Nice Guys Finish Third

In writing this post, I’m working under a few assumptions:

1) You value art in some way, or at the least, you do not hate it.
2) You are inspired, or at least intrigued, at the thought of innovative ways of distributing creative merchandise.
3) You spent at least part of the holiday weekend outdoors, and in so doing, noticed that your t-shirt collection could use some refreshing.

Now, a bit of background:

Months ago now, we promised a free t-shirt to he or she who placed third in the Nasty Chipmunk Essay Competition. Said t-shirt (yet undesigned, at the the time) was to feature a cross-eyed zebra and the words “Nice Guys Finish Third.” The winners were named, two people tied for third place, and there the issue stood, us not designing or producing the t-shirt and the winners going unrewarded.

Until now.

Using the holiday weekend to dust some cobwebs off her TO DO list, Robbi sat down and designed the zebra t-shirt. The result pleases us so much that we both want one for ourselves.

Here it is:

Here’s where things get murky. We could either order four shirts on Zazzle (two for the winners and two more for ourselves) for around $80, or for $260, we could order 20 shirts, leaving 16 for the likes of you.

So here’s what we propose: If 11 of you out there in the Idiots’Blog readership also admire this shirt and want one for yourselves, we will be able to have it nicely printed and break even. And if an additional five of you decide you want one, we could actually make a small profit! It’s the same business model that fuels the subscription service. Why not, we say, try it with shirts?

So, if you like this shirt and would gladly part with $18 to buy one, send me an email and we’ll start a tally. As soon as we get to 11, we’ll call the t-shirt people and get the presses rolling.

But here’s the thing, this model only works if those who say they want the t-shirt actually end up buying it. So we’ll invoke the honor system and call it an experiment. At worst, we’ll be out $260 bucks, but at best, we could start a new way of distributing small-run t-shirt designs.

And whatever comes to pass, we’ll both have (what we believe to be) a really stellar shirt.

Let us know what you think. Comment to this post or write me an email if you want in. And be sure to let me know what size you want (unisex S, M, L, XL, XXL).