Here's more on Bush's approval rating...

...this time from The Onion:

Three general lessons I've learned so far...

...after 7 or 8 months of this experiment in small business:

1. hang on to your cash
Cash is the lifeblood of any business, and conserving cash - or at least deploying it very carefully - could be the most important responsibility of a business's management. My biggest mistake with Wavelength involved one of my first big decisions: whether to order large quantities of shirts in each design (which would mean a big cash investment but a low per-shirt cost) or to order small quantities of each design (which would mean a smaller up-front investment but a higher per-shirt cost).

I went with option A, which I partly justified by thinking "if the company takes off, I'll eventually sell all these shirts anyway." And I was also worried that I might be flooded with orders and not have the shirts to fulfill them. But some designs proved to be unpopular, and I soon realized that - even though other designs were selling relatively well - I would be stuck with large quantities of the unpopular shirts, and the cash I'd spent on them was gone forever. So be tight with that cash, and also rememember that...

2. focus groups are your friend
Along with tightening my pursestrings, I could have used a focus group or a poll of some sort to get a feel for which designs would be hot and which would be cold. In hindsight, this sounds like a no-brainer, but in the business's early days - before I even had an email list - I didn't really have an idea of how to go about getting a large sample of people to weigh in on my shirt ideas, and I decided to just go to market. Today, I realize I should have put more time into coming up with a polling strategy early on. In addition, I should have been more willing to...

3. adapt early - and shut down early if necessary
July 2005 was a big month for Wavelength Clothing. Shirts were printed and stored in my garage, the website was up and running, and I started using Google's AdWords program to drive traffic to my site. As I've described in earlier posts, AdWords brought me 300 visitors a day at a cost of $0.10 a visitor, so at the end of July, I'd spent about $1,000 and had 10,000 people check out the merchandise online.

Of these 10,000 visitors, only about 25 bought shirts - a number that was well below the 100 to 1,000 that I had hoped for. In the small picture, this meant that the AdWords program - which I had expected to rely on as a major source of sales - was a money-loser I would have to discontinue. In the big picture, it meant that Internet sales in general were going to be much harder to come by than I had thought, and that I would soon have to test different sales approaches like boothing it up at farmer's markets and college campuses.

The biggest message from the AdWords results was one that I didn't want to hear: my shirts might not be anywhere near as marketable as I thought they would be. In hindsight, I probably should have grown much more hesitant to invest any more money into the business. But with large quantities of shirts on hand (see lessons 1 and 2 above) and a stubbornly optimistic outlook in mind, I would hold off on cutting off the cash for several months.

Bush's handlers are good at the imagery game...

...think of the Mission Accomplished photo op, or all those speeches where Bush stands in front of phrases like "Strategy for Victory." Those backdrops are set up by marketing pros, and the images help coax certain perspectives on Bush and his policies into viewers' heads.

Al Franken talks a bit about this strategic use of imagery in his book, which I first mentioned a few posts back. His best example is a commercial from the final stretch of W's campaign against Kerry:

The ad, which played like a trailer for a horror movie, showed flashes of wolf fur and fangs amid the leafy shadows of a deep, dark forest. An ominously somber announcer voiced the script:

In an increasingly dangerous world...
Even after the first terrorist attack on America...
John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operations by 6 billion dollars...
Cuts so deep they would have weakened America's defenses.
And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.

At this point, a group of wolves lounging in a grassy clearing arose and began advancing toward the viewer. And then the tagline:

I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message.

Franken points out that the ad is misleading as well as frightening. For instance, the reference to "the first terrorist attack on America" probably made you think of 9/11, right? It actually refers to the '93 WTC bombing, and the period after that incident was an era in which all of Washington was voting to scale back intelligence spending. Anyway, you can watch this fun little mind-bender here.

Gauging public opinion with a poll...

...was something I should have done before printing a single t-shirt. Last week I set up a web poll that asked people to look at some potential new designs and tell me which, if any, they or someone they know might purchase. Sure enough, the results surprised me: one of the two top vote-getters was the "Liberal" design at right, which I thought would be too contentious for most people's taste.

The other top finisher was "Remain Ignorant," with my favorite new design - "Word Up G" - coming in third. Each of the top three designs was approved by at least one-third of the people who voted, so I'll keep them in mind as potential future shirts. I'll hang on to the other designs, too, but they didn't poll well so I doubt they'll see the light of day.

I recently saw "the Wal-Mart movie"...

...its proper name is WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price, and it convinced me not to patronize the chain that many progressives despise almost as much as they despise that other W. The movie's two most thorough arguments described Wal-Mart's despicably aggressive union-busting activities and its strategy of wringing out some extra savings by intentionally keeping stores understaffed.

Uggh. Can we accept that type of employee treatment at one of America's largest and most powerful companies?

Both behaviors strike me as significant violations of the good old golden rule, so I'm not going to support Wal-Mart anymore. I hope awareness and disapproval of some of the company's practices will grow and lead to change.

To be honest, I had shopped at Wal-Mart for some Wavelength Clothing supplies in the past, though I only went a couple times, and my purchases totaled less than $100. Back then, I was familiar with some of the general complaints about the chain but was ignorant of details. So I'm grateful to the makers of the movie for their reporting, and for their grassroots, emails-and-neighborhood-meetings distribution approach. I watched the movie with about 50 other folks at an Ocean Beach community center, and the "town meeting" aspect of it felt great.

So I'm working on a publicity campaign...

...which will kickoff with an email to everybody on the Wavelength Clothing email list. I've got a few new designs in the works, and I want to get some opinions on them before I decided which deserve to go to press. I also want to show off a new funny Bush pics section of the site, and I want to gently remind people that, hey hey, Wavelength shirts make great holiday gifts!

On another front, I'm going to mail a small care package, including a press release I whipped up, to people whose blogs and columns I enjoy. I want to let these folks know I appreciate their work - and let them know about Wavelength - so I'll send them the press release, my catalog of designs, and a sticker or two.

Maybe if I really get a kick out of reading them, I'll throw in a free shirt, too. Anyway, if you know of anyone who might be interested in the Wavelength story, feel free to pass along the press release, or let me know and I'll follow up. !Gracias!

Found an interesting old entry...

...in a recently unearthed journal I kept during my junior year of high school. Like so many scraps of writing from the past, this one is obnoxious and embarassing and ironic and amusing, all at once. Check me out on November 8, 1993:

"If I owned my own business, I'd locate in a skyscraper in the 'downtown' of a big city. My corporation's employees would wear $1,000 suits daily and cater to the demands of our clients, whatever those demands might be. The company would enter the NYSE with much acclaim, with controlling interest (51%) lying in my hands."

My English teacher had a simple comment on this entry: "Good luck." She was being kind.

Not to pick on Governor Schwarzenegger...

...who was very visibly bitch-slapped by California voters last week, but I got a few good laughs out of this two-minute animated parody, so I thought I'd pass it along.

Might Arnold be changing his ways? Here's what he said at a press conference at the Capitol up in Sac-town: "The message we got from this special election was very clear...The people want us to take care of the job right here in this building, and not to go to them if things don't work out." Hmmm. Let's see if he's a little more open to compromise in the days ahead.

Election results are in...

...and they are mostly good, in my opinion. All of the statewide propositions were defeated, and the loss that hit our Governor hard: he had hoped the voters would take his side on issues that he couldn't work out with the state legislature, but no dice.

On a down note, Donna Frye - the unconventional surfshop owner/ environmentalist/city councilwoman pictured at right - lost the San Diego mayoral race. I liked Donna's "for the people" platform, and I had done a little last-minute volunteering for her campaign, so I was sorry to see the election go to her opponent, Jerry Sanders. Sanders is part of the same crowd that brought us our city's last two mayors, who presided over the city's descent into financial crisis...I hope he can turn things around.

I'm still very happy I got out there and volunteered for Frye's campaign. I now have a feel for what "getting out the vote" is all about, and I look forward to helping other campaigns in the future. And on election day, when I checked in at Donna's volunteer headquarters as part of my poll-checking work, Donna herself came in, gave a great pep talk, and even sat down at my table and said hello. That was definitely cool.

It's an election day here in Cali today...

...statewide, we're voting on a bunch of propositions, several the darlings of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In San Diego, we've also got a mayoral race up for grabs. I had pretty strong feelings about both the props and the mayor's race, so I did a little campaign volunteering for the first time in my life.

On Saturday, I walked a 4-square-block area in San Diego's North Park neighborhood, knocking on doors of registered Democrats and asking them to vote for mayoral candidate Donna Frye. I followed that up on election day today by "poll-checking," where I periodically checked to see who in the 'hood had yet to vote (polls post an updated list every hour) and then knocked on those peoples' doors, encouraging them to get out and vote for Donna. Though I was initially nervous and unsure of what to expect, both outings turned out to be enjoyable: I got some exercise, talked about the mayor's race to a lot of people, and felt like I made a small contribution to Donna's campaign.

In between my two stints for Donna Frye, I also spent a few hours at a teacher's union, calling registered Democrats and asking them to vote no on propositions 74 through 77, which Arnold had put on the ballot. In 3 hours I made about 100 phone calls, reaching roughly 40 people and leaving messages with about 40 others (with the remaining calls going unanswered or going to disconnected numbers). Most people I talked to said they were going to vote no. One woman spent a full 15 minutes reviewing each proposition with me after initially complaining - rightfully, in my opinion - that the explanations in the voter's guidebook were hard to decipher. At the end of the call, it sounded like I had convinced her to nix the props, so that was cool.

Today I met Cindy and Fernando...

...Cindy Sheehan and Fernando Suarez del Solar, that is. Two of the most recognizable leaders of today's anti-war movement...two regular people who, after losing sons in Bush's war, have drawn international attention by rallying against the president and against the war. Cindy and Fernando were featured guests at a rally put on by AM1360, San Diego's Air America station, this morning.

