A T-Shirt Conundrum...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Okay, so while Adam is finishing up Reverence, I’ve been working on a new t-shirt design, as we get a lot of requests for t-shirts since we ran out. I wanted to do something that was as high-quality as a t-shirt could be, and based my design accordingly. I got a bit of sticker shock in the ol’ email this morning; my price quote worked out to where we’d have to sell the shirts for $30 each, where our last ones were only $20.
Now, that does sound like a bit of coin, but consider that these would be as high-quality as a t-shirt can be, American Apparel tees with 6 spot colors done in chino-base ink. If you’ve fingered an art tee in one of the many “urban vinyl” toy stores cropping up in cooler cities around the world, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and the prices are commensurate with those sorts of t-shirts.
So, my question is thus: are you, our loyal customers, willing to pay $30 for a high-quality AD t-shirt? I can knock down the design quite a bit, and get the same shirts I’ve printed thousands and thousands of over the years, and charge $20 for them, and everyone would be happy, but in this case I kind of wanted to go the extra mile. Well, the extra mile is expensive, it seems. Obviously, we have to pay for these up front, so I don’t want to do so unless you guys are interested in the best-of-the-best kind of thing; if you’d be happy with the typical t-shirt (and don’t get me wrong here, because our normal shirts are incredibly high quality) then I’ll just do another run of our last shirt and call it a day.
26 comments
I'm interested...
I was gonna say the last shirts were pretty badass, I'd get one of those.
But, if its really gonna be that much cooler, its only 10 bucks. more, so that wouldn't be a big deal.
If I switched the ink from chino to plastisol, we'd actually save quite a bit of money, and we could charge $25 or thereabouts. It wouldn't be that _really_ nice print you see on the best t-shirts, but it'd be nice. We were planning on using the "silver" American Apparel t-shirt, which you can see here:
http://www.americanapparelstore.com/2001.html#i
Another design I'm considering is this Melange one, in the Blue/Navy coloration:
http://www.americanapparelstore.com/m434.html#i
I own quite a few American Apparel t-shirts, and they're as nice as a t-shirt gets, IMO. And I've seen a few (tens of thousands) in my time.
-CR
I vote you stick with the high quality, mostly because that just seems to be the idiom around here.
Working in print myself, I'd be curious to see what you'd design using 2-3 colors + black. Six color just seems like overkill for a T-shirt. Then again I'm a big fan of self-imposed limitations when it comes to art/design.
Wait a minute. Those colors you named off don't sound like "Black".
I'm a big AD fan, and I bought one of the first run of shirts. It's a quality shirt (certainly well above average) and I like it.
But honestly, if you had been selling the $30 shirt then, I think I would have passed. I appreciate your desire to offer apparel of Even Higher Quality, but even a t-shirt of Absolute Maximum Quality is still a t-shirt, and I have a hard time shelling out that kind of money for a t-shirt--particularly when it's for sale online, denying me the ability to see and feel its quality firsthand.
I'd like to offer a minor criticism, not to pick on your work Chris, but because I truly care: To my eye, the "digital dirt" addition, in terms of both word choice and font choice, cheapens the design. To be sure, AD plugs offer a number of effective ways to dirty up one's tracks, but the ever-broadening line of products offers so much more than that, I feel using "digital dirt" as a slogan is selling yourself rather short. Moreover, the name Audio Damage carries plenty of modest irony without augmenting it with more of the same.
And, respectfully, the pretty script font is just god awful.
Just my two cents! You guys have a lifelong user and supporter in me regardless of what you put on a t-shirt.
c.
i might have missed where you said this, but how big is that logo going to be on the shirt?
The entire image is 6.5" x 9.5". So biggish but not huge.
I'll do some other mockups tonight once it cools off in my studio. (Air conditioning is basically non-existant in Oregon, so I have to take the afternoons off in high summer.) I'll take out the "digital dirt" and see where we're at.
-CR
I say go with the higher cost shirt. If I have to buy a t-shirt I want to go for the highest quality one (and I would buy that one). That said, if there is no real quality difference, then go cheap!
BTW blinkman is right about the "Digital Dirt" at the bottom. It seems out of place.
i would happily pay 30 bux. the image is cool, and i've got enough cheap tshirts. step up to flavor country.
Heavens, if y'all will pay $30 for an AD T-shirt, maybe we should raise the prices of our software...
;-)
--Adam
Another lifelong AD user and supporter here. I'm gonna have to agree with Blinkman about the "Digital Dirt" though.
I don't think 30 bucks is too much for a t-shirt. But, I'm sure there are tons of people out there with the following mentality: "With an extra 10 bucks, I can get a Lexi 'verb plug"...
Just do another run of the last one! it'd be the wise thing to do IMO.
- BMU
Adam feels that $30 t-shirts are completely out of line, which is what prompted this entire line of questioning in the first place. I pointed out to him that most of the t-shirts in the stores I shop in are much more than that, and he thought I was some kind of crazy person.
In any case, I'm still pondering it; the reason I don't want to do a run like the last shirt is that the ink is so fucking thick, it's uncomfortable to wear on stage or in the summer. A Hanes 100% cotton Beefy-T with 6 spot colors and an underlay isn't exactly the lightest shirt around.
-CR
I have to say I am unashamedly of the "for 10 dollars more I can get a plug-in" persuasion (also known as broke-ass paying-off-student-loan syndrome). After all, though I love the company and want to pimp for you, for that price I would rather give you money for something that helps me make music.
Also, though obviously it's your company and you know what you're doing, keep in mind that saying "yeah sure I'd pay 30 bucks for a tshirt" in a comment is different from actually putting down payment on it, and it might end up being a big financial risk to base your decision on comments.
I live in Phoenix, and in December it gets down to about 150° when we're lucky. Thick t-shirts don't cut it.
Thirty dollars is also a lot to pay for something to ocassionally wear. I'd pay thirty or thirty-five for a polo shirt so I could pimp the AD on Business Casual Friday, but that's about it. If you could manage the AD robot in place of the little alligator on Lacoste shirts, I would be greatly amused. But that's a side thought.
Go for the AA Chino! (I prefer the melange FWIW)
Plastisol seems like a poor comprimise - still expensive for a T-shirt, but not nice enough to be really special.
Just an unsolicited suggestion - I'd like to see a t-shirt like that, but with the artwork being a more abstract representation of AD, with the AD name/robo-logo in the corner or something. Sort of a fashion-extension of what audio damage is instead of just a logo-shirt.
$5 or $10 difference aint my decision point on a well made shirt, the print itself is. I'm also not in favor of "digital dirt". Truth for me is I'm hesitant to buy a giant robo shirt; being a white guy in Japan, I dont wanna be mistaken for an anime geek.
You're a white guy walking around Tokyo and you're worried about being singled out for being odd?
Huh.
-CR
I'm with Adam, 30 dollars would be the most I've ever paid for a non-dress shirt. The only reason I'd consider buying one would be out of a sense of charity to support a business I like. I don't care how nice the quality is, in the end it's a screen printed tshirt that the ink is going to start coming off of after a years worth of laundering.
Heh. You obviously don't have one of the last run. I don't fuck around when I make t-shirts. That ink is never going to come off. Ever.
In any case, this is obviously a bad idea, so I'm not going to persue it any more, I don't think. I don't want people to be purchasing our products out of a sense of charity. That's just sad. And a long, long way from necessary, as Audio Damage is a Going Concern, as they say. We'd much rather you purchased an AD product because it was something that was cool that helped you make interesting tracks.
We had done the original run of t-shirts as Christmas gifts for people that had purchased every product AD made, in our first year of operation. (There are too many customers to do that now, unfortunately.) We had a few left over and sold them in the store. This company isn't in the business of making t-shirts for profit. I have another company that is quite good at that. I just thought it'd be an interesting exercise to do something nicer than the normal gimmee shirts that most companies make, which are usually done white on black with no underlay on 50/50 sweat shop tees, as that's the cheapest way to make a shirt, but it's obviously not something that'll answer, so I'd just as soon skip it as be stuck with $1500 worth of t-shirts. And we're sure not going to give 'em all away at NAMM. There's a bunch of sad sacks that don't deserve a $30 t-shirt, right there in one room.
I'm sure as fuck not gonna make cheap-ass gimmee shirts, as that wouldn't answer either. Hence the conundrum. I don't want to re-run the last run, because I don't think they're comfortable, as I mentioned earlier. I've washed my personal one at least a hundred times now, and it's just starting to wear in. I'm not too hip on us selling something I'm not incredibly happy with myself.
-CR
CR: odd is OK, I'm used to that. "anime geek" is not. those people should be shot on sight for the common good.
Right, lose the "digital dirt", it's overkill.
I'm old school--t-shirts are meant to be cheap. $20 is good enough.
whatever. make the good shirts. not making good shirts is just plain dumb. my american app. t's rule.
FWIW, i can't stand AmAp tshirts because they are sized weird as fuck and they're way clingy, even da XLs. Maybe i'm just a hiphop fatass, but i prefer the standard American sizes. FOTLoom is aiight.
I think $30 is kinda steep too.
i'd buy a shirt
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