Tee shirts

[Zephod]

It might be fun to have a tee shirt with just your bus blog address on it. It might garner you some site visitors.

I was looking at that though for another purpose. I am astounded at how much printing single tee shirts seems to be.


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[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Zephod, we have looked at T-shirts, coffee mugs, ball caps and other things to offer which has been done before here. The problem with T-shirts is that we would have to order several different sizes and keep track of inventory. Other items would be nice but it costs money to stock all of that inventory.  This is something we are still considering.

If we were to produce T-Shirts or other items and sell them basically at cost, how many people would be interested in them?  Are there any Bus Nuts out there that could partner with us to produce these items to keep it all in the family?

[buswarrior]

Focus on the core business.

Trinkets are not that?

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[Zephod]

Zephod, we have looked at T-shirts, coffee mugs, ball caps and other things to offer which has been done before here. The problem with T-shirts is that we would have to order several different sizes and keep track of inventory. Other items would be nice but it costs money to stock all of that inventory.  This is something we are still considering.

If we were to produce T-Shirts or other items and sell them basically at cost, how many people would be interested in them?  Are there any Bus Nuts out there that could partner with us to produce these items to keep it all in the family?

Probably a non starter for BCM. I'd idly been thinking of getting one for myself that said "Area 51 Crash Survivor" and one that gave a link to my bus blog. The problem was the $17 entry price for a single $3 tee shirt.


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[Jeremy]

Best way to do this is via one of the many online print-on-demand bureaus - you (ie. the magazine) create some designs and set-up an account with the bureau of your choice, and the bureau in turn creates a page on their website where those designs are offered printed on any number of different types of products (ie., clothing, mugs, mouse mats, you name it).

The customer (ie. Zephod) comes along and buys one of the items directly from the bureau's website, which the bureau manufacturers and despatches direct, after which they send part of the revenue from that sale to the account holder as a commission payment for the use of the design. End result is that Zephod gets a Tee shirt in the size he wants (moderately expensive but of known quality and hassle-free), and the magazine receives a small income without having to make any initial orders of their own or hold any stock

Jeremy

[scanzel]

Years ago BCM had a marker plate that said, Why Settle For Bus Like When You Can Have The Real Thing. The only problem latter was that a phone number was on it. When Mike got out I contacted them and let them know. They stopped selling the plates. I have one on my bus but painted out the phone number. I looked into getting new plates made but to costly for the possibility of only selling a few.

[Zephod]

The tee shirts they use are cheap $3 tee shirts shipped from China. Where I find the price becomes unacceptable is in the price breakdown...

$6.99 for the shirt
$3.74 for printing on the back as well as the front

Suddenly that miraculously adds up to $17.12 (I can't figure that math either)

Then add shipping of $4.99 and the $3 tee shirt has now blossomed to $23!

That's where I stop because it's so much of a rip off.


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[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Yes phone numbers changing can be a problem. When we move the office to a different switching center the phone number does not always follow either.  We did get an 888 number so we could retain the same number even if we decide to move out of state which may happen due to the high cost of living in CA. But the 888 phone number is awkward to use and we only get about one call per month on it anyway so we may ditch that number.  We could use a cell phone and take it with us anywhere but Cell calls have delays which I don't like especially when talking to senior folks as it makes it difficult to understand them and them to understand us.  Unfortunately landline technology has not kept up with the times as they have not figured out how to move a single phone number to a different call center yet.

However our website URL will always remain the same so we can put that on there which will always have the correct phone number.  Adding products via a 3rd party vendor is something we will consider in the future as time allows.  But in the meantime if anyone has any more suggestions, we are all ears.  We do have a temporary URL for our new website www.BusConversionStore.com but soon we will be moving that over to our main server and it will be superseded with our regular URL www.BusConversions.com.

