I got an email a while back from a great customer and fan of the brand who’s even offered to help me out in some areas who. He brought up the fact that he’s cool with the owner of Bobby Fresh, Robert Preston and wondered if there was a way he and I could work together. He was like well I know he’s your competition but I know he would love your work, or something along the lines of that.

There’s a guy I met in Finishline a few years back, Terrence. I was doing the Cool Grey Jordan tees and I wanted to see how the greys matched up to my design. He went and brought out the, not yet released, shoes for me to take a look at. He also asked a few questions about they brand and said he might pic a tee up from the site. He’s a super cool dude and even though he doesn’t live in MI anymore we’ve still been keeping in touch via social networking sites. He’s now started his own brand Aviation Bay and ever so often I’ll give my two cents on designs and business tactics. He saw a packaging post on Instagram and asked if he could use the idea for when he ships he’s tees out.

Pepsi's Collaboration Promotion with Doritos

I don’t have any issue with “competition”. Maybe for bigger more established brands with stock options and 401k plans it’s cool to hate another brand or have a strict “stay away from them” kind  of attitude, but that’s just not how I get down. When I see another brand doing something awesome, it fuels me to do the absolute best I possibly can, I want people the raise the bar and I love working at reaching and even raising it myself.

I love what Bobby Fresh is doing, he’s helped me to realize what a huge market is out there for us sneaker lovers. Let’s be totally honest, I’m probably not very much competition for him anyway. He’s way more established and probably funded than I am right now. If Bobby Fresh called me up tomorrow asking me to work on some designs or collaborate or whatever, I’m down! Maybe from a traditional business standpoint that’s a bad way to see things, but in sneaker culture the whole “I’ll get mine, you get yours…. buy for $160, resell for $1000″  attitude is helping to make the culture we’ve grown to love one you darn near hate. I can’t get with it.

When Terrence asked if he could use the same packaging technique I did, I said of course. I don’t think we should blatantly steal a brands designs or concepts and act like they’re our own, but that’s not what he did….He straight asked for my permission to use a packaging technique, which isn’t all that unique in the first place. I want his brand to succeed just as much as I want mine to; if we can both exchange ideas to help one another get there then lets do it. The term “self made” is an oxymoron, no one is self made. No one has ever gotten anywhere alone and no one wants to be alone at the top.

Photo Credit: Heavier

We all know that the love for sneakers fuels a lot of revenue and in my opinion there’s enough to go around. If you’ll buy one limited edition tee you’ll buy three, becuase when do you have too many shirts to rock with your newly purchased shoes? You don’t! If we thought that way we wouldn’t be buying multiple pairs of shoes in the first place. I’d even promote another sneaker related brand on my site, I’m that confident in the fact that it’s perfectly ok to work together to make each other better.

Making my dreams a reality is intertwined in helping other peoples dreams become a reality. It’s not a gimmick, I’m dead serious. I LOVE MY COMPETITION!

One thing you may notice about the KREAM Anonymous tees, is that inside label is different. I used to iron on labels and it only featured just one size. Since I’m small brand running on a tight budget, the iron on option, although not the most convenient, was more cost efficient. After taking notes from a few other brands I keep up with I realized I could go with the bespoke-ish option of having all sizes printed on and circling the correct size by hand. It still gives a personal touch but saves much more time.

Old Label

I’ll be posting up pics of the special packaging that these shirts will come shipped in soon. Based on the fact that I always ship with some form of food or candy, I’m sure you can guess how these will be shipped.

 Here’s an up close photo of the cookie chain.

Heir Jordan is a new site that, as the video shows, is going to give us a glimpse into the life of Michael Jordan’s sons, Marcus and Jeffery Jordan. I guess they’re capitalizing on the hype that surrounds them based on their dad and from the looks of this video they’re going to include sneaker features as well.  I saw this video on Nice Kicks first and I saw a lot of negative comments. If they don’t mind the slight invasion of privacy, then I don’t see what’s wrong with actually giving the people what they want and are going to ask for anyway. Everybody represents their own personal brand in someway or another (yes even you and me). The hype around them is never going to go away, so their personal brand has almost been partially created for them. As a business minded individual this seems like a natural progression into them creating their own sense of self, professionally, personally, and as I said, business wise. Also the name is pure genius.

Cool

Don’t Feed the Animals has based their brand on the concept that believes that “as humans we can no longer listen to the animal within us. To grow and prosper as a society we must break away from selfish thinking.” I don’t know how they’re going to get that point across through clothing, but I’m going to continue to check up on them and find out and you should too. [Side note: Their logo scares me]

I not only like this windbreaker but I like the styling of the model, plus it’s comes in this cool packaging.

Last Place is very similar to a brand also based in the Cleveland area, Illthy. Based on the meany references to the Ilthy on their blog, they appear to have ties somewhere or another. I personally like both brands becuase I’m a big fan of simplistic and clean illustration (you see I know those big words). However, unlike Illthy this brand does not appear to get their inspiration from the sports industry. As the name implies their brand represents those who start at the bottom. They “represents creative individuals everywhere who are making things happen without the spotlight of a glamorous city shining on them, but find it radiating within them.”

They appear to be releasing this Late Summer/Fall collection soon if it hasn’t dropped already. I personally like the general logo. I’d rock that on a shirt any day.

WORXlife is not your average clothing brand. They actually didn’t start out as a clothing brand at all.  They describe themselves as a “Creative Service Firm that deals with client’s graphic design, photography and other business needs.” In 2009 they branched out into a clothing line and it’s not your basic t-shirt line.

