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.

FiftyThousandShirts.com Store Open

About three months ago I told you about the guys over at Fifty Thousand Shirts attempting to raise money to help out the victims of the earthquake that devastated China earlier this year. Their idea was to sell t-shirts (50,000 of them) and hand over all the profits (about $1,000,000) to a relevant charity. It took a while to get the shirts out as there were a few hiccups along the way but they are finally on sale. So if you are feeling charitable please head over there and grab yourself a shirt or two.

Obviously I don’t have my t-shirts yet but they look pretty nice and they are for a good cause. Recently though I have been thinking about this charity and it is a nice thing to do and one million dollars seems like a lot of money and should help a lot of people. Then I think about the $58 billion that I heard were spent on the Olympics in China and I think again. Reduce that figure to $57 billion and you could have helped a thousand time more people that this charity will. Something to think about.

Fifty Thousand Shirts – Still Counting

In a previous post I told you about fiftythousandshirts.com, a web site where they are trying to raise one million dollars from the sale of 50,000 t-shirts to be send to China as relief for victims of the Earthquake. Even though the store is not open yet there are already pre-orders for over 500 shirts. That’s a lot but it is still only 1% of the total.

The store will be open this week but before printing starts fiftythousandshirts.com needs 200 names on the wall so if you have been waiting, now is the time to go over there and reserve you t-shirt and your place on the wall.

Below is a video produced to help spread the word. It is hosted on youtube so you can help spread the word by voting or commenting on it, by posting it on your blog or emailing it to your friends or simply by watching it. Every little bit helps. The song is by Mat Kearney who graciously allowed his song to be used for this noble cause.

Fifty Thousand Shirts

I came across FiftyThousandShirts.com on the Tcritic and I think it is a noble cause. The plan is to sell 50,000 t-shirts to raise $1,000,000 for the people affected by the earthquake in China. The number of people who died has already surpassed 50,000 and the number of people made homeless by the quake is estimated at 5 million. By buying one of these shirts you not only get to help some people you also get a pretty cool shirt. And if that wasn’t enough, you also get your name on the Wall (a list of purchasers). The shirts are individually numbered and cost just $25 plus shipping and handling. They hope to send $20 from each sale to China.

If you have a blog I urge you to post about this. It doesn’t need to be a t-shirt blog just spread the word. You can also email your friends and family. The store is not open yet but you can pre-order your t-shirts now and you will be contacted when the store opens. Your name will be put on the board too.