Posted by
Mongo
Here's the second thing you need to be a successful shirt shop owner.
DISCIPLINE
Yes Detective Kimble, I lack discipline. In fact, I am probably borderline ADHD and have a hard time….ooh, squirrel! Sorry. As I was saying, you need a little discipline in your work. Since this is not my primary job it takes lower precedence than going to work every day, taking out the garbage and cleaning up cat barf. And because I run four shops, the discipline it takes to create a design, come up with a plan to implement it and then blast it out to all four sites can take a few hours and that doesn’t even account for the possibility that I may have to go harvest my crops, take out a rival mafia, or beat my friends’ Bejewled Blitz scores. So, yeah, sometimes I get around to posting designs or even posting… blog… posts when I can get to them.
But if you truly want to be successful you need to harness some of that energy every day and dedicate it to work on your business. Stephen King has said he writes 2000 words a day and will not stop until he hits that number. If you can find the discipline to work on three new designs per day or three new blog posts a day or a handful of twitter posts. You can start the wheels churning on the marketing engine. But be warned, much like a diet or exercise regimen, you need to keep to it or your body will become mush. The same goes for business, once you commit to that kind of discipline you need to keep it going, especially if you have number three on the list. That's in the next post.
Posted by
Mongo
Actually, this could probably apply to any business you may be thinking of starting. But for my purposes, I tend to stay within the world of my shirt shops. You can apply these Five Things to your own life or think I’m totally missing the mark. Either way, live with it. Loooove yoooou!
I’ve blogged before about being successful. Am I? I think so. Why? Because I operate a business that makes money above and beyond any overhead I have. Am I rich? No. In fact I will probably never be rich based on my sales and effort alone. Who’s fault is that? To quote Van Hagar, “Mine All Mine.” The truth of the matter is that I have been totally wasting sales potential since day one of my first store on CafePress. Why? Because I didn’t think it would work. That brings us to the first and foremost thing you need to be a success.
FAITH
This isn’t about religion or pushing a button every 108 minutes. This is about trusting yourself and having faith that you can smash through any ceilings that may have been placed above you. I didn’t have faith in my ability to make a sale because I’m a Doubting Thomas. I look at the world and the Internet as being 90% scam worthy with the remaining 10% being legitimate opportunities to make money from running a business. After all, the last couple of years have shown us that making money is only for schemers on Wall Street who do shady business deals and get huge bonuses for selling their souls. In the long run, is that really a good thing?
So, when I stepped up to the plate and clicked “Yes” on creating my first premium shop on CafePress, I gave it two weeks to produce some results. After that I would have to start paying to have that premium shop. Had I been faithful, I would have been in it for the long haul and worked extra hard to make sure I could not fail. But no, I simply closed my eyes and put luck in the driver’s seat. In those first 14 days I had made enough to pay for an entire year of premium service. I couldn’t believe it. And then Yoda said to me, “That is why you fail.”
Yep, had I been a little more faithful I could have been planning the word domination of Mongo from day one. Now, I’m trying to hold onto Oceania while the rest of the Risk board is filling up with other players’ armies. Like I said, it’s my own fault. I do this more for fun than a full time job. I already have one of those and it is the complete opposite of this kind of work. My work is done in a cube. My business is done in a recliner with the television on, scoping out pop culture lightning to capture in a bottle. Perhaps if the environments were switched I would be more successful. Regardless, I guess I need more of the second thing on the list.
What's
Number Two?
Posted by
Mongo
What kind of designer are you? Do you go with the original artistic approach where you simply design your own images and add them to shirts? Do you try and mimic or allude to pop culture themes from television and movies? (For example: The Overlook Hotel or Nakatomi Industries) Or do you try and be absurdist and catchy? Sometimes I try to be all three and find myself in a disorganized mess. Truthfully, I should have reorganized my stores to offer one category of designs and opened additional ones for different styles. In other words, one store dedicated to movie parodies or nods, one for geek wear, and so forth. In terms of stores, Zazzle and Skreened allow you to have multiple shops on one account at no extra charge. CafePress does too if you are using a basic service. If you are paying for a premium shop then you are limited to 500 sections per shop and must pay for another premium store. We’re getting off topic.
