chaunt: t<3    |

In this post I’ll be looking at the tshirt store that’s not a tshirt store. Vintage Vantage sells tees, sure - some are damn cool too.

But cool is what this site does well. It also sells ‘things’, koozies, wallets, stickers, and more.

Think that’s cool so far? Think again. Because this site doesn’t just call itself Vintage for the hell of it, or because it sounds cool. These guys do vintage. An awesome range of real vintage tshirts from years gone by. They sell the cream of the crop on the site and some cheaper options via eBay auctions.  Anyone want to buy me this one for Christmas?  Go on, it’s only $2,300 …

I’d actually be interested to know which element of their site makes the most money - the mass produced tshirts, or the high price vintage.

I love niche sites, businesses, approaches.  It takes a lot of confidence, belief and ability to be successful with niches - most people play it safe and go for the mass market. But then they get lost in the masses and struggle to stand out.So when someone goes ’super-niche’ I have even more admiration, and that’s what Christine has done with her tshirt site Retro Campaigns. She’s not only gone for a politics niche, not just an American politics niche, she’s gone for old school, retro, US political campaigns niche. And what an amazing job she has done with the site - it looks beautiful, it’s information and most of all, it’s easy to buy shirts. The site is also full of interesting information, spotlights, clear FAQs and contact info. There are even Facebook and MySpace groups.

I must admit that, being a Brit, the tees don’t mean as much to me as I am sure they do to you Americans out there. But even I can recognise ‘cool’ when I see it.

It’s interesting, blogging about t-shirts.  I didn’t realise I would be contacted so often by people running their own t-shirt sites, selling their designs and generally trying to get some publicity.  I am actually going to start writing about them more often, but only when I think either the site or the deisgns are worth the time to.

One site I heard about today, Robit Studios, ticks both boxes, but particularly the site design.  I think the slogan “just another pretentious t-shirt company” on the homepage sums up the owner and his attitudes.  He also either knows how to design websites, or has employed a studio who know their stuff.Browsing the t-shirts couldn’t be easier.  The rollovers are large and clear, the key information is there (price!) - though perhaps available sizes would be a nice addition.  Likewise, the page with info about custom printing is clear and to the point.

So the designs themselves?  Well the range is quite limited at the moment, but what’s there is pretty cool.  I particularly like Karloff and Joust. 

Yup, well it’s a site that I thought got wayyyy too much attention when it launched, and probably still does.  But part of the reason is that it only shipped to the US, so wasn’t of as much interest to me.Well now, finally, TeeFury ships to other countries.  Not quite ‘international’ as it’s only the six shown below - but it’s a good start.

I am confused about the charge though. On the front page of the site it shows $5, but then clicking on the link shows two options:

We are offering 2 shipping options for international orders:
$9 ShippingUSPS First-Class Mail International (2-4 weeks)No tracking.and
$24 ShippingUSPS Priority Mail International (7-14 business days)Full Tracking.

Oh yeah, they also announced that they are ‘partnering’ with Design By Humans as of today.  What that means, I expect, is that they will utilise many of the DBH rejects.

I was just transported back in time 6 years.  Okay, not literally of course (everyone knows you can only travel forwards in time).

In need of some inspiration, I stuck “t-shirts” into Google to see which sites rank.  Of course, this is google.co.uk I am talking about, but it was still quite interesting.  Click for big.

 It’s interesting to see which sites rank.  I also tried at Google.com and perhaps not surprisingly, Threadless comes top.  But on the UK, it’s 8ball.co.uk, an okay site with okay tees (I don’t think I would ever order there, but there are worse).  They also appeared on the Google.com results (about #8), but I don’t know if that would be the case from the US (different data centres and all that)?

Anyway, I digress completely.  It was the site at #8 above that took me back - itiswhatitis.co.uk.  This was the first online tshirt site that caught my attention and I ordered from.  I thought my tee was so cool, wore it all the time and laughed when people didn’t get it.  Wearing a tee with an ‘in-joke” is kinda cool.  Of course now, I wouldn’t wear this for shit, though I do still own it.  The tee quality is also poor (I wonder if IIWII have changed that?).  What do you think?

Anyone else want to ’share’ how they started out with online tees?

Yeah so it’s been a while again with no posts - oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to bitch about my lack of posting any more.  Ah well.

Anyway, I finally caught up with some feeds in Google Reader and this tee caught my eye on Super Punch (awesome blog by the way, go subscribe).

I also like this one:

Available for $20 here (along with many other bunny related prints): http://www.luckybunny.net/news.html 

I just read a post by Andy on HideYourArms.com about Camiseteria.  He said it’s a site that people don’t blog about or mention enough, and he’s right.  The language barrier puts most people off, but as he says, it’s not too hard to work out what’s going on.  I reckon it’s because people can’t spell it!

I have gotten in the habit of reading tshirt blog posts (and vendors, and artists) almost daily in Google Reader.  I went through a mad phase a couple of weeks ago of adding any and every RSS feed I could find.  It’s a great way of browsing a large selection of sites regularly and I would thoroughly recommend it (if you want to subscribe to this blog, link is at the top of the page).

Anyway, to bring this post back to the subject (because there is one, honest … coming very soon), I noticed that one site that gets mentioned too much is teefury.com.  I guess it’s the nature of the site, fresh tee every day, limited stock, lots of buzz on sites like emptees, backing from DBH etc.  But I reckon I see about 8 blog posts every single day informing us about the new tee.

Take today’s for example, I don’t think it’s a great tee.  But there it is, multiple times in my reader.

Maybe in time the ‘buzz’ will quieten and it will become just another site, with tees of worth getting mentioned.

Maybe I take too little interest because the site doesn’t yet ship to the UK.  And because I think the concept could have been so much better if the tees were actually exclusive and one-off.  I’m not saying it’s a bad site at all, I love it.  It’s just way over-hyped at the moment.  In my opinion of course.

That’s right - you’ve had your payday recently, so there’s no excuse not to go and shell out a few bucks at DBH!  Shirts from $12.

Here’re a few extra cool designs heading to my basket:

I have to say, lots of people write about Busted Tees and claim it’s awesome, but I’ve never been a fan - their tees seem a bit childish and the kind of designs that get thrown up on Cafepress etc.  Not saying they don’t have appeal (mass at that), they just aren’t my style on the whole.

However, when I saw on tee junction that Busted have teamed up with someecards.com I almost fell off my chair.  someecards.com is one of my favourite sites of all time on t’internet.  I find its style hilarious.

So go check out some of the tees here:

They aren’t printing many designs to start with (just 8), but I hope they will expand the list.  Here are a couple of good ones though: