I don’t know what the weather is like where you are but here in Western PA we have officially hit cold weather season. Last week we had some beautiful, sunny, warm fall days but over the weekend - the rain rolled in and it is cold. I shed a few tears as I put on my boots yesterday. Flip flop weather is over. I came home yesterday and warmed up in my favorite sweatshirt - the distressed hoodie - mine is from the Crafster Shop and it says “knit fast, die warm”

So to help you stay warm as this chilly fall weather rolls in we bring you the Hoodie Sale! Save 15% on all hooded and zip hooded sweatshirts until October 4, 2009.

Coupon Codes:
USD$: HOOD9
CAD$: CADHOOD9
(Minimum $25.00 purchase is required. Valid for hooded and zip hooded sweatshirts only. Shipping costs are not included in discount.)

Hoodie History: you might want to check out the Hoodie Wikipedia page - there is a ton of info about the history of the hoodie there. continue reading ‘Hello Hoodie! Save 15% on all Hooded Sweatshirts’

Yesterday Problogger posted a list of the 10 most popular blog posts for Q3 2009. So I thought it would be interesting to see what have been the top 10 blog posts for the past month here at Spreadshirt. Here are the top 10 most read posts on the blog for the past 30 days:

1. Are you ready for some football? Say Hello to TO Tees and Ocho Cinco Gear
2. 100 Days, 100 Obama T-shirts
3. Celebrating Mediocrity
4. WordPress plug-in for Spreadshirt
5. GIVEAWAY - Create New Products - Win MOO Mini Cards!
6. Ribbed vs. Jersey Knit - What is the difference?
7. Jerkass Clothing Interview - The Man Behind the Humor
8. New Products Launched to Cover Your Legs, Arms and Neck
9. Five Fantastic Flyer Tips! Market your Online Shop Offline
10. World’s Funniest T-shirt Contest Winners

It is kind of cool to see that people are stopping by the blog to read about all kinds of different things.  We have been reading lots of blogs and talking about how we can improve this blog to be more useful to you.  What would you like to see more of here on the blog?  What stories and announcements are helpful?  What could you live with out?

Are there other company blogs that you think are great?  Some of our favorites include Timbuk2 and Southwest Airlines.  What company blogs do you like to read?

We decided to focus this month’s Trend Report on the shopping days and times which our buyers in Europe and North America really love to click on that buy button. Some of differences between North Americans and Europeans are well known, but perhaps parts of these findings support those differences (siestas?) or provide us with insights (buying at work?).

North Americans best like to part from their money in the afternoon, whereas Europeans tend to hold on to their hard-earned cash well into the evening. The one exception in Europe are the Italians, who strongly increase their buying from 3 to 4 p.m. – nothing like a nice shirt purchase after a siesta, I guess. The average European really gets into the buying mood between 8 and 9 p.m.

You’ll find even more detailed shopping times for the U.S. and a closer look at Europe after the click.
continue reading ‘Trend Report: Favorite Times to Shop for Shirts’

Yup, these days there seems to be a holiday for just about anything. There’s International Bacon Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day and Towel Day (my personal favorite).

National Punctuation Day on September 24th, however, takes the cake and underlines the importance of correct punctuation and grammar. Punctuation something that people take very seriously (and I’m not just talking about your 8th grade English teacher). It’s a great thing, not to be underestimated, overused or misused; it certainly comes in handy making a text understandable.

What do punctuation and t-shirts have to do with each other, you ask? We asked ourselves the same question and took a look at how our customers use punctuation. We were curious what the most often used punctuation mark was on a shirt and a couple of Spreaders placed bets on the exclamation point! We were wrong! People aren’t yelling much with shirts, they’re rather making points – with periods.

Here are the top five most commonly used punctuation marks on Spreadshirt products: period, apostrophe, exclamation mark, dash and comma. Unfortunately, the interrobang (my favorite punctuation mark) didn’t make the cut – but that doesn’t mean you can’t get one on a shirt. Here are some punctuation shirts I’ve found:

Happy National Punctuation Day!!

I came across this great short film “Rebel With a Cause” by Kristian Labusga, which is now competing for the Politicool Award in this year’s Bitfilm Festival. The film spans the journey a t-shirt takes throughout its lifetime and the “ecological backpack” which a t-shirt ends up accumulating along its way.

It’s just 200 grams of cotton – their story is reflected in their design and each one has its own little story to tell.

That story is much heavier than that initial quote suggests and this film visually takes us through the story of a shirt and the impact it has on the environment. I’ll let the film speak for itself and I invite any comments.

P.S. You can vote on this film and others in the category here.

After awarding two US partners with MOO MiniCard packs in Monday’s post, we thought it’d be a good idea to write about using flyers to promote your shop. Our Spreaducation pages have covered how to create products for your shop and market it online. Most of the tips on how to market your online shop are, well, using online marketing. This is where many of your customers will be found and where online marketing methods will bring them directly into your shop without them having to leave the online sphere.