There's something about seeing this kind of event, these kinds of people in person that is just not captured by seeing it on TV (or reading it on the Internet...). As I stood 30 feet from Cindy and Fernando - and then as I just looked at them, absorbing the real them with my eyes - I felt an unmistakable deepening of sympathy for their pain. I also felt a new appreciation for their work.

I got a chance to thank Fernando, and to shake his hand. I got a chance to say hello to Cindy, who gave me a hug - a strong hug. Today, Bush's war got a little more real.

Al Franken's got a new book out...

...it's called The Truth - With Jokes, and today his promotion tour stopped in San Diego, where he broadcasted live from the new House of Blues in the Gaslamp Quarter. My folks had picked up an extra ticket for me, and with a full house of a few hundred other like-minded people, we laughed a lot during Franken's 3-hour show. (One choice line: after joking about how Harriet Miers had said Bush "is the most intelligent person I've ever met," Franken dryly added that, strangely, Samuel Alito has not yet made the same observation.)

From a business standpoint, the event placed me in a bit of a predicament. I knew Franken would attract a bunch of fiesty liberals, who would certainly seem to be potential purchasers of Wavelength shirts. But I had no idea if the event's layout would accomodate any shirt sales, and I doubted that the House of Blues would some let me sell shirts at their venue anyway, so I decided to just attend and enjoy. When we got there and I saw a huge line of people waiting to get in, and I realized I probably missed an opportunity. I had a few Wavelength stickers on hand, which my mom helped me distribute. I noted that at the next event like this I would bring dozens of stickers and be ready to work the crowd.

Here's some history on 2nd term approval ratings...

...for recent presidents who had 2nd terms. Note that Bush's plunge into the low 30s puts him in interesting company.

"radical Islam": the new red menace

from today's New York Times, in an article talking about Bush's strategy in the wake of the Libby indictment:

"Over time, aides and advisers said, the hope is that Mr. Bush will be able to re-establish his image as a strong leader by showing people that he has plans to address issues like high energy costs, illegal immigration and the risk of an influenza pandemic. At the same time, they said, he will try to do a better job of explaining why prevailing in Iraq is essential to defending the nation from the broader threat of radical Islam."

It's that last sentence that caught my eye. I won't even mention that, originally, we were told that we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam might have had WMDs. In the sentence above, couldn't you swap "radical Islam" with "communism" and arrive at the rationalization for the Korean War and Vietnam War? Yikes.

Using a bike for much of my getting around...

...means I'm often on the bike path along the south shore of the San Diego River, a manmade inlet of the Pacific that passes right by Ocean Beach. I see some interesting things on this bike path - most notably my fellow bikers. The other day, I rode by an old guy who had steered his bike to the side of the path to whistle and wave at someone on the other side of the river. As I got closer I realized he was also gazing through a pair of handlebar-mounted binoculars at the someone: a large bird perched on a lightpost on the opposite shore. I couldn't tell if the bird was returning his greeting.

Another interesting sight first caught my eye about six months ago, on my first trip down the bike path after starting up Wavelength Clothing. Someone had set up a ladder and a few dried-out palm fronds in what looked to me like a pelican, just lifting off from the water into flight.

I've passed the sculpture probably 100 times since, and it's still standing, though some days it looks a little worse for wear. I'm curious to see how long it's going to hold up.

While visiting San Francisco last week...

...I brought the Wavelength Clothing booth to a Sunday afternoon festival in the city's Excelsior neighborhood. People seemed to like my shirts, and I sold about 15 of them, but the best part of day was sitting back and absorbing the Excelsior's flavor.

From my spot near the stage where the festival's musical acts performed, I watched an incredible range of people pass in front of me. In general, it was a diverse blend of whites, blacks, hispanics, and asians. More specifically, I saw a group of Spanish nuns in gray and white habits, an elderly woman walking effortlessly on 10-foot high stilts, an Aztec warrior dancing troop, the Balboa High School Marching Band, and a terrific Filipino rapper named Kiwi, from a duo called Native Guns.

Overall, it was a magical day in one of those personality-laden neighborhoods that make San Francisco such an amazing town. I was even located near the free cotton candy stand, so there were lots of very happy kids all over the place. And, as you can see in the picture at right, the lady in the booth next to me had the cutest little girl I've ever seen.

Interesting words from The Sun...

...a truly wonderful magazine with short stories, poems, and reader submissions as well as a usually insightful centerpiece interview with a big mind from some niche of the progressive movement. In a recent issue, they interviewed a remarkable Colombian exile; one of his remarks reminded me of a dilemma I've felt rising in me since I started Wavelength Clothing:

"I'm tired of hating Bush. I have realized there's no point in simply acting in opposition to others. I have to live my own desires instead of just opposing theirs. This is what we all have to do: find our own style of living and working and making love, and do it, I hope, with some beauty and grace."
-Hector Aristizabal in the October 2005 issue of The Sun

Choice quotes from Thoreau's Walden...

