The business I’m currently working on, an active lifestyle brand and mission called Gather No Moss, is initially for writing and blogging about active lifestyles, and selling t-shirts to both inspire people and to further market the brand.
I’ve been blogging for almost two years, while working on the t-shirt designs and planning the business itself. Last fall, I began selling online through a company that handled all of the shirt ordering, printing, and shipping. That was a great way to get the concept into the market at almost no cost to me, but it’s not profitable for me.
Over the last month I’ve worked with shirt wholesalers and a local screen printer to get some shirts made. In addition to selling online, I’ve wanted to get into specialty retail stores: running, cycling, hiking, etc. A couple weeks ago I sent a letter and a sample t-shirt to the premiere running store in our area. Since then, I’ve been trying to contact the owner by phone, but kept missing him. Today, I connected with him on the phone, and then stopped by the store on my way home from work. This was quite unexpected on my part, but I was prepared, since I had two boxes of shirts in my car.
To my surprise, the owner was very happy to sell my shirts on consignment, offering a lot of advice and spending two hours with me to talk about things. I got more out of that meeting than I could have ever imagined. I left him with almost all of my stock, and he’s giving me some prime wall space to hang the shirts, and would like me to go to some races with him to sell too.
Wow! I’m pretty excited. I’ll keep you posted on how things go with those sales. My role in this is to continue marketing my brand, and also to help draw people to that store.
I also gave away four shirts: two to store employees and two to a couple that were in the store, and who gave me some great feedback on the shirts that I showed them. That couple is actually from West Virginia, and drove up to Pittsburgh just to go to this store. Now they’re heading back with my t-shirts and my business card, and will try to get their triathlete club to buy a bunch of shirts.
I now need to order some more shirts, as I’ve got friends asking for them. Not a bad problem to have…
Brian
