Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Free T-shirt Deal approved by Ting Cell Phone service provider for cross promotion

I've been looking for a product that I could promote with a Free T-shirt deal online and I have finally found it with the Ting Mobile Phone Provider. Currently I have an affiliate relationship with the cell phone service provider and if a potential customer clicks on the link I provide, like this one here: https://ting.com/r/vtimr91 then the user will get a $50 discount coupon to be applied to their service. The details of the service can also be found at that link. In turn I would receive a credit for encouraging potential customers to check out the phone plans that Ting offers. My idea is to also provide a free t-shirt to the users who actually convert and sign up for the Ting service as an added bonus. Check out the details of this free t-shirt deal here: http://nocontractphoneservices.com/free_t_shirt_offer_with_Ting_Cell_Phone_Service.html or go here to read more about the No Contract Phone Plans that Ting offers.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

List of T-shirt Design interface updates

The following is a list of links to my updated t-shirt design interface. These webpages are hosted on ekay.com and serve as a based for the designs sold by yque.com and Y-que Trading post in Los Angeles. I have been working on a T-shirt app with my son and except for the descriptions and specifications that are required by the Android App Marketplace it is ready to go, so I have been updating the design interface online so that it will match this App. The entrance page for the t-shirt designs is at Ekay.com and basically it is a grid of current designs that we have available in Los Angeles. The idea is to offer a variety of colors of shirts for customers to preview how any particular graphic t-shirt design will look on a variety of shirts.
These images lead to the design interface where the background shirt can be changed. If someone clicks the text under the graphic of the design then it will take them to the shopping cart online where they can purchase the t-shirt. Production time is still an issue because our normal turnaround time for blank t-shirt orders is 3-4 days, but since these shirts have to be made to order it is typically 1-2 weeks. I will work on this as the traffic picks up and if the designs seem to be selling more, but for now it is faster if the stock color, the one shown on the shopping cart, is the color that is ordered. Still 1-2 weeks for a made-to-order tshirt seems pretty good to me. Here is the list of active designs: Pluto Never Forget in black ink for light t-shirts Powered by Pancakes t-shirt Generic Turntable Record Player t-shirt Moog Keyboard t-shirt Platypus T-shirt design Available for Filming t-shirt Guitar Amplifier t-shirt on black and so on. I'll add more links later, but this should give you the idea. The t-shirt app we are making is basically a phone version of the shirt color changing mechanism and it will allow the user to flip through the colors quickly by tapping and change the design by swiping the screen.

Monday, May 7, 2012

T-shirts without tags - Is there such a thing?

A common request I get is for t-shirts without tags. Although I sell several styles of shirts that have tear-away tags, removable labels inside the collar, some of the shirts on the market that are called "tagless" in fact have tags that are laminated inside the collar. These transfer printed tags in the collar cannot be removed and although they are tagless there is no way to get rid of the company name that identifies the garment. I am very sorry, but when I get request for shirts with absolutely no tags, I have taken to asking the potential customer, "How will you know what you have?" Most customers haven't considered this problem, but today I had a customer respond with, "I'll just compare them to each other and figure out what size they are". Good idea if you want to waste all your time sorting shirts. I do sympathize with the customer in this situation because even tags that are removable they require some work and effort to cleanly remove the label. Any label can be cut out of a shirt, but yes, there is going to be some remnant of the tag in the shirt. Unless you have a seamstress that is willing to cut the threads inside the collar cleanly this would be way more trouble than it is worth. My opinion is that you just have to be crafty in this situation and it is nearly impossible to imitate a large company product effect by removing and sewing in your own labels. May people cut or remove the tags and then print inside the collar the size and the name they want to represent. This works, but it is the same work and cost of doing a one-color print on the front or back of a shirt. Economically this doesn't seem like a good idea, but for style reasons some people will spend the money to do this. Keep in mind you have to have a layout for each size of the shirts you are printing, so you need a design for the small, medium, large, xlarge...

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Y-Que adds Bandito image and redesigns Ekay t-shirt design interface

This new image is an example of the simple printing that Y-Que does, but if you go to Ekay.com you can see the modified t-shirt design interface and see how this design looks on a wide range of t-shirt colors.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Gildan buys Anvil - How does this affect you?

Gildan buys Anvil for approximately 90 million. Sounds like chump change for a major brand, but what do I know. Things may have been tougher for Anvil than we realized. Although I like and promote many of their shirts, I didn't think they were a takeover target. If anything I considered Anvil to be a bit of an upstart with innovative lines attempting to do for t-shirts what American Apparel has done for marketing. The construction is always missing something with Anvil, but the same can be said for Gildan t-shirts. I sell more Gildan t-shirts than I do Anvil, but that is mostly a price issue. I just hope that some of the new lines of organic t-shirts are not discontinued. Also, I am hopeful that the new USA made Anvil shirt gets off the ground with more production so there can be more inventory in the pipeline. Better Gildan did this than anyone else.