...almost always cheer me up, particularly when I'm in a work-related funk. In my corporate days I picked up the nerdy but rewarding habit of typing good quotes from things I was reading into Microsoft Word files so I could easily find the quotes later. My Thoreau file is filled with dozens of amazing passages, so to help me decide which to post in this blog entry, I focused on some of the best of his quick-hitters. When they're looking for words to live by, a lot of people seem to reach for the Bible, but to me, Thoreau's stuff just makes so much more sense...

on money:
"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

on success:
"...a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

on economic equality:
"The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another."

on smarts:
"Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit."

on fashion:
"The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same."

on change:
"Things do not change; we change."

on life:
"This is the only way [to live], we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center."

on the future's potential:
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning-star."

So Sept. 24th was a huge day of protest...

...across the United States - though apparently it barely registered in much of the mainstream media. Rita, the hurricane that followed Katrina, dominated the news through the weekend, and many of the major news outlets couldn't find much time for other stories. I'm not a big believer in media-related conspiracy theories, but when CNN et al basically ignores hundreds of thousands of Americans who spent a Saturday protesting the actions of their president, I start to wonder.

Anyway, truthout.org was all over the protest in D.C., and they've got a great collection of articles and video clips here...if nothing else, check out the video with the bare-breasted woman...it seems to do a good job of showing the wide range of anti-war and anti-Bush activities that went down in D.C.

San Diego had a rally of its own in Balboa Park, and the San Diego Union-Tribune put the number of attendees at 2,000. My parents, who were kind enough to set up the Wavelength Clothing booth at the event, confirmed that there were thousands of people in attendance, some great speeches delivered, and a whopping 40 t-shirts sold - Wavelength's biggest sales day by a wide, wide margin. I'm not sure, George, but I think the natives are getting restless!

Added ladies shirts a little while ago...

...and, with the help of my talented photographer buddy Tomas, I added photos to go with them. Previously, we only featured men's tees, but now the Wavelength website is graced with images of some of Ocean Beach's finest females in the Lies, Wanker, and WMD Fool designs. Many thanks to my amigas for participating - I think it's safe to say that the site is looking quite a bit sexier these days!

In case you were wondering, it only took Tomas about an hour to take the necessary photos; the only equipment he used was his high-end digital camera and a sun reflector that helps eliminate shadows. He gave me the images on a CD, and I then spent about an hour (maybe two) cropping the best ones and incorporating them into the website; the only programs I needed were Adobe Photoshop and Yahoo! Sitebuilder. The digital era is nothing if it ain't DIY...

On vacation in Hawaii...

...I had a chance to do some good thinking about the business. One conclusion I came to is that, while Wavelength will probably never make enough money to pay all my bills, I'll still keep it going, as a side project at the least. The whole thing has been so enjoyable - learning how to start a business, designing the shirts and getting them printed, selling them over the 'net and in person. I've probably sold between 200 and 300 shirts at this point, so they're out in the world, being worn by people who want to spread the message...and that's enjoyable, too.

Anyway, it's easy to reflect when you're chillin' in a setting like the big island of Hawaii. At first I was surprised by the island's terrain, much of which consists of flat, desert-like expanses and fields of black lava rock. But the beauty of these areas grew on me, and the island offers lots of beach and jungle, too. Here's a small sampling of big island beauty...

"Think Globally, Act Locally"...

...is a great motto, I've always thought. Like Gandhi's "be the change you want to see in the world," the line helps me remember that the most fundamental way to fight the high-level offenses of Bush and his ilk is to do what I can at my own level - in my neighborhood, on my block, even in my home. I got a similar message from Bob Filner, a U.S. congressman who represents part of San Diego in the House of Representatives. Filner spoke at a meeting of the San Diego County Young Democrats; after hearing his speech, I wrote the following summary for the SDCYD newsletter:

SDCYD Members Fired Up by Congressman Bob Filner

“The country’s going to hell,” said Bob Filner, who represents California’s 51st District – generally, the southern portion of San Diego – in the U.S. House of Representatives. Calmly but passionately, the congressman explained that Americans are currently being “attacked” by rising gas prices and pharmaceutical costs, and that George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans have rolled back many of the gains the progressive movement has achieved in recent decades. Overall, Filner contrasted the core Democratic idea that “we’re all in this together” with the GOP’s “law of the jungle” mentality and lamented that, in recent years, “their ideology has triumphed.”

Does this mean the average person should just give up? Filner doesn't think so, and he shared stories from his past to illustrate how ordinary people can have a real impact on their country’s affairs. In 1968, for example, a young Filner joined hundreds of other activists in New Hampshire to campaign for underdog candidate Eugene McCarthy in the state’s Democratic primary. McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in that contest stunned the incumbent Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from the race soon after.

Filner, who is currently in his seventh term as the 51st District's representative, took some time to ask for help with his 2006 re-election campaign, where he will be facing a primary opponent who plans on accusing him of being "too liberal." But the congressman's main point seemed to be that Democrats need to stay motivated in the fight against the Republican agenda - and that individual Americans cannot get discouraged about their role in the country's democracy. "At the municipal level, in particular," Filner noted, "a little organization can go a long way."