[Zephod]

Yes phone numbers changing can be a problem. When we move the office to a different switching center the phone number does not always follow either.  We did get an 888 number so we could retain the same number even if we decide to move out of state which may happen due to the high cost of living in CA. But the 888 phone number is awkward to use and we only get about one call per month on it anyway so we may ditch that number.  We could use a cell phone and take it with us anywhere but Cell calls have delays which I don't like especially when talking to senior folks as it makes it difficult to understand them and them to understand us.  Unfortunately landline technology has not kept up with the times as they have not figured out how to move a single phone number to a different call center yet.

However our website URL will always remain the same so we can put that on there which will always have the correct phone number.  Adding products via a 3rd party vendor is something we will consider in the future as time allows.  But in the meantime if anyone has any more suggestions, we are all ears.  We do have a temporary URL for our new website www.BusConversionStore.com but soon we will be moving that over to our main server and it will be superseded with our regular URL www.BusConversions.com.

What I do...

I use a Google Voice number that is forwarded to whichever phone I'm using. I did this because my allegedly portable numbers turned out not to be so portable. I couldn't transfer from sprint to T-Mobile nor from T-Mobile to at&t and by the time I'd got as far as that I was pretty fed up and went for google voice.

The good... every call can be recorded and transcribed automatically, voicemail can be transcribed automatically, can make international calls using just a flip phone.

The bad... slight delay between the caller hearing the phone ringing and it actually ringing.


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[Dave5Cs]

Talk to an art student at the local community college that does Silk screening and work a deal with them to cut the screens and run some off for you. Offer a decent price for a bunch of them. You buy the materials for them.

[Jim Eh.]

Find some cheap plain white Tshirts and just print your own on iron-on transfer paper with an inkjet printer. You can find some at Office Depot, maybe even Wally World has it. I found I had to print twice (alignment is pretty easy) and the transfers you get are full rich colour.

[Zephod]

Find some cheap plain white Tshirts and just print your own on iron-on transfer paper with an inkjet printer. You can find some at Office Depot, maybe even Wally World has it. I found I had to print twice (alignment is pretty easy) and the transfers you get are full rich colour.

That's actually not a bad idea. The transfers get a bit obvious after about a dozen washes but a $3 tee shirt plus a transfer isn't too bad in cost. Of course you don't get white text on black but you can't have everything.


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[eagle19952]

However our website URL will always remain the same so we can put that on there which will always have the correct phone number.  Adding products via a 3rd party vendor is something we will consider in the future as time allows.  But in the meantime if anyone has any more suggestions, we are all ears.  We do have a temporary URL for our new website www.BusConversionStore.com but soon we will be moving that over to our main server and it will be superseded with our regular URL www.BusConversions.com.

here is (for a board that is about as old as this one) a "store front" for swag... don't know any details, but they like it

http://www.cafepress.com/+umgf+gifts

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Yes, I contacted them but they require we guarantee them a minimum order which I was afraid we could not guarantee.  Maybe I will call them again and see if anything has changed. Thanks so much eagle19952.

[Jeremy]

How about just preparing a design as a Photoshop file and making it available to those busnuts who want it? (or selling it to them if you're trying to make money). Then the busnut can place an order for whatever garment they want from whichever T-shirt printer is most convenient for them, and just attach your Photoshop file to their order.

I did exactly this very recently when I wanted a piece of fan merchandise for a TV show that a fellow fan in the US had designed and made available though a US outlet - having seen what the postage costs were if I bought the item itself from the US supplier I instead arranged to get just the design file (with a Paypal payment to the lady who created it, to go to the charity she was doing it for) and instead ordered the item from a UK supplier.

There is effectively zero up-front costs for T-shirt printers nowadays who use modern inkjet-printing equipment and many (if not most) of them do one-off jobs as a matter of course. Only the ones still operating in the stone age with silk screens and bottles of liquid ink will (legitimately) charge set-up fees and have minimum order quantities etc

I for one would pay a modest fee for the use of a decent busconversions.com design if you made one available - and remember too that such a design (for inkjet printing onto fabric) can be multicolour / photographic in style as well, rather than needing to be single / block colour as old-fashioned screen-printed designs had to be

Jeremy