Indie Threads

January 11th, 2008 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: Favorite Shirt of ’07

I’ve seen the blogs with the “Favorite Shirts of ’07″ but I’m (not really) going to shake things up!

What’s your favorite shirt from the year 2007?

My response is in the comments.

December 15th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: Packaging

I’m interested in taking my packaging a step up from just stuffing a t-shirt into a padded mailer and sending it out, but I’m not sure what I’d like to do. I want it to still be affordable and look good. I feel like I’m offering a good product and I’m making myself look a little sketchy by shipping like this.

What do you, as a consumer expect when you get a shirt in the mail packaging wise? And, what do you, as a t-shirt company do to make your packaging stand out from the crowd?

December 5th, 2007 by Brad

Shopping Cart Software?

With the exception of the last few months, I have been using a shopping cart program I pretty much wrote on my own for my shirts at Quixotic. It wasn’t quite cutting it with what I wanted and I was too lazy to code anything out, so I switched over to a wordpress plugin that I found. It seemed pretty good at first but it lacked a few things that seemed pretty common. They said they were working on features I wanted so I stuck it out and sure enough they’re all there now. However, it’s still pretty buggy.

I’ve been looking at some other shopping cart software lately to see if I can get rid of the buggy and get awesome features. The most promising one I’ve found seems to be one I’ve never heard of. It’s called Magento. It looks like it’s got a ton of customizable features with all kinds of shipping and payment processing stuff. …Almost too much for what I need. It looks way better than Zen Cart and OsCommerce. Oh, and it’s completely free and open source. I’m considering using it, but haven’t fully decided yet.

So, here’s my question: Do any of you use specific shopping cart software? If so, what one? Or, do you prefer paypal buy it now buttons or something similar?

October 27th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: Kids shirts?

I’ve recently been thinking about running some kids shirts. I know that Burby and probably a few other folks on this site do or at least have the idea to.

My question for you is, Do you think there is a good market out there for indie tee companies to sell kids shirts?

October 19th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: New Features for Indie Threads?

Hey guys,

Sorry I’ve been absent the past couple weeks, but as I said in the last post I’m working on redesigning the site from the ground up. I’ve also been pretty busy with Quixotic.

I’m trying to make Indie Threads the best it can be and in order to do that, I need your honest opinions. I’m looking into adding new features to the site but I’m not sure what would actually be appreciated and what would be ignored. I’ve thought about doing something where you can send messages to your fans, adding a critique section where you can post ideas for designs you’re working on and have other members tell you if it’s ready for printing or if it needs work, and things like that.

As you already know, because I posted about it back in July, I’m working on getting the blog section to run with WordPress. I’ve finally figured out how to import all the posts into it without having to manually copy and paste each entry and all it’s comments, but I’ll still have to manually change the author of the post. I’ve almost got it to work with all the user pictures but I’ve still got a few bugs to work out. But, it’s coming along.

So, my question to you, the members of this community, what would you like to see added to Indie Threads?

August 25th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: Movie Quotes

How do you feel about companies that seem to make mostly t-shirts with quotes from movies on them?

I can’t be one to talk too much, considering one of the shirts I sell at Quixotic is a quote from the Colbert Report, but I kind of feel that it’s not fair. I don’t feel that they put hardly any thought into the product they’re selling and just mooching of what the public already obviously likes.

What do you think?

August 10th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion Question: What if…

I’ve been trying to think of a question involving American Apparel since a lot of people have their different opinions on it. I’ve been trying to think of something pretty much all week and not coming up with anything all that great, but one just popped in my head that I think would be interesting.

What do you think it would be like if American Apparel didn’t exist? Do you think there would be as many independent t-shirt shops? Do you think there would be another sweatshop free brand as big as AA in their place? What do you think?

July 27th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion Question: Where did you start?

Okay, this is pretty much just a question for those of us who have our own shops. Sorry to everyone else, but at least you might get a little bit of a back story to your favorite thread trafficker.

When I was about 15 or so, I decided that I wanted to start a clothing company. The idea was that I’d come up with some cool designs and give some of the money each shirt raised to charity. I figured people would be more willing to fork over some of their hard earned cash if they were getting something cool to wear and helping a good cause at the same time.

Next, I decided what kind of charity I’d want to give to. I was going to save the Pandas. I’m not entirely sure why that’s what I chose, but it was. I think it might have been because this was all still pretty new to me and I found a dingbat font called Pandamonium and it was a bunch of cute little cartoon pandas and figured that was an easy way to get my foot in the door.

Now that I had my goal, I needed to raise some money to make the cure for the Pandas. In order to do this, I started making some 1 1/4 inch pins with the “Badge-a-minit” button maker my girlfriend had bought me for my birthday. I had various pin designs and eventually, I had enough money to go through a rather expensive online screen printer that supplied a rather boxy Hanes Beefy T.

Interestingly enough, the shirt didn’t have a panda on it. Instead it had a turtle walking a snail and text that said, “Slow Down”. I never even raised a cent towards the pandas.

That is pretty much the story of how I started in this business. How/why did you get your start?

Oh, and don’t forget to come up with some interview questions for Dan from Sharpshirter.

June 8th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: For the non-color blind

I’m going to keep it pretty simple this weekend.

What’s your favorite t-shirt color?

I, personally, like both brown and blue. I’ve got quite a few of those colors in the closet.

May 11th, 2007 by Brad

Weekend Discussion: What was your gateway?

Back when I first started my first clothing company, Heart on Sleeve, in 2003 there weren’t really as many clothing companies out as there are now. There were quite a few, don’t get me wrong… just not quite as many. The ones that I found back then were The Cotton Factory, Random Shirts and other companies like that. I thought I found the cream of the crop. I was at the top of the underground t-shirt mountain. …Only not really. But if it weren’t for those companies I wouldn’t know about nearly any of the ones I do now.

So, that being said, what was the first indie clothing company you knew about?