I'm heading off to the big island of Hawaii...

...for a week-long trip that will culminate in my friends' wedding on Saturday, Sept. 24. While I'm looking forward to the trip - my first real vacation in a while - I can't help being a little bummed about the timing. The day of the wedding happens to be a massive day of anti-war protesting across the country, and if I wasn't already booked, I would be representing Wavelength Clothing in Washington, DC, where hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected.

Being in DC would be a great business opportunity and also a lot of fun. I think my shirts would play well, even if I was simply wandering around on foot and selling them out of a backpack. More importantly, I think the atmosphere would be incredible. Hundreds of thousands of people brought together by their passionate disdain for war? I've never had the chance to participate in an event like that, and I think I would really enjoy it.

But there are only so many days on the calendar, and it'll be great to see my friends Chris and Maggie tie the knot. In addition, my parents have volunteered to set up the Wavelength Clothing booth at San Diego's anti-war rally on the 24th, so with their experiences and their t-shirt sales, I'll feel like I got at least a piece of the action.

I've received a handful of negative emails...

...since opening Wavelength Clothing, but only a few have been truly mean-spirited, and a couple have asked an interesting question: am I close-minded politically, or put another way, am I demonizing a politician who is not malicious and dark-hearted, but merely interprets the world differently than I do?

Sure, President Bush's stances on the contentious issues tend to strike me as dead wrong, and I find it hard to believe that half the nation feels otherwise. But I also cannot believe that anyone would prefer a tough, flavorless Twizzler over a moist, yummy Red Vine, or pre-stirred yogurt over its obvious superior, fruit-on-the-bottom. When it comes to licorice and yogurt, I recognize that my "beliefs" on the "issues" are purely a matter of taste, not of actual right and wrong. I also recognize that part of me actually enjoys engaging Twizzlers fans in endless "how can you be so stupid" debates over which of us is right - and I would probably do the same with pre-stirred yogurt lovers if I ever bumped into one.

So does this have any bearing on my political orientation? I might have thought so a few years ago, but I don't anymore. In debates over licorice flavors, nothing is at stake. But a vote for a politician with priorities like George W. Bush's is a vote a world with fewer environmental protections, with less intranational and international cooperation, with less of the Golden Rule and more of the Almighty Dollar, with more poverty, with more guns and ammo, with more suffering and death.

Bush, in you have done anything for me, you have given me conviction in my core political beliefs. You have also given me the motivation to fight for them. Punk ass.

Made an interesting contact through KLSDam1360...

...which is San Diego's outlet of the Air America radio network. A few weeks ago, I had sent free shirts to the 5-person team behind the Stacy Taylor show, a local talk segment that broadcasts from 6am to 9am (Pacific time), before Al Franken comes on nationwide. Stacy and the rest of the gang got a kick out of the shirts and mentioned them repeatedly on air, which I appreciated a great deal.

Anyway, while Cindy Sheehan was camping outside of Bush's ranch in summer 2005, a San Diego woman named Barbara Cummings spent time in Crawford with Sheehan and called in to the Stacy Taylor show regularly to provide updates. I sent Barbara some shirts via the Crawford Peace House, and a few weeks later she got back to me to introduce herself and to let me know that the shirts were appreciated.

Barbara mentioned that Cindy had just left Crawford on a multi-week bus tour that would end in DC on Sept. 24, a day of massive anti-war protesting in DC and elsewhere. She noted that Katrina survivors would also be joining the protest, as new members of a group called Bushville, a traveling encampment that also consists of people who are homeless because of other forms of negligence at the top. The Bushville group needed hats for its coordinators, and Barbara asked if Wavelength Clothing could help provide these hats, so I came up with the design in the picture and donated 50 hats to the cause.

Calculating the cost of an individual shirt...

...is harder than you might think. It involves the challenging game of "cost accounting," or the process of looking at all the different expenses involved in running the business and crunching them to come up with an idea of what each unit of output actually costs. This cost estimate is critical to the long-term health of the operation: without an accurate feel for the true cost of your products, it's very difficult to price them at a level that will provide an adequate return over time.

But coming up with even a ballpark cost estimate can difficult, as the photo at right might help illustrate. It's a shot of my merchandise at a recent farmer's market, and it includes a few examples of how cost accounting can get wacky pretty quickly.

My products are t-shirts, and the first cost associated with them is the cost I pay to get them from the printer. This one is easy...the print shop charges me somewhere around $6 to $10 per shirt, mainly depending on how many ink colors are involved and whether it's a Hanes men's shirt (less expensive) or American Apparel women's shirt (more expensive).

But take a look at some of the other stuff in the picture. The shirts are hanging on a neat fold-up clothing rack that cost me $70, and which I should be able to use for at least a few years. The blue strip you see in the upper left is part of my canopy, a necessity at outdoor selling events; the canopy cost me $50, and I'm hoping to get a couple years out of it, too. Other equipment includes a $25 portable table and an old patio chair I've had for years.

