Our clothing line has entered into round two of TeeMadness! We’re in a neck and neck race with another clothing company, and we need your help to advance to the next round! It only takes one second to vote, and two clicks!

All you have to do is click on this link, and then click on the green button next to our name which I have spot shadowed for you. Please help us avoid an EMBARRASSING second round elimination, and we’ll high five everyone and do everyone’s laundry. Mr. 51% has also been so kind to volunteer his singing talents via voicemail to anyone who can prove they voted for us, and told their friends.

So we like molotov cocktails, and fire

After a night of mildly drunken tom-foolery not so long ago, we decided it would be interesting to aimlessly throw around some  molotov cocktails in an uninhabited neighborhood under the supervision of professionals–fun for the whole family.

During our crusade, we discovered two things: 1) how exciting  it is to pretend you’re an anarchic gangster, and 2)  it would be awesome to be Indiana Jones. But, with those two dreams hopelessly removed from the reality of our day to day struggles as t-shirt shop owners, we thought it’d be fun to set some of our inventory on fire in true pyro fashion. So we bring to you a rescue mission of sorts: while we don’t want to set our prized shirts on fire  – they were made in America, after all – we just can’t help ourselves.

If you think you’d like to rescue one of these shirts from being put down like a stray dog having a real bad day at the animal shelter, then you should head over to our store and buy one  (or two, or three) before we go all twelve-year-old-with-a-magnifying-glass on this shit. Please, rescue one of our fledgling t-shirt orphans in true liberal style. Have at it thou mangled boil-brained pigeon-egg!

Go to the store to get shirts for $15.99 that we’re never selling again

Two years ago we launched with a small t-shirt store, (We only had 12 shirts) and virtually no clue what we were doing. Two years later and we’ve become a full fledged design/music/apparel resource with 30 products sold to every state in the US and 20+ countries.

It’s been great, and we wanted to say thanks by giving 25% off on everything in our store as well as free shipping on everything. No discount codes needed–and please share this with your friends and family, especially if they’ve been wanting to order shirts from us for awhile. (We’re sold out of alot of stuff quite often.)

Here’s to another two years–hopefully by then we’ll have our retail store in Chicago, a thriving video podcast of some sort, and millions of dollars and a stripper pole in our corporate offices.

Thanks to everyone who have helped us over the last two years

• Lex and Terry Morning Radio Network
• Phil and everyone at Woot!
• The Kaplowitz Family
• The Toomey Family
• Adam Hendle, and Beau from IATT.tv and IAmTheTrend.com
• Oswald Hobbes who makes me laugh and inspires me every day
• Tubbs! + future baby
• Dasimator (@quornball)
• Andy from Hide Your Arms
• ShirtsOnSale
• All the bands we sponsor and are friends/fans of (Dear Enemy, A Hero Named Hope, From The Broken, Seven Day Sonnet, The Swellers, Alkaline Trio, Rise Against, Invisible Gods, Trippy Wicked, Puddle of Mudd, The Delivery Boys, Motion City Soundtrack, Paramore, Radiofix, Direct Hit!, Anna Vogelzang, The Action Blast, The Fold and many many others)
• JumboG
• EddieFTW
• Rich Bellamy
• Ron Guerin
• Peter (Slashfilm) and Neil (Film School Rejects)
• The Emptees community
• Jud & the lovely Marietta from ShirtFight
• The guys from Cameesa
• Nick & Jon from Storenvy
• Chris Martin + Merchspin
• Jon Kruse from Shred
• Dane, Scott, Dennis – Photographers and professionally good looking male models extraordinaire
• John Staniforth, Fernando Rodriguez, & Candice Ciesla for their incredible design work
• Martin Atkins
• Chad Lehner + everyone at Total Assault

Help us spread the word!

Paste this code into your site to put our flyer in there (We know it’s large, that’s why we made 3 sizes!)

Large:

<p style=”text-align: center;”><a href=”http://www.assaultshirts.com” target=”_blank”><img title=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” src=”http://www.assault.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/february-sale.jpg” alt=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” width=”705″ height=”912″ /></a></p>

Smaller:

<p style=”text-align: left;”><a href=”http://www.assaultshirts.com” target=”_blank”><img title=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” src=”http://www.assault.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/february-sale-231×300.jpg” alt=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” width=”231″ height=”300″ /></a></p>

Before I launch into my whole schpiel here and start foaming at the mouth, let me say one thing: I don’t hate zombies. As a younger man, I hated many things, but now that I’ve grown up and mellowed out, I try to save emotions of that intensity for truly deserving targets (like Sarah Palin). But I do have a zombie problem: I don’t “get” the appeal. Zombies are slow, dim-witted creatures whose only reason for continued existence is their hunger for brains. I decided to address this topic at length here for two reasons: 1) People love zombies; over the past decade, more books, movies, and songs have been devoted to zombies than any other monster. Their popularity has already gone through the proverbial roof, exited the Earth’s stratosphere, and lifted God’s skirt in Heaven. Zombies are huge. 2) I’m a world famous internet blogger, and people want to know what I think about absolutely everything.

Now: in the interest of fairness, I’ve invited our friends at two separate zombie t-shirt companies to represent a pro-zombie stance. I suckered them into doing this by asking if they would answer “a few general questions about zombie culture” and then springing hyper-specific zombie vs. vampire hypotheticals on them. This is called “getting a scoop.” The fine fellows in question are Django from ShopZombie and Jason from Zombie Liquorice, and I strongly urge you to check out their sites and spend some cash – we may not see eye-to-eye about the undead, but they both have some very fine merchandise that will make your wiener tingle in a most pleasant fashion. But before we hear from them, I’mma let myself finish explaining why I don’t like zombies.

First, there’s the “slow and stupid” factor. Zombies are dumb, lumbering beasts; the average zombie moves slower than Jason Vorhees on ‘Ludes. I’ve been a dedicated pack-a-day smoker for just under a decade; when we ran the mile in high school, I never finished in less than fifteen minutes. But even I, Oswald Fucking Hobbes, could out-run a zombie. I could probably also overpower one in a fight, despite whatever enhanced strength he might possess, because I’m a nimble ninja where it counts: in my mind. I would confuse the shit out of a zombie. Also: zombies are undead. That means they’ve already been killed once, most likely by a zombie. So: if you’re dumb enough to be killed by a zombie (which we’ve already established would make you pretty fucking dumb), and you then become a zombie (which kills another couple thousand brain cells), are you really gonna argue that you stand a chance against a super-genius such as myself? I don’t think so, cabron. But my biggest problem with zombies is their utter lack of personality. If I find myself in a fight to the death, I want to face a combatant with some spark, somebody that can trade witty one-liners with me and get personally invested in the outcome of the battle. We’ve already established I can out-run and out-think a zombie; the only thing that might convince me to stay and fight would be a compelling, charismatic persona, which is something that zombies simply cannot offer.

