Being the season for games, the German company, Spreadshirt, have put on a worldwide t-shirt treasure hunt. There is even a shirt lurking in Cambridge, UK. If you find a shirt you are expected to replace it with one of your own to keep the fun going. To be honest though, it is probably best to be first to a location otherwise you may end up with the skanky shirt someone was given free at a the ‘Ball Bearing Manufacturers International Expo 1987′ rather than the sexy designer t-shirt that was the starting prize!
One question though? Is this a genuine attempt to have some fun or a shameless ‘viral’ marketing ploy from a company desperate to look cool and hip by using Flickr maps? I’m undecided.
It is time to go home, turn off the lights, pick up all the bottles of wine and ‘Quality Street’ and juggle them on the train whilst dodging all the little kids that have come into work with ‘Daddy’ in the City, an old tradition around here.
Just a quick reminder, we’ll be running a skeleton crew between Xmas and New Year and will be all Indigo-go again on 2nd Jan 2007.
All that remains for me to do is to wish clients, suppliers and everyone a very Happy Christmas.
If you are into ‘geek’ t-shirts, take a trip over to the t-shirt post at wordpress.org, the open-source makers of Indigo’s blogging software. They are selling limited edition t-shirts.
Pip, of Unearth Travel (and blog) and resident of the Indigo office is having a birthday party tonight in some smart London suburb and Indigo are providing t-shirts as one of the free goodies for the guests. Iain Hollingshead, author and recent winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award with Twentysomething: The Quarter-Life Crisis of Jack Lancaster, has kindly provided the caption for the front of the tees.
The Indigo-go girls (plus Alex) will be joining the Unearth boys to celebrate Pip’s 25th and we would just like to wish him a happy ‘quarter-life crisis’!
Image Source: Creating Passionate Users
Kathy Sierra, over at the Creating Passionate Users blog, makes an excellent point which anyone buying t-shirts for an event should take notice of. In fact, if you don’t have time to read her post just check out her picture above which, as the platitude goes, speaks a thousand words. The fact is there are so many items of apparel, tailored for any shape and size, buyers can be more intelligent than simply ordering 2500 XL t-shirts. When ordering for you event make sure you cater for women and men of both small and large builds. As Kathy’s post make abundantly clear, it will make the receiver of the freebie feel cared for. [via and via]
With the prices for promotional ladies classic tees (e.g. Stedman Ladies or Continental Ladies) now almost on a par with mens promotional t-shirts, factoring in different styles will not greatly increase the total bill and in the long run will probably result in a better Return-On-Investment (ROI) as the staff wearing the tees will look and feel more professional and the customers getting the free t-shirts feel more valued. If you need help picking size ratios feel free to ask one of our team - we handle these product everyday, we often wear them (especially when cold in the office like it is today - we are all layered up with the samples from the ‘sweatshirt‘ shelf!) and so we genuinely can help you out.
American Apparel, the casual clothing chain whose socially conscious manufacturing, sexually charged advertising and snug-fitting T-shirts have generated a cultlike following, will be sold to a little-known investment firm for $382.5 million, according to people briefed on the matter.
Source: The New York Times, 18 Dec 2006Â
If you haven’t come across Google Trends yet, check it out. You can see and compare search patterns over time and key news articles are correlated with the graphs. Interesting to note summer 2005 saw a big peak in search volume for the t-shirt printing industry compared to 2006, which wasn’t as big as 2005 on the world’s biggest search engine. Anyone know why last summer was so popular? More concerts, elections or campaigns than 2006? Answers on a postcard to the usual address ;o)
What do you get a friend who is a t-shirt lover for Christmas other than a t-shirt, because if they have one more trendy,
screen printed, slogan tee in their wardrobe, it will explode? Well, a book may be a good way to go and
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli may be a good start. A four and half star Amazon rated book, telling you how that humble tee on you back started life in a cotton farm in Texas and all the economic and political hurdles that occur before you buy it. However, whilst the book may be more interesting than listening to your granny’s stories about how Christmas during the war was so different from these new fangled modern Christmases, it isn’t the most ‘wow-thanks-mate!’ gift for your t-shirt crazy pal.
100% Cotton: T-Shirt Graphics by Helen Walters may be more exciting for the design junkie and the author has followed up with two more books over the years, 200% Cotton and 300% Cotton (anyone guess what she might call the fourth?). Packed full of trendy designs and some t-shirt history it might be ideal.
Of course, I could just go to Threadless and buy my friend yet another trendy screen printed tee?