There are also lots of little supplies I've had to either make or purchase to be able to sell on this day and others like it: the signs that explain the shirt designs ($10 and an hour of work at Kinko's), the hangers the shirts are hanging on ($1 or $2), the stickers I hand out to people who sign up for me email list ($.25 each), the book of receipts I bring in case a customer wants one ($5), the four storage bins ($3.50 each) of shirts that I've brought with me as my inventory for the day.

One more number to throw into the mix is the participation fee for the farmer's market, which was $25 for the session pictured above - a session that saw me sell 10 shirts at about $15 each. So what did those 10 shirts actually cost me? And more importantly, should I consider this day of selling a success? Hmmm...let me know what you think.

Had some fun at Cal State Long Beach...

...my day started unusually early, at about 5:30 AM, when I left my buddy's place in Beverly Hills Adjacent (that's actually the name of the 'hood right next to 90210). As I drove down to Long Beach, the sun had just risen on my left. It was the first time I'd seen the sunrise in awhile, and I noted that getting up early - which I typically abhorred - is a lot less painful when you're excited about where you're going.

CSULB is a huge school, with about 34,000 students, most of whom are commuters, I assume. While most other big California schools offer limited or no opportunities for a guy trying to vend t-shirts (some require $1 million in liability insurance, some only open up the campus for one week per semester, some don't allow shirts because shirts are sold in the bookstore), CSULB has a program that lets me set up a table in the Student Union for $65 a day, with only two weeks notice. So a couple weeks back, I made a reservation for August 30, the second day of the new semester.

I was set up by 7:30, and of the hundreds of students who marched by during the day, several stopped to check out my merchandise and about a dozen bought shirts. I had two very interesting conversations as well: one with a young white guy who talked about the potential Democratic contenders in 2008, and one with an older black guy who had some interesting views on Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as well as Republicans and Democrats in general. These chats helped remind me that part of the reason I'm doing this is to get out in the world and talk to people about our country's leaders and their policies...it felt great just to talk, to hear other's opinions and hash out my own.

Another nice part of the day was when my uncle Steve, who lives in Long Beach, surprised me with a visit. He's a staunch Republican, so I hadn't even told him I was going to be there, but he found out from my folks and stopped by, and even offered me lodging for future CSULB visits. Very cool.

Anyway, after CSULB I concluded that college vending has potential, and I resolved to look for similar opportunities at that school and others in the days ahead.

Fear and Loathing in Santa Monica...

...would be a fitting description for a brief period of angst I experienced upon arriving in Santa Monica today. I'm in LA to sell shirts at Cal State Long Beach tomorrow, and I had hoped to pull into Venice Beach today to talk to some retailers and to find out what it takes to sell on the boardwalk.

But traffic was heavy on the way up, and I soon realized that I wouldn't make it to Venice before sunset, so instead I headed to Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade, an open-air mall right near the beach. I was neck-deep in negative thoughts at that point, wondering how my business was ever going to make it in the face of expenses like gas prices and printing costs (I had just got an estimate of $250 for a run of 1000 full-color flyers featuring my catalog of shirt designs). Then I had to abort the Venice mission, and when I got to Santa Monica, it looked like I wouldn’t even be able to get parking without paying for it. With all of these red-ink-stained dollar signs spinning around in my mind, I was pitying myself and my situation pretty intensely for a few minutes...

...but then a free parking spot opened up in front of me, and after parking I grabbed a stack of WackWear shirts and headed to the Promenade. The stores there are all of the corporate mega-chain variety, so pitching them on Wavelength wasn't really an option, but that wasn't my plan anyway. Over the course of an hour, I handed out shirts to each of the homeless people I could find in the Promenade area - probably a dozen in all, mostly men. I asked each person if they'd like a free t-shirt, and each immediately said yes. I asked if it was okay if the shirt had an anti-Bush design on it, and again, each person said yes right away.

From there, I asked the person to choose the size and design of their liking from the pile of shirts I had brought with me. Most seemed excited to wear the new shirt, and all of them were grateful for the gift. When I walked back to my car later, I was buzzing brightly, and those clouds of doubt didn't seem so formidable anymore.

Sold shirts to the National Stonewall Democrats...

...a grassroots organization that connects the country's activist lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Democrats and helps them lobby effectively for change. As the group's website notes, its members "do the hard work of calling voters, putting together campaign mailings, going door-to-door for our fair-minded candidates and having tough conversations with Democratic party officials about why our families need and deserve more support from our party and its elected officials."

Along with about ten other vendors and organizations, I had a table on the Saturday of their 2005 organizing convention, which was here in San Diego and featured speakers from the Stonewall group and other similar organizations as well as several state and local goverment officials, the media, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and even a couple of U.S. congressional representatives from the San Diego area. Panel discussions and workshops listed on the event's agenda included Organizing at the State Level, Marriage Equality - What is on the Horizon?, and Party Matters - The DNC's 50 State Plan.

I was fascinated to see the Stonewall Democrats conference in action, and to get an inside look at the education, teamwork, and relationship-building that forms the foundation of the group's efforts to effect change. I also talked to several interesting people over the course of the day, most of whom seemed to get a kick out of my shirts. My sales weren't off the charts - in fact I didn't crack into the double digits, though I got close - but I had fun and got a new perspective on activism along the way.