On the other hand, there is the fact that we (hopefully still!) spend most of our time offline. This is where an offline promotion can catch the attention of customers in the “real” world and bring them to the online one. When we say “offline promotion”, it is less about taking out a full page ad or standing out on the street and forcing a flyer into the hands of every passerby. We are thinking more about targeted use of flyers and stickers. We asked some of our partners in the European forum about their experiences using flyers - and we’d like to hear your opinion here, too! Here are a few highlights we collected from our partner’s experiences:

1. Flyer Layout
Once you have come up with a concept, the next thing to consider is the flyer’s layout. Christbear’s opinion: It’s important that the flyer’s info is conveyed quickly while still making sure the flyer will be pocketed.

The less advertising found on the front the better. A nice picture, a funny saying and always put the site’s address in small font at the bottom right (so it doesn’t get in the way). These are the flyers (or postcards) which I pocket, pin up on my fridge or set down on my desk for a couple of days. And these are the only flyers which I turn over and take a look at the other side.

2. Format and Printing
Quality over quantity: look for a good printer (we’ve had great experience with MOO), rather than worrying about the price. People will think twice about throwing away a high-quality flyer. And vice-versa – if a flyer looks like it was copied onto recycled paper, it is very likely to end up back in the recycling bin.

Popgarten shared the same opinion: continue reading ‘Five Fantastic Flyer Tips! Market your Online Shop Offline’

Congrats, congrats!

A little over a week ago we asked you, our partners, to create new products with the new September apparel for your shops and the Marketplace. Many of you took us up on this request and therefore automatically entered yourselves into our MOO Minicard raffle.

We’ve pulled 10 winners out of a hat and each of them will receive 1 free pack of MOO Minicards from us.

The winners are:

Lucie - Milatchek Shop
Bernd - Warten Shop
Katharina - Katharina’s Shop
Yasmin - Wiesnengerl Shop
Rene - Vakantietshirt Shop
Stephan - Stephan’s Shop
Iris -Ticeforheroes Shop
Dagmar - Exklusiveshirtandmore Shop
Becky - Wonkywear Shop
Robert - Thecasualmusician Shop

In order to claim your coupons for MOO, please write a short e-mail to Kathrin at ktl at Spreadshirt dot net.

If you are wondering how best to use the Minicards, we will be posting some offline marketing tips in the blog soon!

So, don’t wait too long to claim your coupon as they are only valid until 31st October 2009. You can start creating your Minicards here.

Thanks to the Hungry Girl newsletter (Hungry Girl has a great daily newsletter with tips on how to eat better) on Friday I learned that September 12 is National Chocolate Milk Shake Day (also listed on this page of bizarre food holidays). If you are in the Atlanta area you can even get a free chocolate milk shake at this place.

So in honor of this esteemed holiday I did a little search of the Spreadshirt Market place for the word milkshake and found this super great t-shirt design from Teebagks.  I love the cartons of milk shaking hands!

What is your favorite bizarre food holiday?

Image by Gary Denness via Flickr

Temple’s Tip is a regular feature of the monthly Shop Partner Newsletter. Click here to see previous Tips from Temple.

Last month we introduced a small change to our shipping method…the UPS Ground option was replaced by a new shipping method, Standard Shipping.

What does the new shipping method offer?

• A third party, Mail Express, will facilitate the delivery of the packages from our facility to USPS, therefore the package would be delivered to the customer with their regular mail
• Tracking included for all orders using this shipping method from pickup to delivery
• Saturday delivery is available, as well as shipping to PO boxes. Since USPS delivers the final shipment, delivery would be the same as regular mail delivery times.
• Shipping in the 48 contiguous states will take 1-5 mailing days from the time the orders leaves our doors, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and APO address can take up to 7 mailing days.
• A lower shipping cost, check out the shipping prices for complete pricing list (http://www.spreadshirt.com/us/US/Service/Help-1328/categoryId/277/articleId/542).

No changes were made for the other shipping methods, so 3 Day Select, Next Day Air Saver, UPS International Premium, UPS Standard (Canada) and USPS International Economy have all remained the same. For an overview of all shipping methods, check out this helpful Shipping FAQ.

Update: In last month’s newsletter I discussed new fonts. Well the new fonts are live and available for you to use! For further font updates, check out the fonts topic on the Forum.

How can you stay in the know with Spreadshirt? Visit our Partner forum regularly! The forum offers many tips and advice from us and other partners. Logon with your Spreadshirt account user name and password to post a question, offer advice, or read up on announcements for new apparel, sales, new features and changes!

Make your next custom t-shirt really shine! We are offering some super savings on sparkle flex print types.  Use the coupon code SPARKLE19 to recieve the discount (minimum 1 item per order. Order must contain 1 product with a sparkle flex print. $2.01 will be deducted from your cart for the original $3.00 sparkle flex print price.)

Click here to learn more about the different Spreadshirt print types in our FAQ pages.

Here is a close up photo of silver sparkle on a black t-shirt: