Hi Diana,
Thanks for the help!
On 12/04/2015 01:42 PM, Diana Connolly wrote:
> Hi there everyone! As Bryan threatened, I'm chiming in.
>
> Things I know:
> You want shirts before SCALE on Jan 21st.
> You would like colors to reflect the Snowdrift design guide.
> You would like people to actually wear the t-shirts.
>
> Things I don't know:
> What is your budget?
Well, our budget isn't as concrete as I'd like. We're scraping by with
limited resources and basically personal funds of the co-founders along
with whatever donations we get at this time.
We have additional expenses for stickers and other things for our booth
for SCALE, and we basically have around $2,000 buffer for these things.
Now, at some level, the shirts are offered to people as a reward for
additional donations, and we want them to be decent enough.
> How many shirts would you like to have on hand?
We have around 20 donors already expecting shirts and should be printing
5-10 more for primary team members. Beyond that, we will want to be
efficient and order extra shirts to have on hand, but it doesn't need to
be a lot.
We also want to have a situation where it's easy to place re-orders. We
might have initial run of shirts, then they are out there, we'll have
pictures of them, pictures of us wearing them, etc. and we can get other
donations and interest and then place larger order accordingly. We do
want to take advantage of bulk pricing within reason and can scrape
together funds to take advantage of that if it's clearly financially
superior to do so in the medium-term.
> How about a few women's cut shirts thrown in?
I really like the idea of having the *option* to order women's cuts at
least. We certainly can consider a few to have on hand if that seems
sensible, but
> Do you want organic/green production or the cheapest available?
>
We have to balance these decisions based on looking at actual options
and cost differences. We *do* care about quality and ethics. Our ideal
would be to use cooperatively-run business using
environmentally-friendly practices and great shirts people will really
love. We likely will make some compromises.
Here's a big deal for the value of local stuff: I have been to many
conferences, most shirts I have are fine but unremarkable. But the local
Write the Docs conference provided jerzy material shirts or something
like that which are nicer fit *and* simply amazingly comfortable and
attractive, really stands out.
I contacted the conference organizer, and he says:
"we use http://bluemillscreenprint.com/ -- they are great to work with,
and helped us pick out shirts. We used Next level 3600 & 3900 (men &
womens), I believe for the shirts. If you end up using them, let them
know I [Eric Holscher] sent ya :) "
That's a local Portland business, so we/you can go there and talk to
people in person, see shirts, etc.
> Some comments:
> Your website design guide is cohesive and clean, and for a lot of
> people, hard to wear. I've seen some comments suggesting white or blue
> shirts and here's what I think: There are a few colors that are
> universally wearable, including teal, true red, aubergine, and deep
> coral. The closest thing you have to any of those is your "dark blue",
> so let's work with that.
>
For reference, here's the designs we had already which were made before
anyone thought to consider the issue of shirt color:
https://snowdrift.coop/img/shirt-preview-12-04
On an interesting side-note, probably too expensive and impractical, but
a two-tone shirt like this might fly: https://imgur.com/KuKCaOZ
> Your "dark blue" is a muted, slightly warm, deep blue, definitely
> leaning towards a teal. Most t-shirt companies start with standard
> shirts and can customize ink colors more readily. So going with a "blue"
> shirt will most likely give you a true royal or navy, and that doesn't
> fit the bill. In general, I'd say that white t-shirts look like
> underwear, but for some people, it may work as a logo shirt if the
> fabric is thick enough.
> The real issue with getting people to wear your shirts is that what
> looks good on a grey eyed caucasian is not going to look good on a
> swarthy Italian. I think you need a minimum of two colors. Go for a
> cooler, lighter shirt and a darker, warmer shirt. I suggest a charcoal
> grey and white as shirt colors with judicious use of your guide colors
> and perhaps the addition of a warmer accent such as true red or chrome
> yellow on the charcoal. You have a lot of cute designs and a great logo.
> It would be easy to run with those designs and just pick the right colors.
>
Yeah, I agree shirt color is a real issue, and we just hadn't thought
about that until now.
I agree with the concern about white shirts and thing that a charcoal
grey and white could work. And I could see offering two color options,
so a second one that is dark colored.
> Bottom line:
> I'm willing to help and I'm sure I can come up with some great options!
> There are companies in
