Apparel Ops
T-shirts: a Love Affair
TTTeeing Up a Side Hustle
2012-2015
In 2012, a couple of friends and I started up a micro-label whilst living in Asia. ‘Think Tank Threads’ was borne out of a self-serving desire to wear tees that weren’t some bizarre bricolage of random Chinglish (Chinese + English) thrown together on a boxy-cut piece of fabric that would fall apart after a year.
Our business model was simple: import premium blank tees at astronomical VAT cost, put tongue-in-cheek designs on them that only our small community of expats would get, and sell them for next to nothing. It was the opposite of textbook capitalism; buy high, sell low, and have tons of fun in the process.
TTT Collateral + Web Design
Aside from sourcing, ordering, and designing all the garments, my role as brand manager also included setting up sales displays, defining the manifesto/visual language, building the online presence, and coming up with the novel idea to hand-stamp and number every tee we made so buyers could see which item in a series they’d gotten.
TTT Garment Test Series
We also shot a number of very ‘budget-friendly’ hype videos for our local premier that I edited and cut together, in which we test our tees against the rigors of non-existent music genres, all custom composed by the musically prodigious Cam Burns, one of the co-founders/scientists/subjects.
HIFI Clothing Co.
2016-Present
TTT ran until 2015, at which point we decided we’d gotten enough fun & tees out of the deal. A year later, I started Highly Irie Future Inc. with a friend based out of Denver as a more altruistic venture. The idea was simply to create tees that people enjoy wearing as much as I did designing them, while generating funds for various charities. Common themes are nature, pop culture iconography, political barbs, and whatever the hell I feel like.
HIFI Collateral & Web Design
Similarly to TTT, I was responsible for branding, design, ordering, e-shop creation & maintenance, and scheduling of vending events along the Front Range from 2018-2019.
RESULT
To date, I’ve put around 100 designs on various textiles between TTT and HIFI. They’ve been labors of love and something about that must resonate with consumers, as TTT sold out all the products we printed, and HIFI was inducted into the ‘Top Shops Club’ on Threadless in the first year of business.
Despite discontinuing on-site vending thanks to Covid, the online shop continues to generate regular sales with customers as far away as Israel, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, France, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. All proceeds still go to charities that are now directly linked on product pages, so anyone can directly see what they’re supporting, which is pretty neat.
Related
If you like this sort of stuff, check out the Digital Illustration Gallery to see some more handiwork in rectangular format.
