March 17, 2006

"saturday shirts"

im-not-blogging-this.jpg

Got a new t-shirt design up. The blurb reads like this:

Each gapingvoid 'Saturday Shirt' is from a limited edition (never to exceed 200 t-shirts). It will be offered on a Saturday and is available for pre-order for one week only. Place your pre-order by midnight (GMT) on following Friday. Once the deadline has past, that's it, they're gone. I won't be reprinting the design.
The idea is to not only keep them limited edition [like we said, we'll never exceed 200 shirts of one design], but to limit the time they're available. A new design will come out on a Saturday, and people will have a week to pre-order one. After a week, the shirt design is taken off the market.

This pre-order allows us to know exactly how many shirts we have to print, saving us the headache of unsold stock. It also allows us to come up with more new designs, more often.

We were going to launch tomorrow, but then we thought, what the heck.

I hope you like the new design. Thanks.

[PS:] The traditional Flickr & Technorati tag for this enterprise is "gapingshirts".

Posted by hugh macleod at March 17, 2006 2:50 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I showed one of your quotes in my SXSW slides ("...infinte") and a little later I meet a guy wearing the shirt with that quote. I'm glad you've got a new one up... but we want MORE!! And please, please, please consider making a few in attractive, *small* (and more, um, form-fitting) girl-style shirts. I have your smallest size and it's still way too big for me. (Not that I'd wear it, though -- the first one's just for display ; )

Posted by: Kathy Sierra at March 17, 2006 9:20 PM

Good idea, Hugh - this will keep the designs turning over more quickly. I got two of the first ones, but didn't really want the next ones - the idea that I only have to wait a week before another choice is available will probably have me buying more often.

Posted by: Ric at March 18, 2006 1:52 AM

Once more you are using the scarcity of product as a selling point. 'Get your run of 200 before they run out!" is the subtext. This seems to run counter to your ideas that blogging destroys old marketing strategies - yet here you are using one of those 'old ideas'.

I just think you would be better off concentrating on the excellent quality of the shirts (because they are very high quality).

Meh, but what do I know?

(Last time I mentioned this with respect to English Cut, the answer you gave me made it seem that I'm not good enough to be sold to... I'm guessing that this isn't what you meant).

Posted by: Tom Reynolds at March 18, 2006 6:28 PM

Never confuse a bishop with a pawn, Tom ;-)

Posted by: Hugh MacLeod at March 18, 2006 9:39 PM

Eh?

(Now you're just trying to fuck around with my head...go on...admit it!)

:)

Posted by: Tom Reynolds at March 19, 2006 5:33 PM

;-)

Posted by: Hugh MacLeod at March 22, 2006 10:04 AM