A less-than-great day today...

...I tried out the North Park Farmer’s Market and came away empty, selling no shirts. This market had maybe 10% of OB's foot traffic, so I won't be back.

A guy selling French crepes (which always strike me as their version of the burrito) was next to me and he was cool. I kept getting strange looks from a guy selling some kind of makeup across they way, though. Later, when I watched the guy drive away after the market closed, I counted 5 pro-Bush bumper stickers on the back of his truck...so that probably explains the evil eye!

On the way home, I stopped to fill up my gas tank, noting that I was out not just the market's $15 fee, but also the couple of gallons of gas required to get there and back. I realized that gas was a pretty significant part of the costs of selling things at markets outside of Ocean Beach, and that increases in gas prices could put a significant dent in the business's profits.

I've hit up a couple more farmers’ mkts in OB...

...on recent Wednesday afternoons, selling 7 shirts at the first and then 10 at the second. By now it takes me only about 15 minutes to set up or break down the booth, a shot of which is at right.

I've also figured out how to quickly prepare for a market session a day in advance; then on the day of, it's a simple as loading the car and going. Overall, I'm fully ready to hit the road and visit other settings. I've also got the OB Farmers' Market down, and will be able to fall back on it as necessary.

Here's the short list of stuff required to booth it up:
-clothing rack
-canopy
-portable table
-fold-up chair
-4 bins of shirt inventory
-1 bin of accessories:
--display shirts and their hangers
--tupperware drawer:
---clipboard with email list sign-up sheets
---stickers
---pens
---receipt book
---laminated signs featuring catalog and prices
---double-sided tape
---shopping bags

and last but not least, it's nice to bring refreshments and to have a little audio support, too:

Was up in LA the other day...

...so I stopped in at the Hollywood cafe whose owner had agreed to sell 5 dozen Wavelength Clothing shirts on a consignment basis. The visit was kind of sleuthy, as I'd called the guy about a week before to see how things were going - and I hadn't heard from him, even after making a follow-up call a couple days later. When I had dropped off the shirts with him 3 or 4 weeks before, he'd said he would call me with an update in a few weeks, so I wasn't sure what to make of the cold shoulder he was giving me now.

Anyway, I was coming back to LA with two friends after vacationing northeast of the city, and we were going to be passing near Hollywood, so I suggested we stop in and check out the cafe in person. I explained the situation to my friends and they agreed to walk into the place with me. We laughed because of how our visit was going to look: we're all in our late twenties, and we each happen to be pretty fit and over 6-feet tall...this coupled with the somewhat uncomfortable nature of the call we were paying made us feel a bit like thugs trying to strongarm someone or something. It was funny.

As we approached the store I noted again how ideal the cafe seemed to be, with its location on a Hollywood corner that seemed to be bustling with people in general and trendy LA people in particular. Certainly would be a great place to have Wavelength Clothing shirts hanging in the window, I thought again, imagining a happy sequence where a trendy Hollywood insider person sees shirt, buys it, and wears it to musical performance/photo shoot/film set, where it is somehow catapulted into the national spotlight, making Wavelength Clothing a household name. "We get celebrities all the time," the guy had told me when I dropped the shirts off. "Sheryl Crow comes in a lot." Or maybe it was Sarah Maclachlan (whatever - same difference).

The guy must have seen us coming, because he popped out as we approached. "I was going to call you," he said, and then explained that he hadn't figured out how to display the shirts yet, but that he would very soon, and that he expected they'd sell well as bad news on Bush kept coming in the weeks ahead. He also said he'd sold four shirts, and paid me for each at the discounted wholesale price we'd agreed on. In my Perry Mason moment, I asked how he sold the shirts if they weren't on display; his answer didn't really make sense, but I didn't press it. We agreed that he'd take some more time with the shirts and call me in a few weeks.

I had approached the cafe with a fair amount of apprehension, but on the way back to the car I felt kind of silly. It looked like I was the victim not of a rip-off artist but a guy who was just kind of flaky. I couldn't be mad at him. After the guy and I had bid each other adieu, he made a point to make a mildly smug goodbye to my two buddies, kind of acknowledging their role as intimidators and making fun of it at the same time. It was a pretty cool exit maneuver and I had to give him style points for it.

Those referrals from Google ain't free, of course...

...they cost me 10cents each. And that might not sound like much, but it adds up when you're getting 8000 referrals a month.

Google's pricing system is worth mentioning - it's a great example of how the company does things so right. OK, so I've signed up for the website to be listed as a sponsored link when people search for "anti-Bush t-shirts" and similar phrases. But there are other people signed up for the same thing...how does Google decide who gets to be at the top of the list? Simple: we each set the maximum level we're willing to pay per click - and the highest bidder gets the top spot, with the 2nd highest getting slot #2, and so on.