Those are the reasons I don’t fear zombies. Take those reasons and multiply them by a thousand and you’ll understand why I won’t spend two hours watching a movie about zombies. I don’t need entertainment to try and make boring things interesting;  I want entertainment featuring subject matter that’s already entertaining. I’m too busy being world-famous to watch movies about boring crap that wouldn’t scare me in real life. This may seem like a stupid argument to you, but your face seems stupid to me. So let’s call it a draw and hear from some real zombie experts, who will provide us with information that is interesting but, unfortunately, factually incorrect. I’ll point out the inconsistencies in italics when need be.

What is it about zombies that people find so appealing?

"I Love Brains" tee from Shop Zombie

Django: Pirates, zombies, bacon, Pet Rocks… All of these things have tugged the collective coattail of consumers at some point. It’s always a mystery to me how these things rise in popularity. I think that a pile of good, exciting zombie movies (28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead remake, etc) catapulted zombies into the modern public’s eye.

Jason: I cannot speak for everyone, but what makes zombies so appealing to me is they are very anti-hero.  They will never be featured in a shitty teenage love drama and will never be romanticized.  They are incorruptible and never disappoint.  If you love horror or gore, you must love zombies. (Well, that’s not true, and I can disprove it easily: I love horror AND gore, and zombies do absolutely nothing for me.)

Zombies seem incredibly easy to defeat. Am I wrong about this? If so, why?

Django: Somehow, it seems that only the stupidest people survive the initial zombie attacks. The hardest part about defeating zombies is that they have sheer numbers, and if they can get close to you, you’re suddenly in a VERY dangerous situation. (I believe I already refuted this pretty satisfactorily above. But, in regards to numbers, so what? The zombies aren’t able to organize themselves in any way, so they’d just be stumbling around like a bunch of drunken hobos.)

Jason: Zombies can seem incredibly easy to defeat.  This is their strength.  What they lack in defensive awareness they more than make up for in aggressive numbers.  Not to mention the fact that their numbers keep replenishing after every fresh kill, bite or even scratch. (So you’re telling me that zombies’ obvious stupidity and clumsiness comprise some kind of secret strength? That’s blatant nonsense. See above for my thoughts about zombies’ strength in numbers…or lack thereof.)

Honestly, in a zombie vs. vampire fight (fair), who would win? What if the fight wasn’t governed by traditional codes of honor?

Django: Well, if the vampire was dumb enough to bite the zombie, it would turn INTO a zombie, right? So I dunno. Does that count as a win for the zombie? (No. Vampires aren’t dumb – this isn’t some Team Edward shit, I’m talkin’ Bram Stoker style. Dracula wouldn’t bite a zombie, he’d use his super strength to snap that motherfucker in half.)

"Twilight" by Zombie Liquorice

Jason: We actually did a shirt based on this age-old battle.  The Zombie will always win, mainly because he is not thinking about high school girls or when the sun is about to rise.  More often than not, the zombie is only interested in one thing: brains.  That, coupled with his inability to feel any pain and the fact that he is undead, really ensures victory.  Not to mention that there is probably a horde of zombies just around the corner waiting to mop up whatever is left.  For this very reason there could never be a fair zombie vs. vampire fight – no code of honor could ever be enforced. The ref would promptly be eaten as well unfortunately. (Jason brings up some interesting points, but fails to play by the rules of the hypothetical and thus voids his own answers. One zombie, one vampire. If a zombie needs an entire horde of his undead buddies to come and get his back, he’s not fit to even get in the ring.)

If zombies eat so much brain, why don’t they ever get smarter? Brain seems like the textbook definition of “brain food.”

Django: Same reason that eating carrots doesn’t turn you into a carrot. (That would be a valid point if I had asked why zombies don’t turn into brains. Nice try. I eat carrots because they taste good and they improve my vision. I assume that zombies have a similar reason for feasting exclusively on human brains, and I doubt it’s the taste.)

Jason: Let me explain it this way: “I eat really lean, muscular meat, but I am still fat… What gives?”  You see what I did there – clever, eh? (Yeah, about as clever as a zombie attempting algebra. If you just ate lean, muscular meat – if that was literally the ONLY thing in your diet – you probably wouldn’t be fat. And since zombies eat nothing but brains, they shouldn’t be so stupid. Who’s clever now, Jason?)

Vampires were the ultimate monsters for ages, mostly due to the wealth of artistically legitimate movies and books devoted to them. Is it possible that zombies’ cultural cachet will recede in the future if somebody like Stephanie Meyers writes a teen romance novel featuring a really sensitive zombie who refuses to eat brains, thus sparking a trend of emasculated zombies in popular culture? Would this make you angry?

Django: If someone tried this shit right now, there would be gigantic backlash against them. It would be a massive fail. It would be hard to pull this off. Vampires really have no down side. They can’t go out in the sunlight, sure, but they don’t age, they’re strong, they’re sexy. Zombies are rotting. They eat brains. They are dumb as hell. You’d have to bastardize zombies pretty good before they appealed to young girls. (“Zombies are rotting. They eat brains. They are dumb as hell.” This is the guy DEFENDING zombies, ladies and gentlemen. I must say, though, I agree on all counts. This makes me wonder if I don’t like zombies because I am, in fact, a young girl.)

Official Assault Zombie T-Shirt

Jason: Would this make me angry? Not so much anger, but more white hot loathing.  However, I know this will never happen, as I have already said that what makes zombies so cool is that they must all act a certain way to be classified as zombies.  If someone ever tried to break this mold or screw around with how zombies operate, the amount of book burnings that would take place would put another, bigger hole in the ozone. And no one wants that, right?  Zombies are here to stay; now lets just learn to love it. (I’m sure people felt the same way about vampires before Anne Rice and that crazy Mormon were so successful at making them seem sensitive. Not only do I refuse to love your precious zombies, I’m now actively rooting for someone to ruin their appeal by pussifying every even mildly cool thing about them.)

