Sometimes making people happy in the world of business can result in wonderful personal gains . And no, I’m not referring  to an “arms-deal-type” happiness, which may be terminal (in business and in life) like in the case of  Mr. Shaik (aka Shaba). No, I’m talking about good, prompt, hassle-free delivery of service and product.

I was afforded some happiness last week when I received two VIP tickets to yesterday’s Rugby Festival which was held at the new Cape Town Stadium in Green Point.It was an experience of “goosebumpular” emotions which resulted in a great victory for the Stormers over the Boland invitational team (43-17). And in the curtain-raiser the South African Legends 10s team beat the International Legends 27-5. So…. all-round victories for the locals.

The greatest victory however goes to a happy people; the famous Capetonian sea-breeze; a beautiful mountain and the organisers (some wearing Lava Ink promo t shirts) . Even with a crowd of 40 000 people, it was  smooth sailing from beginning to end.

The organisers of the event SAIL Stadefrance, made sure that help was available at all times and that the assistants were easily visible, wearing Lava Ink’s VB 145 gram t shirts in bright yellow. This is an excellent cost effective promotional product which is 100% South African (and cheaper than the Chinese imports nogal). It’s not very “feshenable” but rather functional as it serves its basic purpose.

People can moan and groan about the state of the world……….and all that is, is talk. Then there are those who do. Those who do are the ones who change world. Organisations like The ManKind Project (MKP). I love their vision, which is partly described by this inset taken from the MKP website :

Men have been warriors since the beginning of time and every man has his warrior side. But social forces pressure many to repress this part of themselves. They unconsciously substitute a distorted shadow for the healthy warrior energy so essential to sustaining individual and communal balance.

The New Warrior is a man who has confronted this destructive “shadow” form and has achieved hard-won ownership of the highly focused, aggressive energy that empowers and shapes the inner masculine self. Sustained by this new energy, the New Warrior is at once tough and loving, wild and gentle, fierce and tolerant. He lives passionately and compassionately, because he has learned to live his mission with integrity, and without apology.

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We were asked to print some 200 gram t shirts for MKP and initially I wanted to do a Direct To Garment (DTG) print. I was then handed this strike-off  and informed that the guys got this result with a screen print - we decided to run with it because it looks amazing!

Strike-off (pre-production approval)

What’s great is that the actual t shirts even looks better than the strike off (see below). Well done guys, I must say that your skills are unmatched and you have restored my faith in CMYK screen printing.

Actual printed t shirts

The South African Clothing Industry at the moment is like a dog with its tail between its legs because of the barrage setbacks in recent years. Companies have called it quits due to the lousy  economic environment and thousands of jobs have been lost.  Larger companies like Frame Textiles and Team Puma have closed down and what remains are many small to medium sized businesses who chug along trying to survive. So the task of supplying World Cup products have been left up to the last of the big guns, The Seardel Group. This group of companies known as The Seardel Group, have accepted the task but they themselves do not have the capacities, technologies or experience to produce products like headwear or the Zakumi soft toy (the world cup mascot).

Now a  dispute has emerged between SACTWU (Southern Africa Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union) and SAFA’s (South African Football Association)  master licensee  SLAM (Safa legal and management). According to Redress Consultancy, SACTWU claims that the agreed figure of 80 percent (locally produced) to 20 percent (imported)  have been ignored and that actually 40 percent of world cup clothing products are imported.

How obvious is that to anyone who knows this industry? There is no chance in hell that these companies (Seardel) could produce all the stock required and they definitely not going to outsource to local companies because they need to make a profit. Providing work to the desperate small fry is last on the list because of the logistics and the headache of  keeping everyone in line with quality, deadlines and consistency of products. Who else could produce R840 million’s worth of Zakumi product under one roof and ensure quality and consistency but the Chinese.

What I am saying is that once again a lack of knowledge and preparation has resulted in a toi-toi and it puts us in a bad light once again. SACTWU please stop to think before you kick up a fuss – understand that we need to supply and reach deadlines and that you haven’t exactly played a part in promoting productivity- calling for tools down when the economy is at its most vulnerable state.

Here’s some free marketing info compliments of  Bizcommunity.com . It relates to the ticket sales for the Fifa World Cup 2010 – anyway, that’s what I’m focussing on. What’s more important, is that the ratio of predicted ticket sales  per country is listed and this gives us an idea of which countries to target when selling our world cup merchandise.

2010: Our Cup runneth over

Good news from FIFA: not only has two million tickets been sold to date, a recent poll reveals that South Africans are ‘overwhelmingly positive’ about hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The third ticketing sales phase, which will conclude with a random draw for oversubscribed matches on 1 February, saw 1 206 865 applications received from 192 countries. Six matches are currently oversubscribed (in all categories), among them the semi-finals and the final. In total, 55 matches are oversubscribed in at least one category.

This means that after three of five ticketing sales phases, two-thirds of the available tickets have been sold.

Taken from Bizcommunity.com, continue reading

P.S. If you’re not interested in all of this marketing mumbo jumbo and don’t want the fuss of planning ratios of t shirts / caps per country for optimum sales and blah,blah, blah………  just put on some “klopse” garb and sell proudly South African on the parade.

I’m an avid reader of  t-shirtforms.com. This cauldron-esque hub of t shirt chatter is where I keep up to date with the latest garment printing tech and t shirt info- plus it’s a great interactive area for picking the brains of the  both experienced and newbies.

So, yesterday I was reading about the “tips of starting a clothing brand” and there was some good advice given. I found the following comment by Mike from Imahottee to be the “tip of the thread” because this, from my experience with t shirt start-ups, is the key ingredient to being a successful t shirt brand:

You should have something that makes you different, and should be able to describe it in a single sentence. In addition to running my shop, my day job is reading scripts for movie studios. In Hollywood, they call that something different “the unique attractor,” or The Hook. “Ghostbusters” has a great hook, for example; so did “Back to the Future” and “Jaws.”

So if you take a look at the different huge tee companies out there – Busted Tees, T-Shirt Hell – they’ve both got easy one-sentence pitches. Whether or not you like their stuff, it’s hard to deny the power such a resource has for marketing and branding purposes. I always knew I wanted to have a humor tee company, for example, so I decided to do only clean humor to set myself apart. The company’s called I’m a Hot Tee, and our slogan’s “Hot Tees You Can Take Home to Mom!” So it’s a pun and it’s memorable – two other things that can really go a long way.

What it means is understand your concept; stick to it and build your whole brand around it, even especially if it’s controversial.

Check out these great sites and see if you can regognise their excellent concepts:

• Think Geek
• Street Shirts
• Threadless Tees
• Band Tees
• Laugh It Off