So, in one of my imagined niche stores I might want to feature funny or absurd designs based around a single style. That style is rapidly becoming a staple of the “funny t-shirts” market. It’s usage of what could be considered “retro clipart.” You know those Americana type images from the 40s and 50s of the guy holding a cup of coffee or woman wearing the apron. The simplicity of these images are usually coupled with absurd phrasings. The kind of thing that makes no sense when you imagine the visage of something like a 50s Leave It To Beaver Father saying he’s “pretty gangsta.” Somebody thought it would be funny to pair up these contrasting styles and managed to come up with something that was funny at first but then became easily imitated and often duplicated on a variety of topics. Hey, I’ve done it. But I try to be a little bit more absurd or clever. Sometimes I come up with the funny. Sometimes I don’t. But I became obsessed with jumping on the sell out bandwagon.
I knew it was pretty bad when I just started looking at all the clip art I had and tried to make up something funny to go with any picture. But, the more I tried to be creative and original in my designs, the more I found myself copying others or at least approaching their idea from a completely different angle. I even started looking for fonts that were comprised of retro looking clip art from the 50s. Remember, folks, dingbats are not a toy. I was becoming a cliché. Then a stroke of brilliance came over me. Why not parody the cliché?
This shirt is more for designers and shopkeepers who get the joke. You have to be familiar with the shirt market to know what I mean or at least have a sense of humor that loves a good parody. With that I give you…
Funny Clip Art Cliché
To get a sense of where I’ve been overdoing it. Here’s a few of my clichéd ideas over the past few months. I didn’t realize how bad I’d become until I started looking through my portfolio. And yes, I just realized how pretentious that made me sound. Sorry, my folders.
Tweet Your Kids About Drugs
This was one of the first clip art inspired designs I did. I looked at it as a melding of Web 2.0 and the PSA style of talking to your kids about drugs with retro pop art. Unfortunately, the original design for the dark shirts were simply a negative image because I hadn’t discovered the easy way of removing the primary color from images that I spoke of in a previous post.
I Speak Jive
Oh, look, I recycled my own image to use in a movie quote design. It’s a quote from Airplane! Since Barbara Billingsley was in Airplane as the Jive Talking Passenger I thought what better way to contrast the idea of a 1950s television icon speaking jive then to actually use an image that resembled June Cleaver’s style?
Lent Is For Quitters
Ahem… See, I told you I was getting desperate. Here we have the same frickin’ image of that 50s housewife. I did this for Easter as a riff on the “Rehab is for quitters” motif.
Methlete
I saw a shirt from another site that sported, what looked to be, a 1950s era white picket fence house with a 1950s type guy making the comment “Ask me about my meth lab!” I thought it was somewhat funny and decided to parody that idea with the Mathlete idea. So, I coupled a retro styled chemistry set and scientist with the Athletic team style of font.
Biden F Bomb
This one was typical but a short lived story about VP Joe Biden dropping the F Bomb into Obama’s open mic after the Health Care Bill Passed. I thought if you are going to go opposite ends of the spectrum, why not have a wholesome looking 50s style nurse say Health Care is a big f**king deal?” This one actually sold a few before the story died down. And I at least offered it in the NSFW version as well as the censored version just in case you didn’t want to offend people.
Now Available In Medicated
I'd seen a few clip art style shirts with the cocktail glass guy saying, "Also Available In Sober!" That's pretty funny but let's take it one step further and say that you are now taking medication that allows you to be socially interactive without the general public afraid to be around you and sharp objects. Hence the 1950s style of advertisement touting that you are now available in medicated form.
The Ovechkin
After the Washington Capitals’ disappointing loss to Montreal in the playoffs, Pittsburghers simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief and started joking about Ovie’s inability to get a Stanley Cup. This joke got passed around in the process, “Guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for an Ovechkin. The bartender says, ‘What’s an Ovechkin?’ The guy says, ‘It’s a White Russian without a cup.’” So, I took the joke and reworked it with an image of a retro looking bartender and the punch line. Sold three right off the bat.
Tweet This Ochocinco
This was in response to Chad Johnson saying he was going to put up twitter posts while on the field. This guy continues to be a show off yet rarely scores a touchdown when playing Pittsburgh. I refuse to call him Ochocinco because not only is it a pretentious douche nozzle type move, the idiot didn’t even use the correct translation for his jersey number, 85. Ochocinco is 8 5. The correct translation… according to Babel Fish is ochenta y cinco. Congratulations, you’re stupid in two languages.
Since I’m a diehard Steelers fan anyway, I figured why not combine my thoughts with some retro looking bird flipping.
So, there you have a long winded post about the wonders of clip art cliché shirts.