So, there you have it. This study effectively concludes that zombies are lame, vampires are better, and I am (obviously) best. I’d like to thank Jason and Django again for participating in my little study, and if you don’t go buy some product from them (here and here) you’re gonna have a zombie Oswald Hobbes at your door demanding fresh skullmeat. So get out your credit card, and check out our very own store here at Assault where we feature a pretty rad zombie shirt. And if anybody wants to collaborate on a film script about sensitive zombies, email me at oswald@assaultinc.com. I’ve got a lot of good ideas.

This shirt was designed around the same time that Proposition 8 made headlines in the state of California. Proposition 8 was side note to an election ballot that was primarily used to strip away the previously granted rights of gay couples to legally marry. The new wording of the ammendment essentially stated that, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

What most people don’t know about Proposition 8 is that it marked the first time in American history that the rights of a group of people was taken away after being granted by law. Who do we have to thank for this black mark on the history of our country? None other than the Roman Catholic Church, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons.

These two groups were heavy proponents of Proposition 8, even donating hefty sums of money to the overall campaign in favor of passing the amendment. Does that sound fair? A tax-free organization that is allowed to contribute around 50% of the total budget to lobby against a cause it opposes? A tax-free organization that doesn’t even reside in the state where the election ballot ammendment vote is taking place?

No matter the person, no one should have their rights limited, and no book should dictate the status quo. Gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights. The pursuit of happiness should belong to every man woman and child. Repeal prop8.

This shirt was designed by me, (Tim Toomey) and depicts an 8-legged spider stepping on the bill of rights which grants us our basic freedoms.

To purchase the Anti-Proposition of Hate Section 8 T-Shirt click here
(Currently priced at $22.99 but you can get 10% off with the discount code HANDHSAKE)

More images of this shirt

Shirt depicted below on Kyle Smith, lead singer of the band, A Hero Named Hope

With so many different facets of information and steps needed before you can even print your shirts it’s easy to quit before you even get started.

With all the different, well-documented sites out there, I’ve found that there still hasn’t been anyone who managed to get everything just right, and more importantly, just right on a limited budget. The only thing that comes close  is the How to Start a Clothing Line E-Book. If you’d rather not swing the $37 bucks for the e-book we’ve done our best to compress everything you need to know to start your own clothing line here in this blog post. (Disclosure: We get a portion of the sales of the E-Book and recommend it if you need more in depth information.)

Spend only what YOU can afford

We’ve been lucky at Assault to have made all the right moves so far to a point where we have no credit card debt, no binding agreements with any poisonous partners, and no investors to pay back. We’ve started Assault with our own money, and it currently runs itself, independent of outside funding.

One thing to keep in mind during this read is that there are no definite right or wrong ways to forming your own company. In the end, your decisions need to be based on what works best for what you are trying to accomplish. This article is a compilation of what worked (or didn’t) for Assault; as well as some of the complications we ran into.

Before you EVEN start your t-shirt company

1. What makes you different?
2. What makes your t-shirts or clothing buzz-worthy?
3. If you saw your product on a website, would you tell your friends?
4. Would you pay $$$ for your product?
5. What separates you from your competition?
6. Who has been successful with similar products in the past, and what did they do?
7. Who is your ideal customer? Age? Sex? Interests? Where do they hang out? What do they like to eat?

These are all questions that you should have addressed before you drop a penny into your clothing line.

T-Shirt Printing Equipment

Storenvy Printing and Free Online T-Shirt Stores

Don’t buy any. There are plenty of professionals who are GREAT at screen printing and have been doing it for years. (Exhibit A: Nick Roccanti over @ Storenvy) Your product will suffer if you try to learn to print on your own and you’ll be too busy with other day to day activities to learn to print and fill your orders.

Trying to learn to do it on your own will only make your bank account dwindle.

Akumu Ink

An exception to this would be if you only plan on doing one or two color prints. Akumu Ink does just this, and have been extremely successful at it. For Assault, if we were to do this, one color pressing would have been too constricting for the majority of our designs as they’re oversized and multiple colors.

Online Store Systems

For many of you with limited or no web experience, you are going to have to go with some sort of hosted cart solution like Storenvy. One thing I do recommend is going to a service that will suit your needs and only charge you a flat rate per month. (Or no rate per month–as in free beer… like Storenvy.)

You don’t want a cart system taking a cut of your payments no matter what, because your bank is already doing that on your merchant account. (more on that later.)

Domains are CHEAP! Buy one and forward it

One thing I cannot stress enough with a hosted system is to buy a cheap domain name and forward it to your site. It’s just a bit more professional to have a store with yourname.com instead of yourname.etsy.com or yourname.bigcartel.com.

I never understood why people were okay with that–and why they were willing to put a .etsy.com or .bigcartel.com appended to THEIR brand name on a large banner for an event or festival.

Spend the $8.00 bucks or whatever it is and buy a domain name. That should be one of the first things you do after deciding on a company name.

Sole Proprietorship, Partnerships, Incorporation

This gets confusing and again, there are no right or wrong answers. Because we are talking about starting a company, and on a budget no-less, I’m assuming that you’re a small company. With that assumption, I’d suggest not starting out with a corporation. Corporations have their tax benefits and depending on your growth, are definitely something to look into, but they are fairly complicated to setup. The cost to have a professional setup for you runs approximately $500, but considering the complications that could arise if not done properly, is money well spent.

To start, Assault formed as a partnership. (We have more than one founder) What this meant to us was that the Assault company name was personally held by me (Craig) and Tim. This included any liability, gains, losses, etc. So if Assault made money, as far as the Government is concerned, Tim and I made money. Same goes for if we lost money, if there was any litigation, and so on. Obviously, on a larger scale, this could create some major troubles in ones personal life when their company gets sued for say, copyright infringement, and the lawsuit now bleeds over into their personal assets.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can always incorporate later. At that point, you would need to choose which corporate structure fits best for your business. If you would like more information on this, request it in the comments, and I’ll do a separate post on that in-depth topic.

The alternative to a partnership, or incorporating, is a sole-proprietorship, also known as a DBA, or “doing business as” which is the cheapest solution to starting your company if you are the sole driving force behind your brand.

“Doing Business As” or DBA Certificate

The best way to get a “doing business as” certificate is to place an ad in a local publication with the name of your company and where you will be doing business. This ensures that no one else has the same name as you, and that you are officially on record in public as operating your business.

This is only necessary if you (1) are operating as a Sole Proprietorship or Partnership (ie-not incorporated) or (2) if you have formed a corporation and do not plan to operate as your corporation name. In Chicago, we ran an ad at The Chicago Reader for $100 bucks. They’re used to doing running these types of ads, and they mail you a copy of your ad when it’s done running.

Federal Taxes, State Taxes

You need to register your business with the federal, and the state government you intend to do business in so you can start paying money to Uncle Sam just like the rest of us do with our businesses.

Even if you don’t plan on paying any employees or having any payroll, you still must register with federal to get your Federal Employer ID (FEID). What you register on a state level varies by state, but will be for any state employment taxes as well as state sales tax.

Small Business Checking Account

To get this you have to have the proper documentation. The proper documentation consists of your partnership agreement. (Or incorporation documents) your FEID (federal employer ID), and your local (state) business formation paperwork. You can obtain the FEID from the IRS, and your local state tax registration can be done at your respective state’s government website. (Googling County Clerk +IL is how we found out where to do this cause we’re in IL, duh)

Accepting Credit Cards

This is going to be your one of the essential costs associated with your store. We were lucky enough to get this right the first time.

Paypal has one of the best, and easiest to implement online payment systems. It integrates with plenty of stores already including Storenvy, Magento and Big Cartel–plus it’s very competitive with anything that Authorize.net or Checkout2Payment could offer you.

(Opens in iTunes)

It varies per amount, but for $30.00 per month and a small percentage of every transaction–Paypal’s Website Payments Pro is the way to go. It’s the payment system we started with and it’s worked. If you need to have a terminal on site for street-fairs etc, we recommend using iSwipe Pro on the iPhone. (opens in iTunes) It’s only $.99 cents and easy to setup. Thanks to Judd from Shirt Fight for helping us out with that at our first street festival.

SSL certificate for secure online transactions

If you’re hosting your own store like we are at Assault you’re going to need an SSL Certificate to ensure that your server is encrypted when making credit card transactions.

Back in the day there was only one place to do this: Verisign, and it cost a whopping $300 bucks a year! Thankfully, the great people at GoDaddy started selling their own version of the SSL certificates which works the same way and costs a fraction of the amount. I believe we ended up paying only $17 bucks per year after all was said and done.

Launching your store

You’ve got your shirts designed, bank account setup, and your website is successfully processing credit cards legally and safely. Here’s the most important part about launching your store: making sure you get people there, and the only way to do that is with links!

I Am The Trend - Your Guide For All Things Independent

When we got started, we compiled a list of places that you can post links about your store launch, and have actual people come to the store to buy your products. I Am The Trend will review your shirts live via a ustream video podcast if you send them one. They’ll even pimp your stuff all over their website.

We’ve also recently added a User News section to our website which displays prominently on our homepage and sidebar where you can submit links to us for approval. If you’re launching a store–let us know and we’ll pimp you double hard.

Launching and marketing your new store could be a post of it’s own, and is on it’s way, but in the meantime you can refer to these two posts for some additional SEO and Google tips that will help bring in some organic traffic to your online store:

• How to Float to the Top of Google Search Results Pages Without Paying
• SEO – Tips & Strategies you aren’t hearing from high priced consultants

I’ve been going back and forth lately between several twitter clients, and I think I have finally picked a winner for my laptop: Tweetdeck. (I use Tweetie on my iPhone.) The newest feature of Tweetdeck finally put it over the top with multiple logins, but just today I discovered something I wish I had known about a long time ago:

Search Columns

Currently, I have two search column tabs open keeping an eye on what types of t-shirts and shirts people are looking for. Primarily, I have just been using the columns to get an idea who is looking for what and why. It’s been pretty interesting so far, and a lot of the time you find many people asking, “Where should I buy shirts?” or even, “Considering going out to the mall to buy some t-shirts.”

Like anyone else who has an online store, and has slaved away their weekends selling in booths outdoors in music festivals, I know exactly what this anonymous person over the internet looks like. They’re the ones who stop from a distance when they see your product, and are on the fence about coming in for a closer look. All they need is a little push.

Don’t spam, and don’t make your twitter feed a scrolling car salesman–but it’s perfectly reasonable to answer the questions of people who have opened themselves up for a pitch. I guarantee selling your product this way is a great way of generating word of mouth leads, and quality ones at that–at least it’s way better than paying $.50 a click on Google.

Not only will you find people looking for shirts here, but I’ve recommended plenty of print services as well as given out referrals to other t-shirt companies that I like.

Our local friends in Chicago Cameesa have made a few significant updates to their cutting edge crowdfunding system. After adding as little as $10 bucks to your account you can start pledging towards the printing of any of the t-shirts added to the Cameesa pool of designs. As soon as one of them reaches the $500 threshold you get a shirt!

On top of that you get a percentage of sales of the shirt that you pledged your money towards after it reaches the threshold. It’s times like these that I wish I had some good ideas every once in awhile. So head on over to Cameesa and take advantage of their new features, and also their free shipping going on until March the 27th.

Hi I’m Jon Kruse. I run Mediocore Clothing and the blog How to Start a Clothing Company. When Tim and I got together to discuss writing a guest article for each others’ blogs, I was stumped on what to write about. In the end I decided to write about something that has helped me a lot but most people pass over it because they consider it common sense. What is this you ask? It’s called asking people for Help!

I use a three step approach

1. Connect on a personal level with someone.
2. Ask them for help.
3. Give them the tools they need.

When I first started I was very timid and I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I would make up absurd milestones in my head that I had to reach before I would post on certain forums, websites, or even email friends that own clothing companies about helping me out. Looking back, I wasted too much time trying to do things by myself when there were so many people that wanted to help me and knew so much more than I did. It wasn’t until I let go of my fears of asking people for help that I finally started seeing returns in my business.

I hear from a lot of t-shirt companies that are starting out and looking for advice. I always tell them to have a great relationship with the t-shirt blogs and I have a couple articles about the subject “How to get your cool t-shirt reviewed“, “How I became one of the top online t-shirt companies by being a nice guy“. It really amazes me how many people will come back and say “ohh they wouldn’t post my shirt, it isn’t their style” or something along those lines. You will never know unless you try, and doing nothing is the fastest way to fail. I have had plenty of blogs post my shirts that didn’t really fall into what they normally post just because I have a good rapport with them.

Once I started making a personal connection with blog owners, I did the same thing with my customers. When you join my mailing list I give my background and what I believe in. I tell them about when I got fired from my job and decided to pursue something I really was passionate about–starting a clothing company. A lot of people can connect with my story because they know someone that has lost a job or have lost a job themselves. I always give out a couple of coupons with every order and ask my customers to tell their friends about my shirts. Some people will do this without you asking, but the simple act of asking someone to do something makes it a lot more likely that it will happen.

So let me go over those steps again.

Make a personal connection with someone.

I read a book called “You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself”. There is a ton of good advice in there but one of the stories that made a strong impression on me was about tipping waitresses. It said that when it came down to how much tip you would leave you would tip more to a waitress that made a personal connection with you over a waitress that provided the best service to you but didn’t connect with you. This is the opposite of what most of us were taught, that hard work and dedication will pay off, but really the most important thing is connecting with someone and making them feel like your friend.

How to connect

Myspace, emails, facebook, twitter, these are all great ways to connect with your fans. Johnny Cupcakes really has this nailed down, and even though he has only said one thing to me over the internet, I still would call him a friend. He also does things like a showing of gremlins and a free pizza party and these stories spread through the Internet like wildfire.

Ask them for Help

• When was the last time you helped someone for no reason at all?
• When was the last time you helped someone when they asked you?
• Just asking for help will increase the chances of them helping you tremendously.

Give them the tools they need

You have to make it as easy as possible for someone to help you or else they won’t do it. So many times I hear a band or artist asking for votes for a contest, but if I get to the website and I have to fill out a long form I usually just give up. This is how it is for most people, so give them the tools that will make it easy for them to do what you’re asking.

• When you want to have a blog post a new shirt, give them already hosted pictures to use, a bio of your company, and information about the shirt. The less work they have to do, the better.
• When you want a customer to tell their friends about your company, give them coupons to hand out. Get them on a mailing list with emails they can easily forward.
• Just doing these simple things will increase the chances of someone helping you.

Now get out there and ask for help!

View a high resolution.

Along with getting a new tattoo this week that was inspired by my favorite band of all time, I decided it was time to design and sell a shirt that was inspired by the same band, Rise Against.

I’ve been listening to Rise Against since about 2003-2004 when I was in college, and since then they’ve only gotten better and better.

Themes ranging from political activism, animal rights activism, and to just have a cause and purpose in general are a major influence in many of the designs and ideas that go into Assault, as well as the songs that make up the new Rise Against album so we thought it’d be fitting to incorporate some of their lyrics as well as some famous quotes and thoughts from some of our favorite books and people.

The main quote on this shirt comes from the book Anarchic Harmony by William J. Murray:

We classify ourselves above other animals because of our so-called intelligence. Why? If we instead chose to classify species according to effectiveness on the planet, mankind would be at the bottom of the totem pole. If we classify according to beauty, or grace, or sheer numbers, mankind wouldn’t make the top third of any category. The fact is that our intelligence, as we now use it, makes us a cancer to the bottom of the ladder of life-forms.

The other main quote in this shirt is from John F. Kennedy:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

If you get a chance, listen to some of Rise Against’s new album, Appeal to Reason, as well as their other favorite album of mine, Siren Song of the Counter Culture.

Oh yea, go buy the Peaceful Revolution T-Shirt at the site for our WOOT side deal of the day for $16.99 plus free shipping, or you can wait a week and pay $23.99 when it’s back up to it’s normal price.

I recently wrote this post as a guest blogger on, How To Start a Clothing Company, for my friend Jonathan Kruse of Mediocre Clothing, and figured I’d re-post it here on my site for anyone who’s looking for a Lehman’s explanation of SEO, or search engine optimization.

One of the major things that has helped me with my t-shirt brand, Assault, since it’s inception in late February of last year was optimizing my site for Google and other search engines. I’ve worked as a SEO consultant and developer the past 7 or 8 years for various companies, and our list of clients contain some of the biggest names and brands in the world.

I’m not going to add to the gigantic list of of great SEO resources and basic SEO 101 strategies that you can easily find all over the web. Instead, I’m going to go over a few secrets that I have developed specifically for my online store, Assault Apparel, that will help those of you who are like me and don’t have any sort of money to use for marketing and PPC like some of the other t-shirt shops around town.

Assault's URL structure with CSS disabled

Think like a robot – Link Text, Title Text, Content Keywords, Landing Pages

A search engine spider uses a lot of information about your site to determine your search engine rankings. Using links with system text pertaining to your search term is a big factor. Using landing pages with specific keywords in your page title, as well as throughout the text in your actual page is another thing that gives you proper keyword density pertaining to the page titles.

Disable your sites’ stylesheet to get an idea of what a search engine is seeing when it comes to your page. The link text and text position on the site is very important. Be sure to have your links near the very top of the page, and to carve out your sites’ links by putting rel=”nofollow” on your anchor tags associated with pages you do not want spidered. This cuts down on the number of links on the page, thus giving you more weight on your pertinent links.

My links to the right all use the word t-shirts as well as link to my landing pages with the same keywords sprinkled throughout the content. I would say that about 2% of your pages content should contain your keywords. Anymore than 2% is overkill.

Think like a human – Keyword Choices

One of the most important tools I have used to determine naming conventions for my pages, shirts, and images is the Google Keyword Tool. Everyone uses this tool, and everyone who’s good at SEO is following the standards as laid out by Google in their SEO Starter Guide pdf, but what most places aren’t doing is choosing the high volume search keywords that aren’t being target by everyone.

For example, you’re never going to show up in the first 10 results for the keyword t-shirts, or tshirts, or even shirts. If you’re just starting out, there’s no point in trying to compete for this word. It’s already dominated. The words you should be trying to get in the top ten for, are other searches with the word, “t-shirt” in them. Assault‘s top keywords besides searches related to “Assault” are things like

• zombie t-shirt
• band apparel
• graphic t-shirts
• skull t-shirts
• rocker apparel
• chicago t-shirts
• band shirts

You get the idea. These are the keywords you need to use throughout your internal and external links to your pages as well as your actual physical file names. The way you work your way in the top ten is to carve out your niche in other t-shirt related searches and over time you will finally begin to sneak into the top results for other one word searches. Currently we’re between 5 and 9 for the keyword “Assault“, and we never even used to get into the top ten.