It’s obvious when looking through Worxlife’s collections that their background in graphic design allows to bring a detailed, as well as a vintage look, to their brand that includes a money clip wallet.

OK, so when I saw the brand Invizible Box I thought…….”really an invisable box?” However, after looking through the site I realized it was a pretty cool idea. The concept comes from not thinking inside the box and they also have this mime theme going on. They say they’re brand speaks for it’s self without word, much like a mime. Here’s how they describe it: “…we see the concept of “the box” as boundaries that an individual forces themselves within, thus presenting them with the dilemma of how they can overcome their “box” and think outside. That being said, we believe that true inspiration and success can simply come from “thinking inside” oneself, without influence or pressure from others.”

What I really like most about Invizible Box is the well-roundedness of the brand the theme is fit into pretty much every shirt design. Every detail of the branding from tags, to stickers, and the entire site all fit within the theme.

There many more brands that deserve a mention, but I will introduce them on a later date to save scrolling and because I don’t have the time to go into them right now. Until Next Time….

Well even though I designed the shirt to go with the Retro Jordan 3′s a year ago. I still remember what brought me to the final design you now see on the soon-to-be-for-sale tees. I always say this, but in the sneaker culture there are so many variations of sneaker related tees that it’s difficult to find the balance of relevancy, creativity, consumer appeal, and current trends a shirts design. I think I speak for all of use sneaker type designers (customizers, web and graphic designers, and clothing and accessory designers) when I say that the best thing we can contribute to the sneaker biz is first being the person we sell to. A lot of us are able to  find the balance I spoke of and create great designs becuase we’re not just selling something to people who like sneakers. We’re selling you something we’d buy ourselves (and if no other brand is, I am).

So as a usual a part of my design process I began sketching out ideas as they came to me. As you would imagine, one of the first thoughts I had was something elephant related since the shoes feature elephant print [I won't go into the fact that the print is continuously called cement print when cement print is actually a whole other thing]. Elephants make me think of the circus so, that theme became a part of the brainstorming. This is a bad sketch (most of my sketches are), but I think the elephant was supposed to be on a ball or something circus-like. I honestly don’t remember the exact direction of this particular drawing or why he’s in a circle.

I was thinking “lets make an elephant Jordan-type figure.” Mr. Elephant (why does everything have to have a name?) was gonna be Mars Blackmon/Jumpman which would have fit in with the original Tecknicolor logo which is now Sheepy as Mars. I was dead set on having his trunk look similar to Jordans arm in the famous free-throw-line-dunk. However, after thinking this concept through I realized I’ve seen way too many characters mimic Jordan poses, including in my own brand. I also hadn’t totally abandoned the circus concept. His ears are unusually big for a reason and if you can read the words at the top, they’re from a related song to an elephant that has big ears.

I really loved that phrase, so I decided to try and work into the design somehow. I’m not the best and incorporating typography into designs. I want to be, but I’m just not. I was actually stuck on this particular style of the design for a really long time. However, in my usual design process I woke up in the middle of the night with what I felt like was a much better idea and spin on the same general theme.

I send and resend these pics to my team of people who are totally unaware that they’re working for me for free and get feedback until I finally get something that I think is a good balance of me and something other people can appreciate. So as I’m sure you’ve guessed this is the design I woke up in the middle of the night for. I sent it to the peeps and got the type of feedback I was looking for (actually one of them hates the circus, so they were ignored) and this, the first design of the 3 three’s tees package, was officially born.

I hope you enjoyed yourself on this Tecknicolor journey of design. Until next time, good night and good luck (sorry, I say things that don’t matter or make sense).

I knew about presales, but I wasn’t completely comfortable with using the system for my brand. This was mainly becuase I was so new to the t-shirt game and I didn’t think I would get as many sales as I could just selling from pre stocked inventory. What made me actually take the whole presale thing into consideration was observing the brand Illthreads. First of all they have great products with dope graphics, and they’re masters at marketing and sales via Tumblr. They also use their tried and true presale method for most, if not all, of their shirt releases. There’s a page on their site that explains the whole process from beginning to finish. They explain it a such a simple and easy to understand way:

Have you ever tried to reserve a video game? Have you ever booked a plane ticket or concert ticket? Well Illthreads™ uses a similar method called pre-orders, which is when you reserve your merchandise now to be received at a later date.

I observed this whole process, watched fans of the brand sell out each shirt design, and even submit photos of themselves proudly rocking their Illthreads gear. I thought hmmmm…….. this really works. Because they keep their blog updated so frequently, even when unexpected situations come up, such as misprints or something, all paying customers can feel as ease with sending them their hard earned cash. All they have to do is just visit the sites to be reassured that their products are on they’re way.

Then there is the best part of presales: No excess inventory sitting around! This saves a ton of money that can be put towards more products, giveaways, site upgrades, marketing, ect.  You don’t have to worry about how many shirts to print up or how many of each size. You can make a decent amount of sales and still maintain the limited edition-ness of your brand. Overall, it’s a great set up for a start-up line, especially if you have already established a customer base.

WARNING: YOU MUST BE TRUSTWORTHY! You will never get repeat business from customers who have had bad experiences with your brand. Ripping people off, lack of communication, terrible customer service, and empty promises….are quick ways to destroy your business and news travels fast.

So presales aren’t just for sneakers, plane and concert tickets anymore. They can apply to probably most products and services out there. So this is my little piece of business advice, as well as my explanation of the next Tecknicolor shirt releases for the fall/winter seasons.