Angela, Alan and Matt drew inspiration for their business idea from a vacation trip to Disney World and decided to make tee shirts. Their t-shirts are perfect for those who love to cover their bodies with comedy and quality.
Their will to make funny t-shirts combined with their unique sense of humor gave birth to their business idea: Conch Tees.
We were eager to learn more about them and Alan was kind enough to answer a couple of our questions and appease our appetite for stories behind such cool entrepreneurs.
To begin with, tell us the story behind Conch Tees and how did the whole thing start?
We were all on vacation together at Disney World. As we were standing in line for Space Mountain, we started coming up with funny puns and slogans saying "Man, if that were a shirt, I'd wear it!". Then we said ,"Well, why don't WE make these shirts ourselves?" From there it was born.
Your T-shirt slogans are hilarious, how do you come up with cool and witty tag-lines?
Thanks! Maybe we're born with it, maybe we're Maybeline. All of us just kind of think about life in a slightly different way than a lot of others, which is the reason why we're all great friends. I don't think there's any particular secret to coming up with this stuff other than just bouncing ideas off of each other based on things that we see or hear about on a daily basis.
Rarely, though, do all of us agree that something is completely funny, which always leaves us to tweak the designs until we’re all happy with them. Then we scour the Internet to see if it already exists somewhere. If it does, we skip it. So, if you see a shirt similar to ours out there, chances are THEY took it from US.
Conch Tees is handled by three founders, tell us more about you guys.
Angela and I are married, and Matt and I were pot-luck roommates at a six-week summer program in North Carolina back in 1996, so that's the connection the three of us share. Angela and I both have a background as theatre performers, and we met doing a regional theatre show in Indiana. Our showmance turned into a romance after the contract was over and BOOM, married. Matt and I kept in touch and stayed roommates all throughout college. As products of the digital age, before going into business together we have kept in touch via the multitude of platforms available. On the side we all keep our own projects and hobbies. Matt is probably the best programmer I know and is always available for freelance projects and contracts. Angela decided to go back to school for a second degree and is currently enrolled at Columbia University. I freelance in the IT realm for a post-production studio, and also work very closely with one of the top news organizations in New York. So, we all have other things that seriously occupy our time. Conch Tees is kind of our "release" where we can just mess around, make people laugh, and sometimes even get a few people upset.
Which has been the most successful T-shirt by Conch Tees?
By far, the most successful t-shirt has been our "Obamunism" tee. That shirt basically put us on the map during the presidential race back in 2008.Of course, it also made people think we were right-wing radicals. (Hint: we're not.) Building on that success was our "Two Dads are Better Than None" tee, promoting a message of adoption by same-sex parents. Of course, that made people think we were left-wing radicals. In reality, we just think everything can be funny, and if you don't think so, then you suck.
We also like to think that sometimes funny can be hopeful, as we have seen with the explosion of our TwoDads.us community on Facebook. Due to demand, we have also turned both of those designs into other things like hoodies, stickers, and tote bags which have been equally successful. It's strange.
How has social media helped you in expanding your business?
Social media IS our business... it's free advertising. We go to great lengths to stay as tightly integrated with Facebook as possible. If you visit any of our pages, you will have the option to "Like" it and/or leave a comment regarding that particular design. Both options will publish to the user's wall if they allow it. (Matt can poop out a socially integrated web application in a weekend. You can hire him via kungfuters.com.) Partially for fun, each of us also have separate Conch Tees based twitter accounts that we update and use for public communication. Since most of our target demographic now has grown up not knowing what it's like to NOT have the Internet, it only makes sense to use social media tools every day, all the time. We also try to make lasting connections with other social media gurus, creating mutually beneficial partnerships and such.
How do you guys prefer to market yourself, and which has been your best marketing campaign so far?
A lot of our "marketing" has just been organic and word of mouth. We started out advertising just via online social networks to begin driving traffic to the site. We now have created fan sites on Facebook our more popular designs and have gathered quite a following (facebook.com/twodads.us and facebook.com/obamunism) as well as a standalone contest page for Awkward Turtle (www.awkwardturle.me.) Unlike other "big" shirt sites, we can't yet commit to some of the $25k/month ad budgets that the big advertising avenues require. We epitomize "the little guy" and act accordingly. (i.e. We sneak up behind you and give you a swift kick to the kidneys.)
Can you share the best testimonial/feedback that you guys have received so far?
Here are a couple of positive comments:
I had a last minute change on sizing right before my order was scheduled to ship. They took the time to change my order and still ship it on time. I've done a lot of online shopping and know MOST companies would not let you modify your order that easily.
The site is easy to navigate, with a smart interface. You can easily see what you want and a realistic visual of what you'll receive.
The shirt I ordered was shipped to me super fast and I absolutely love it. Highly recommended!
And here is a hate mail we received during the presidential race... some might not see this as positive, but we viewed it as such and actually like getting hate mail every now and then. For every person who takes the time to write a negative email, we have eleventeen-hundred gazillion more who love what they see and never write anything. This shows us we're reaching people:
You're about to get a lesson in Capitalism. Crappy idiotic products lose money. Sit back and watch, before you can say "What's that McCain? $300 billion to Nationalize mortgages?" you'll see, the election will be over, Obama will be president-elect, and YOU idiots will have a ton of worthless T-shirts.
BTW... our Obamunism tees still sell just perfectly fine.=)
Where do you see Conch Tees 10 years from now?
We hope to see Conch Tees' tees in retail stores, used in tv shows (as seen on Law & Order SVU) and movies, and being talked about by name on a daily basis. We want to have a large staff (pun intended) with a larger facility so that we can meet the print demand we are projecting.
Some expert advice for the newbies in E-commerce.
Do a lot of research! There probably is no out of the box solution that will work for you (read: avoid things like OSCommerce and ZenCart.) If there is, then you're not innovating. Once you know what you want to do, find the pieces and put it together yourself or hire someone you trust to do so (like Matt.) You most likely are not going to be an overnight sensation just by posting a video on YouTube or making a website, so get ready to drop some cash into advertising, at least in the beginning, so you can get the snowball rolling. Also, if you're selling something that requires inventory, get an accountant!! We've had a few different web-based businesses in the past, but this was our first where we actually inventoried a product that needed to be shipped. It's a completely different world.
Thank you Alan and we wish Conch Tees all the success in the future.
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