Register your brand with local search results

We registered our business as a local business with Google and we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic from “chicago t-shirts” related searches. This is what gets you in the local results up near the top of the search results page.

Link backs are incredibly important to move your site up

The number one thing that determines your page rank on search results is link backs. (This isn’t a proven fact, but we’ve seen our best results from a precision link back campaign) This means if you want to get in the top results for t-shirt related searches, you need to start exchanging links with popular websites, and sites that show up in the search results for t-shirt searches.

A couple of my tips/tricks to get high quality link backs

• Start an Ebay Blog. There aren’t any rel=”nofollow” on your links back to your own site. This is the best quality link juice you can get
• Flickr Photos with links back to your site. This also gets you top quality linkback text to your specific site
• Provide the exact linkback text to your link exchange partners so that it uses proper link text pertaining to your site.
• Forum links – participate in relevant forums and generally your links will not have the rel=”nofollow” on them.
• Start a Public Facebook Fan page. These are showing up in search results now as well.

Myths and irrelevant techniques

While everything I’ve said are examples of things that have worked for me, I should precede all of these things with this statement:

Google’s search algorithm is constantly changing. Last year it changed over 300 times, and no one is 100% how it actually works. Don’t fall for the companies out there selling expensive “black magic” to get your site in top results. Most SEO boutiques are full of shit. I’ve done SEO campaigns for small and big time clients, and independent SEO boutiques trying to scam business off of them gave our SEO work an F grade… no joke. Be wary of SEO marketing companies. There are about 50 techniques, and everyone is doing them. Any SEO company is probably on the verge of spamming if they’re overpromising results.

Google, Search Engine Watch, and the Search Engine Round Table are about the only 3 places I really trust.

Google does not use meta keywords, some search engines do, but I wouldn’t waste too much time on this.

Loading up 30 character file names and 40 word alt descriptions on images is a waste of time and resources. “SEO Experts” like Acronym may tell you to do this, but the time wasted doing this could be used somewhere else and you may get flagged as trying to game Google.  While it is important to use alt tags, and to name images appropriately, overdoing this by using 40 word alt tags, and 30+ character names for your images is a bit of a waste of time and you run the risk of being flagged as loading your image and alt tags.

Don’t use hidden text to fool Google. They’ll find out and you’ll get penalized.

Make an XML sitemap and submit it to Google, and update it constantly.

Don’t overdo keywords in the title. Be specific, but don’t be a total spammer.

Use Google Analytics, and setup E-Commerce tracking. You’ll be amazed at the value of the information you get from this tool. I get 70% of my sales from organic search results, and plenty of that comes from Google Image search related to finding my product images with quality names and alt tags. Like I mentioned before, it’s important to use proper, specific names, but overdoing file names and alt tags is a unneccesary.

Like this post?

If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed, follow me on twitter, and don’t forget to check out the Assault BLOG and online t-shirt store.

Jobby Monster

Darren let us know that he’s started his own gig called Regal Clothing. He’s got some great stuff including my favorite, the Jobby Monster.

It seems like most of the sites on the net are posting his Fingerprint ID shirt, but this one takes the cake for me.

Use the code IHEARTREGAL at checkout and you get 10% off!!

With Assault in it’s infancy, we’ve decided that the time has come to execute the old punk rock motto, “Support your local scene.” We’re in the t-shirt business in Chicago, and there plenty of other local companies that are in one way or another associated with the apparel industry–here are some of our favorites.

Akira Chicago

1837 W. North Avenue Chicago 60622 | 866.477.2299
If you’re familiar with the indie clothing scene in Chicago then you’ve surely heard of Akira. One of the fastest growing boutiques in the area, and they’ve got something for everyone! Currently, they’re running a sale for 30% off everything that ends in 4 days!

Cameesa

Cameesa’s paving the way just like Threadless did with a new business model known as crowdfunding that we’ve talked about here on the blog before. You pledge your money to a shirt design submission that you like and if a total of $500 bucks is pledged by other members your shirts get printed! Artists get commission, you get a shirt for every $20 bucks you pledge, and you get a percentage for each shirt sold! New and innovative–I think so. Check it out and start submitting your shirts!

Ware You Fit In

Unique T-Shirt designs by the graphic designers John and Shane. They’ve been featured in several newsletters in the area as well as at the Renegade Craft Fair. Check em out!

Screwball Press

4045 N. Rockwell, Chicago 60618
Steve Walters has been running Screwball Press since 1991, and has since opened up his own screen printing academy. They offer 8 hour screen printing poster sessions at a very affordable price. If you’re interested in learning how to screen print, and need access to screen printing equipment, this is the go to place in Chicago.

Boutiqueville

770 North Halsted, Suite 303 Chicago 60642 | 312.243.8786
Comprehensive local boutique listing here in Chicago. Boutiqueville also runs as a print publication in tandem with New City. Hopefully they’ll come around and list us as an online only shop!

Solemates Chicago

2708 N Halsted St Chicago 60614 | 773.327.7782
Shoes, apparel, and handbags store for both men and women. A favorite amongst Assault friends and family.

Leaders1354

1400 N. Milwaukee Chicago 60622 | 773.489.1900
Freshness. Leaders1354 has hats, t-shirts, and shoes for rappers, scenesters, geeks, hipsters, skaters, and I’ll go ahead and say ROCKERS. (That’s more our department though) Leaders started in the south side in historic Hyde Park, and now have multiple shops around the area closest to Assault being Wicker Park. They’ve got great taste and a great assortment of stuff. Highly recommended.

St. Alfred

1531 N. Milwaukee Avenue Chicago 60622 | 773.486.7159
St. Alfred has the finest footwear and streetwear apparel brands from around the world, and one of the cleanest stores I’ve seen since those communist Apple folks.

Propaganda T-Shirts

3327 N. Lincoln Avenue Chicago | 773.549.6736
Propaganda is a full service printing company and I highly recommend them for any printing needs whether it be t-shirts for your local bar, soccer team, or if you’re starting an apparel brand like we did. They’re friendly and very helpful.

I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few of you, and if I have post it in the comments or email us and we’ll add to our list!

Fatal Justice T-Shirt

I must say I’ve spent almost zero time the past week doing any major site updates of any kind besides the When Every Sale Counts blog post and a few miscellaneous twitter posts.

