haiti and 100% of tee profits go there.

3. Threadless are contributing all proceeds (not just profit) from the sale of this tee to The American Red Cross and Haiti Relief and Development Fund. At the time of writing this post they have already sold 7000 of these $10 tees and they plan to sell up to 15,000 more. Awesome!

4. Bungie (makers of video game Halo?) are contributing profits from this t-shirt as well as all online store profits through February directly to the relief efforts in Haiti.

5. Cafepress had a t-shirt designed by Shepard Fairey (which is no longer on sale) as well as designs donated from the community which are still available. Cafepress have already donated $30,000 to the US fund for UNICEF.

6. Storenvy have a selection of beautiful shirts and $8 from each sale will go to the American Red Cross. Lots of designers offered up their designs and they all deserve a shout out but only six were chosen.

7. Blink 182 apparently raised $30,000 for Haiti with this t-shirt but it doesn’t seem to be on sale anymore.

8. Lady Gaga also added her celebrity power to a charity t-shirt with all proceeds going to the Red Cross.

9. ZBQ will donate $6 from every t-shirt sold in their until the end of February which is pretty awesome as they have a great collection of original tees.

T-Shirt Design Contest for the Altruistic

I’m sure you have probably heard of One before but just in case I copied this text from their website:

ONE is a grassroots campaign and advocacy organization backed by more than 2 million people who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. Cofounded by Bono and other campaigners, ONE is nonpartisan and works closely with African policy makers and activists.

Well, One is holding a t-shirt design contest with no real prize as far as I can see but it is for a good cause so it would almost be hypocritical to accept a prize for designing a t-shirt for a charity.

The winning t-shirt will go on sale on African-made t-shirts and the profits will be used in the war against poverty. Money is after all the only real solution to poverty..

Check the One website for terms and conditions. Submissions close November 6th to don’t waste any more time.

Buy a Tee Plant a Tree

Zazzle have this pretty cool promotion going on at the moment where they will plant a tree for every t-shirt sold (as long as you enter the code: PLANTATREE09). OK, so Zazzle won’t plant the trees themselves but the result is the same. Until Arbor Day (April 24)  Zazzle will donate one dollar for every shirt purchased to the American Forests Global ReLeaf Program and apparently $1 is enough for the American Forests to plant a tree.

When you read the blurb it is a little deceptive. It sounds like every shirt that is sold will contribute a dollar but that isn’t the case. You have to remember to add the above mentioned code during checkout. I don’t know if you can use it in conjunction with other codes.

Earth Day T-Shirt – Small feet are sexy

Carbonfund.org have teamed up with Cafepress to produce and sell this pretty sweet tee designed to promote environmental awareness. Here is the blurb from the tee page:

Celebrate Earth Day with a carbon-neutral AnvilRecycled shirt. Proceeds benefit Carbonfund.org, which certified the shirt CarbonFree. View Carbonfund.org’s other products at Cafepress.com/carbonfund

Certified CarbonFree^® by Carbonfund.org’s Product Certification Program, the high-quality, pre-shrunk AnvilRecycled^® T-shirt features 69 percent pre-consumer recycled cotton. This tee has been released just in time for Earth Day so you to can help spread awareness. Below are a couple of Rude Retro’s environmental awareness t-shirts which you can purchase in a variety of styles at Zazzle.

Fifty Thousand Shirts Shipped

On December 20th I received an email from MerchSquad saying that my order had shipped. A bit of investigation told me that the order was for two tees from the charity t-shirt web site FiftyThousandShirts.com I’m a fan of charity tees, assuming they are wellpay designed, because it’s not like you are just giving money away. You are also generating business, income and sometimes even creating new jobs. You also get to show off how charitable you are and the chicks really dig that. (Jokes!)

I first mentioned this website back on May 24th when I put my name down for two shirts but it wasn’t until August that they officially opened the store. By that time, of course, the publicity and news of the tragic situation in China had died down. I guess the interest also died down but clearly interest was never as high as Steve Paterson, the creator of the project, had hoped. The idea was to sell 50,000 shirts and send about $1 million dollars in aid to the victims of the earthquake that devastated China earlier this year. The total number of people who put their names down for shirts didn’t reach 750 which is quite short of the hoped for figure of 50,000. In reality though, the number of people who put their names down and the number of people who actually paid for the tee was also way off, at least when I spoke to Steve Paterson on the phone. I guess one reason could be the state of the economy had drastically changed since this project had started and people were more worried about putting food on their own table and paying their own rent.

Anyway, I paid for my t-shirts on August 15th and when a month had rolled around with no sign of a shirt I wanted to know the status. There were no updates on the site so on September 30th I shot off an email to see what was going on.

It has been over a month and we still haven’t received our shirts. We were wondering what the delay was and when should we expect the shirts to arrive.

There was no reply so on October 19th I send another very similar email to which there was no reply either. Nor was there an update on the site.

It has been nearly two months and we still haven’t received our shirts. We were wondering what the delay was and when should we expect the shirts to arrive.

