T-shirts
Friday, August 24th, 2007So we gotta have t-shirts, right? Everybody wants a t-shirt, right? OK, I guess we’ll see.
Years ago, when I was playing in an obnoxious rock band, I had created a cute logo for our band name: Smoking Cow. It was a cartoon of a cow smoking (go figure). We had printed up a couple dozen t-shirts and sold them all. It seemed more people enjoyed our cute t-shirts more than our loud music.
When the time came to create a logo for Velma’s Wicked Delicious Kettle Corn, I wanted to work in a funny cartoon of something, just so it would look good on a t-shirt. My early prototypes can be seen here, here and here. I liked the concept of a Velma as a witch (kettle/witch), but I didn’t want people to think it was a Halloween only treat. I was never was totally happy with what I came up with, so I’ve dumped it for now.
In my mind, I’ll be selling a million of these things. Why pay $300 to have a bunch of shirts made when for the same amount, I can buy everything I need to MAKE the damn things myself. (I will be making hundreds of these things, right?) Bought a silk screening starter kit from silkscreeningsupplies.com.
The website LOOKS professional and their videos were helpful, but it took ’em ONE SOLID MONTH to get me everything after a bunch of emails and phone calls. SIGH Went with the one color press since I was just going to do the logo (red) on a yellow shirt. Normally you can spend a pile of more money doing multiple colors, but since I don’t have a cute Velma character to worry about, one color outta do it.
Bought a bunch of blank t-shirts from a Michaels art supply store. Banged out a logo on an acetate, burned the screens and printed up a couple dozen. They give you a nice ‘n detailed DVD that shows you all the steps, so it wasn’t too much of a biggie to pound these things out. The only wrinkle I discovered was that the inks in t-shirt silk screening don’t just air dry, you’ve got to heat cure the ink to about 350 degrees or else it’ll come apart in the wash. You get a cheapy Wagner paint remover heat gun with the kit, but it’s a pain in the ass to wave it over each shirt for about a minute to do its thing. I’ve got a two sided shirt (logo on the front, web address on the back), so multiply the drying time by two. We ended up tossing everything into our kitchen oven for a minute to finish off the curing. You’ve got to cough up another 300 bucks for the flash dryer if you want to bang these things out in any reasonable time. (I’ll have to get one of them too ‘cause these babies are gonna sell like…kettle corn.)
I eagerly hung them up for sale in our tent and waited for the rush. They’ve been on sale at our 2 farmers market locations all this week.
Total t-shirt sales so far: 0
Maybe they’ll sell better online. 
Steve and his kids certainly loved ‘em. Gee…maybe I do need a cute cartoon character. Everybody still loves getting the stupid refrigerator magnets. I’ll have to re-order some of them soon. Oh well.
Farmers market updates: They both hit a record number of sales this week! Framingham, which only has 4 other tents, has started to approach what we do in Springfield. Many people have told us that their friend insisted they come down and try it. Mostly repeat customers too.
