
We're done working with clients - nathanperetic
http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/
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normloman
Who exactly is buying all these t shirts? I never see shirts like these when
I'm walking down the street.

~~~
pjungwir
That was my thought exactly. But I can imagine there is room for a "ThinkGeek
for designers." Their second site is already a move beyond T-shirts into
patches, hats, and other things. I guess they will find out!

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samspenc
And here I was thinking they were tired of dealing with clients.

~~~
rhizome
"and we’re not ruling out the occasional consulting gig under the right
circumstances"

They're not accepting new projects, except for when they are.

~~~
nathanperetic
Our goal for the rest of the year is to cover our costs by working exclusively
on United Pixelworkers and Cotton Bureau. If we haven't quite bridged the gap,
we might take on brief, time-blocked consulting work after the holidays. This
would be a big, big change from how we've operated for the past four years.
All the previous work we did was flat-fee, project. We'd work with a client
from strategy to launch. The consulting we were referring to in this would be
a 20 or 30 hour, one week engagement and it might not result in us writing a
single line of code or opening Photoshop/Illustrator.

We have a couple options for staying in business if United Pixelworkers and
Cotton Bureau don't grow fast enough to sustain us. We'd prefer not to need to
explore those options, but I hope you can understand why we need to leave that
door open. We'd be very sad if we had to stop doing what we enjoy because we
ran out of money, and a lot of other people would be too.

~~~
rhizome
I'm sure you can see the issue with the Upworthy-style title, though.

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peteretep
I am amazed there is real money in printed t-shirts, but there clearly is.

~~~
sethrin
Speaking as a former screen printer, the material costs are very low, except
for very elaborate prints: clear or glitter inks, adhesive and foil, partially
embroidered shirts, water-based inks with or without burning out the
underlying dye in the shirt itself, and certain gradient effects like the Zune
logo that required a very steady hand and some experience to produce. The last
was my favorite; the complex prints were mostly to the demands of Vegas
casinos.

With the caveat that my career was interesting but fairly brief, I believe
that I may offer a cost analysis of what exactly the profit potential is here.
The shirts and inks themselves cost a pittance, less than five dollars each as
a rule. Production equipment can be moderately expensive and requires a
moderate amount of warehouse space, but the highest operating cost is almost
certainly going to be the Art department. Complex prints take lots of
expensive man-hours and back-and-forth with clients to produce, and even
simple ones need someone with a bit of domain knowledge to produce. Most
designs will be spot colors rather than CMYK, because CMYK tends to look like
your grandma's Christmas sweatshirt rather than e.g. a photo.

So, if you can outsource half your art department, and avoid complex designs,
and avoid the need for a lot of expensive machinery, you're pretty much where
these guys are at. Your big competition is likely to be Chinese, and so the
real mass market (Target, Wal Mart, etc) is more or less out of reach, so if
you can focus more on smaller runs of boutique prints then you can join the
handful of other companies competing in this space, and make -- as other
poster suggested -- a decent profit, an enjoyable product, and a career, but
not likely a staggering amount of wealth.

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louniks
"We’ve re-built that thing from the ground up almost half-a-dozen times over
the past few years."

Surely that's not a good thing. Surely.

~~~
manmal
What do you mean? I don't grasp your intention. Rebuilding from scratch is not
always bad. While Joel (on Software) said that it's the worst idea ever, there
surely are situations where it makes sense. E.g. if your codebase is so rotten
(from too many quick fixes on the initial MVP) that it's quicker to just rinse
and repeat.

~~~
louniks
If situations where it makes sense to do a full rebuild come up 6 times in the
space of a few years, to me that indicates a deeper problem.

~~~
mrzor
As they were previously running client jobs, I can see an attractive side to
building up the team experience on new tech using their in-house project
rather than on client projects.

Put otherwise, in their previous line of business, it matters to be current
with regards to state-of-the-art application development. Where's the harm in
experimenting with your 'on the side' app?

~~~
nathanperetic
Exactly. Pixelworkers was always a playground for us. Cotton Bureau was
explicitly started with the intention of it becoming a business.

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pan69
I they can ensure consistency over time in t-shirt quality and size I might
become a customer for life.

~~~
nathanperetic
How do you mean? We don't manufacture the shirts we use (yet), but I suppose
we're open to it if the demand is there. Do you know anyone that's doing it
well?

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pan69
Hi. Sorry for the typo in my previous post. It should have started with
"If...".

What I mean is, sometimes you buy a great quality shirt from a store but the
next year at the same store, when they have new a new line of shirts, the
quality of the textile is rubbish. This is what I mean with consistent quality
which is especially important since I order of the net and I can't check the
quality of the textile before buying.

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schenecstasy
Cotton Bureau shirts are really high quality, was surprised by that.

~~~
nathanperetic
Thanks! We use exclusively American Apparel right now, but there are obvious
reasons why we don't want to do that forever. We're planning to add additional
(high-quality only) shirt styles and manufacturers.