This was a little frustrating. I decided to call them but because of the time difference it was difficult to find the right time to call. Find it I did though, early one morning before work I got through to Mr. Paterson. He wasn’t very apologetic but he explained that he was waiting for 1,000 or 2,000 ( I forget exactly) shirts to be ordered before he would get the first batch printed. It was here he told me that of the people who put their names down for a shirt only a few actually paid. I can understand that and I wouldn’t have minded waiting longer if I had to. The thing that annoyed me was that he neither replied to my emails or updated the website to let us know what was going on.  In fact, there was no update, that I can see, on the website from August 11th until finally the shipping notice was published on December 15th. At this time, they also announced that the store had closed.

It’s been a long time coming, but the shirts should arrive from the printer to MerchSquad on Dec 17th, and be shipped out by the 18th! Thanks to everyone for your support and your patience through this process. I know many of you have been wondering where your shirts are… and hopefully you’ll have them as an early Christmas present!

Also, you may have noticed that we closed the store. I am saddened that we needed to end the project before reaching our goal, but it looks like I simply bit off more than I could chew. In reality, it did not make sense to allow orders to trickle in, one or two at a time – as printing costs would have been too high to allow for much to be dontated.

Please check in after the Holidays, as I’ll be posting a little info about how much, and to whom we’ll be donating the profits. And again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who supported this project. You are a blessing.

The t-shirts haven’t arrived yet but when they do I will make another post and hopefully include the details from the donation they have promised above. Although I won’t hold my breath waiting for them.

My advice for anyone in any business is to keep the lines of communication open. If you are having some problems that will affect your customers in any way, you should let them know. In many cases they will be understanding. On the other hand people get very frustrated and angry when they are ignored.

DBH and Toys for Tots

The sale at Design by Humans may be over but there is another reason to buy some tees from there now. For every tee they sell they will donate $1 to Toys for Tots. Pretty cool.

They have also suggested that big changes are coming to Design by Humans and I wonder what they could be.  Below is a blurb from their newsletter.

January 5th. Everything changes. Well, maybe not everything, but pretty darn close.  Lets just say we have been listening to you in 2008 and have a few surprises in store for the new year.

Ten Bills Contribute to One Organization

Ten Bills is a popular t-shirt store than sells t-shirts for, that’s right, $10. All the t-shirts have a very urban feel and fans of the TV show, The Wire, might be interested to know that Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar Little) is a fan of this store  and apparently drops in sometimes to check out their new releases.

Well, back to the main point, Ten Bills are giving $1 from every t-shirt they sell to the One Campaign by purchasing a white One bracelet and mailing it to you along with each t-shirt you purchase. The proceeds of these bracelets and all merchandise from the One Store benefits the One Organization and the movement of the One Campaign directly. MORE INFO. Considering the t-shirts are only $10 to start with, I think that is pretty generous. But it goes further than that. Even if the t-shirt was $5, $7 or $10, or if you use a coupon, every t-shirt you buy will account for another dollar towards the One Campaign. And to help generate more funds, they are extending the $5 flat rate shipping option for the entire month of December.

I have to wonder if the kids pack, a great bargain that includes three kids t-shirts for $10, will also be included in this offer. If it is I can only imagine that Ten Bills will lose money on that deal especially if you use the coupon that they provide: a 10% off coupon that expires this Friday (Dec. 5). CODE: IGLOO.

Anyway, even if it wasn’t for a good cause Ten Bills is great deal and a great place to do some holiday shopping. It is good to see that they are feeling so generous even after forking out $39,000 to someone who either doesn’t understand humor or is a bit of an asshole.

An e-mail sendout to TenBills shoppers in 2007 announced the release of airplane keychains that would be included with the purchase of three $10 t-shirts. The declaration read, “Free Airplane with Purchase of $30!” One TenBills fan, however, expected a full-sized airplane and filed a lawsuit to get it. (Read more…)

Street Art Charity Tee from TeeFury

TeeFury are at their charity collaboration thing again and this time the charity is called Movember. All shirts at TeeFury cost $9 and are only available for 24 hours. Here is the blurb from TeeFury by Wotto, who organized it.

This collab has been a month in the making and featured 56 artists from the far corners of the world. It is also going to raise money for an awesome charity called MOVEMBER. This charity is vitally important and helps to raise awareness of Prostate Cancer which claims the lives of many men each year all over the world. Wanna read more about it and grow a stache? Do it here:

www.movember.com

Street art has influenced me from a very early age. It’s recent growth in popularity has meant that more than ever people are expressing themselves through using their local environment. This tee celebrates all styles of street art including stencils, stickers, characters, tags and graffitti. Love or hate it street art is more influencial in design than ever before.

So buy this tee for 2 reasons:

1. You will look awesome and cool

2. Because it helps to raise money for a charity that ultimately saves lives!

What more do you need to know?

Huge thanks to teefury for giving me creative freedom to do this project and massive thanks to every single lovely artist who contributed. You all = Awesome!

Next Page »