I did however, finally move around our homepage to get a few more of you signed up for our monthly newsletter. It appears to be paying off at least a little bit since I’ve seen a slight increase in sign ups over the past few days. We were having some technical difficulties and for some reason people were able to sign up with invalid emails.

Here’s what’s been happening lately with Craig and myself at Assault

• Scoping out Black Friday deals – We haven’t had a special sale yet, but have one planned for a future date to corrrespond with a Shirt.Woot.com side deal of the day.
• Twitter friending and posting as often as we think of it
• Screen printing research – We’re working on doing some at home one color prints to see if we can do it at a feasible price point at home. Contact us if you’ve done this before.
• We’re now shipping our shirts for free! No order minimum required!
• Getting ready to release our December newsletter. Hopefully the unsubscribe link will work this time.
• Bought a 32in Emerson flat screen that I wrestled away from a crazy soccer mom–totally worth it.
• Re-ordered the Fatal Justice T-Shirts in both  black and white–get em while they last!
• Converted nearly our entire store’s javascript to JQuery. I love jquery.

Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter. We only sent it once a month and it always has the newest deals we are currently offering.

You’ve identified your niche, registered your business, designed your shirts, and launched your online t-shirt store. Now what? If you’re like we were, you need some sales, you weren’t blessed with $20,000 of marketing money to buy pay per click ads from Google. These few tips should help save you a few headaches as well as give you a few ideas on how to market your product for free.

Don’t give away your shirts for free

Don’t give your shirts away for free to people unless you are guaranteed at least a write up in a blog or a link back to your site or some sort of return on investment. I can’t count the number of times we’ve sent free shirts to websites and companies who said they were doing t-shirt roundups and then never posted anything of the sort after we sent them free product.

If you have limited inventory like we do–reserve your inventory for sales. This may sound like we are slightly bitter, and that’s because we are. I designed most of the shirts on our site and I even pay for them. When you’re just getting started, you can only afford so many shirts. This means every sale counts. Unless you are going to get some sort of ROI on your give away, there’s no reason to do this. GoMedia has a great article about doing design work for the apparel industry that touches upon a similar subject.

GoMediaZine

I know I’ve mentioned them before on this site and in this post, but Go Media is a great resource for tutorials and design insight. If there’s one thing you can take away from this post it’s to subscribe to Go Media’s RSS  feed. They’re the best at what they do. One article that I know can help for you people starting up an on demand t-shirt store is the tutorial that shows you how to make realistic t-shirt mockups.

Here at Assault, we were lucky enough to know a few photographers who would take awesome photos for our site, but if you don’t happen to know any photographers and don’t want your photos to look amateurish this is a great tutorial to get your design renderings onto realistic t-shirts.

Put yourself out there – Network in your industry and local area

Don’t be shy. Send emails to local magazines and websites that are similar to yours. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They don’t respond or they say not interested. It’s a numbers game. Not everyone is going to like your stuff. The people of QBN and Digg LOVE to slam our designs and site. It’s not big deal. Most of the time, they give good insight and can be quite humorous. Your friends and family are going to say your stuff is cool, but people who don’t care about you will be blatantly honest behind the protection of anonymity on the internet.

The first thing we did after launching our store was to send friendly emails to t-shirt blogs and design websites with links to our store and our blog and tutorials. The best way to find sites similar to yours in your industry is to do Google searches. We did searches like “t-shirt blogs”, “t-shirt resources” and “apparel design resources” and sent emails to sites that appeared to be open to reviewing our products.

Forget Myspace. It’s fine to have a myspace page to get in contact with bands for instance, but it’s useless for the most part as far as getting sales. Make friends with fellow designers on twitter. Download Twitteriffic or a similar twitter application and join in the conversation. Share links you find and comment on other t-shirt blogs’ posts. Thank everyone who comments on your products. Send personal emails back to your customers who comment on their orders.

Monitor your site traffic for forum post links

When you’re not getting much traffic it’s pretty easy to monitor your traffic and referrals. I recommend  using something like Sitemeter since it gives you real time stats. (We also use Google Analytics) There’s been plenty of times that a user in some obscure forum posts a poll asking which shirt they should buy (with links to one of our shirts as well as other shirts they like)

Create an account and add a comment to the forum post with a discount or a coupon code to help persuade the users to buy your product. When every sale counts, this is a good way to get a sale.

Give coupon codes to sites that review shirts

Some of our top sales referrals are from sites that we gave non-expiring coupon codes to like Shirts On Sale and Hide Your Arms. They show up for many t-shirt related searches and users are often at their site to do exactly what you’d think–get coupons for t-shirts. It’s the best way to get exposure to your shirts directly to customers who are ready to buy stuff.

Why would you spend $1,000 dollars for Google Ad Words when you can get the same target visitors to  your site for free? We’ve ran a few pay per click ad campaigns, and let me tell you that we’ve never even come close to breaking even. On the other hand, some of our top sales referrers are from a coupon code on a t-shirt blog that we didn’t pay a cent for.

Know of any good tips that I missed?

I know there are countless tips and tricks that I haven’t told as of yet (Maybe a part two?) I’m sure there’s also people who disagree with me on Ad Words, and giving away our product for free. If you have anything you’d like to add, or if you have your own site, post it in the comments!

It’s not very often that you get to find websites that are brand new to the market and that are actually trying a totally different approach to business. Recently, we somehow managed to get in contact with the great people at Cameesa, a new, possibly better than Threadless style social website that gets the crowd involved in getting their favorite shirts printed by providing the actual support for the prints.

Signing up and getting a profile setup is quick and painless. After logging in you can cruise through the designs and choose to “support” certain shirt designs that you like by pledging a dollar amount towards that shirt. Best part is for those of you who don ‘t do t-shirt design is that if the shirt you support gets picked then you get one sent to you AND you get a portion of the profit!

Are you a starving t-shirt designer like us? Then submit some of your work and reap the benefits if your shirt is picked for printing!

I’ve become a real fan of sites like this, as well as sites like Rumplo, and Please Dress Me, but more so I’m a fan of the business model. Being able to have the community rally around the designs they like best is like a guaranteed product that will sell. Throw in the fact that people are willing to wear just about anything on a t-shirt and you’ve got yourself a surefire way to make money. The real genius in what Cameesa is doing though is that the community is also funding the designs and sharing the profits. For the little guys like Assault, every penny counts. This seems like a great way to expedite the up front cost of printing shirts. (even if people have pledged to buy them) We know better than anyone that sometimes people just don’t buy the things even when they like them.

I think a site like Cameesa opens the doors to designers who may have tastes more like myself. Same goes for the great work that comes out of Design By Humans. As of recent Threadless seems to print more and more of the same style of shirt rather than branching out and allowing for a more diverse audience to get involved. Is Cameesa the answer to what we’ve been looking for in an apparel design community website that isn’t Threadless? I think it’s got a great shot.

Hails and Horns July/August 2008

The heavy metal magazine Hails & Horns did an interview with Mr. 51% and Tim in their July/August issue of their magazine and you can get it now at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble. (Unless of course you tried to get it in Chicago off North Avenue, in which case I have already purchased all of the copies to send to friends and family of Assault)

I’ve taken the liberty of scanning the two full pages that we got in for all to see, but if you want to see the magazine in the flesh you’ll have to buy your own!

If you’d like to see the Hails & Horns website you’re going to have to wait because it’s under construction. For now, you can see their Myspace page.

Brandon Porter wearing the Skull Wing Assault T-Shirt

Kendra and Kate wearing the Assault Official T-Shirt and the Green Assault Shirt.

Shirts Pictured in this article

• Skull Wing Assault
• Assault Official T-Shirt
• Green Assault

I recently spent the $50 dollars required to earn me the title of coolest person EVAR by purchasing myself a pair of adult sized Heely shoes from Zappos.com. For the longest time I’ve wondered what the hell those little kids were scooting around on when they were in my local mall and when I finally found out what they were I was devastated to learn that they were only kid sized shoes.

While parusing the net the other day I was delighted to find that they do in fact make Heely’s in Adult sizes! Best part: they’re only $50 bucks! After conferring with the great people at Zappos I was able to get my shoes overnighted, and as of right now I’m sitting here at the office anxiously awaiting their arrival. I’ll keep everyone posted as to my progress as well as to share any pictures of the major spillage that will most definitely ensue.

In other news, we still have yet to receive ANY pictures of ANYONE wearing our new Phoenix Rising T-Shirts that we mailed out several weeks ago! For those of you who promised pictures… well, WHERE ARE THEY!? We have all these free guitar picks and coupon codes that are just sitting here waiting to be given away!

Saw this great post at IttyBiz and decided to fill out their quick survey in case anyone doesn’t know what Assault is all about.

What’s your game? What do you do?
Assault is currently a t-shirt company that has plans to branch out and become a complete apparel line over the course of the next two years. We have 13 designs that we print on American Apparel t-shirts, and we have done 2 custom t-shirt designs for the Lex & Terry show. We’re currently looking for new opportunities in the custom t-shirt/merch market whether it be bands, radio stations, or sports teams.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?
We do it to meet famous people–to earn money–to get chicks–pick your favorite. More importantly, we’re t-shirt snobs who can’t stand most of the designs that most online t-shirt companies have, and we have a unique design style that we think others appreciate as well. We’re doing a service to you–our shirts get you laid, though as of yet there’s no official proof.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?
Our customers range from 15 year old skateboarders all the way up to 40 year old parents with green hair. The people who’d need or want what we offer would be in bands, skateboarders, snow boarders, bikers, or anyone who likes wearing t-shirts, but doesn’t want to wear one of those gimmicky shirts that says, “Barack is my homeboy”, or has some strange illustration that looks like it came out of a children’s book.

What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?
Our shirts are printed on the best of the best, in America, and you won’t see anyone else who has them. Unlike all the other small t-shirt design companies out there, our shirts don’t have our brand name splattered all over them, and we don’t charge $40.00 for a shirt. If you can buy a case of Old Style on Friday night, you can buy one of our shirts instead and we guarantee it will do you better with the ladies +24 beers in your stomach.

Our shirts don’t have some silly offensive slogan on them either with a design that was done in two seconds like our competitors. Some of them have ambiguous, yet powerful political messages, and some of them have unique humorous undertones. More importantly, there’s something there for everyone.

What’s next for you? What’s the big plan?
The next big step for us is to get our products expanded to more than just t-shirts, and also to get our stuff worn by some of the hottest up and coming bands in the punk rock, or independant music scene. We love doing custom t-shirt designs for high end clients who need more than a t-shirt that gets shot out of t-shirt cannon. (Thanks for that quote Terry)

We’d like to have a premium brand of our shirts, as well as a line of clothing that you can find in stores like Hot Topic, The Alley, Nordstrom’s, or even Macy’s. Our goal is to branch out from clothing, and to move into other avenue’s such as Jackets, Snowboards, Skateboards, Sport Team equipment, and anywhere else we can.

One of my daily reads is a blog called Stuff White People Like. The sarcastic banter is subtle to the point where your everyday web surfer may skip right over and miss the absolute genius in their posts.

Specifically the post that I decided to blog about is post #84: T-Shirts. It touches upon all my favorite cliche t-shirt companies including Threadless, and American Apparel, who as of now is still our t-shirt supplier. Here’s a tidbit from the article:

Finally, and perhaps the most important to be aware of, is the unacceptable category of t-shirts. There are a few simple rules to follow in order to avoid wearing the wrong t-shirt. First, if it’s made of a stiff, thick cotton, throw it in the garbage immediately. White people t-shirts must be made of the softest, finest organic cotton. This is law. Unless it is vintage, the shirt cannot be made in a foreign country (unless you can certify its labor conditions). The shirt cannot contain a current sports logo. Shirts with sports logos are acceptable, but they must contain a logo that hasn’t been used in 15 years. Last and not least, it cannot be baggy. Your t-shirt must be tight-fitting for both style and mating purposes.

As much as I hate to say it, I’ve most definitely thrown out given away t-shirts that weren’t tight fitting, or were made of thick Hanes Beefy T style cotton. Damn the Stuff White People Like blog for being so accurate in the ways of the whites. Although, I totally disagree with the vintage crap. I’d rather be caught wearing a pink polo than a stupid “vintage” discolored John Deere t-shirt.

Some other articles at Stuff White People like that you may want to check out: #11 Asian Girls , #88 Having Gay Friends , and #69 Mos Def. An honorable mention also goes out to Wrigley Field–just because it couldn’t be more true.