When setting your bid, you can see the max bid and beat it or come in right behind it, which I was doing for a little while. But I was paying an average of 25cents a click and quickly coming up against my daily spending limit of $25. So I turned all my bids down to 10cents, Google's minimum. The next full day, I got 250 clicks for $25 instead of the 100 clicks I had been getting before. This shows how many people are doing anti-Bush related searches and looking at anti-Bush related content on the Google network...enough to allow Google to throw me an extra 150 daily visitors without batting a virtual eyelash. (Update on 22 Sept 2005: apparently the "black box" nature of the AdWords program troubles some users.)

BTW, I just learned what the dime's decorations symbolize: the torch is light or enlightenment, the olive branch is peace, and the oak branch is strength. The other side of the dime bears the image of a man who annoyed the living hell out of the conservatives of his era: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

So the site's been up for a full month...

...and I've got some interesting numbers to analyze. I had about 8300 unique visitors during July, at least 8000 of which have come from my Google Adwords account, which lists my website among search results for phrases like "anti-Bush t-shirts" and Google advertisements on webpages with content that somehow relates to "anti-Bush t-shirts." The handful of remaining visitors were mainly from my friends and family who I told about the site or who got wind of the site from others.

As an Adwords customer, I get nearly real-time data on how my phrases are doing: how many people are searching on them or looking at websites with content related to them; how many of these people then click on my website; and how many of these clicks resulted in sales for the website. The last number is the key one, of course. Getting 1 billion unique visitors wouldn't be worth a dime if none of their visits converted into sales.

My conversion number for the month was less than 1%. In other words, fewer than 1 in 100 visitors bought a shirt. But that number is significantly understated: it doesn't include the 60 shirts I sold to the cafe in Hollywood because I had arranged that deal over the phone.

Still, I'm disappointed to see that so many people are coming to the site and then leaving without buying anything. Before going into business, I had thought about what my conversion figure would be, and the number I kind of anchored on was 10%. That now seems naively optimistic!

At the same time, I'm encouraged to note that my conversion at the OB Farmers Market was somewhere in the 5% to 10% range. (To get that number, I'm dividing the number of sales by the approximate number of people who stopped to check out my shirts. Basically, I'm saying that - for the purposes of comparing direct conversion with Internet conversion - a farmers' market customer who stops to check out the merchandise is equal to an internet customer who makes their way to the site.) This tells me that people are more likely to buy when they can actually touch and feel the shirt, which makes sense. It means I'm going to have to do more than just run the website - I'm going to have to work more touchy-feely sales into my game.

First day at the OB Farmer's Market...

...which goes from 4pm to 8pm every Wednesday on Newport Avenue, Ocean Beach's main street. At right is a picture of the arts & crafts section of the market getting started on a recent Wednesday afternoon.

It went pretty well. I set up a beach canopy I had in my garage, hung a bunch of shirts from it, and vended my wares, selling 6 shirts in four hours. Revenue from the sales totaled about $100, and the fee for the space was $25, so I took in about $75 in cash flow.

More importantly, I learned two big new things about the business. One was that several people reacted very positively to the shirts, and some of these people were willing to buy them. I hadn't had the shirts on display in front of potential buyers before, and I the response I got was encouraging. Hell, I could have been shutout, without a single buyer...that would have been a bad sign, but it didn't come to pass.

The other new thing I learned involved the equipment and supplies I need to do this kind of selling in the future. My buddy Marcus was kind enough to go with me, so I had help solving a couple problems, like not bringing enough hangers. But after I pick up a few new pieces of equipment (such as a new canopy - my current one is hard to set up and also looks shabby), it will be quite possible to setup and run the booth on my own, which I expect to do at the OB Farmers' Market and other settings over the next few months.

Tomas hooked me up again...

...with some super sharp photos, this time of the WackWear shirts. I worked these into the website, so now viewers can see not just a close-up of each WackWear design, but also a photo of the actual shirt on a model. The new photos include shots of the back of the shirt, which features a small Wavelength Clothing logo...I want to be sure people know that logo is coming when they buy the shirt...I've bought a fair amount of shirts on the Internet myself, and it can be a bum-out to get stuck with an unexpected logo on the back or on a sleeve.

BTW, if you need a talented photographer in the San Diego area, I highly recommend emailing Tomas (tomas at boardsnap.com)...he's great behind the camera and he's a great guy too!

Got a very interesting email last week...

...here it is:

>Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 6:18 PM
>To: help@wavelengthclothing.com
>Subject: wholesale

>Dear wavelength
>I own a caffe in hollywood where I think your shirts would kill. My
>caffe is located in the hottest new area in hollywood. Is it possible
>for me to carry your line in my caffe. It's *snip* in Hollywood.
>Check us out. Maybe we can get something going for you.

So I called the guy...he seems legit, and he's very enthusiastic about the shirts, so I'm going to cruise up to Hollywood and drop off a dozen shirts in each of the Lies, So Money, Wanker, WMD Fool, and W is for Wack designs.

I'm eager to have my shirts on sale in Hollywood (seems like the perfect hip hotspot and all that) so I suggested we do a consignment deal, where I drop the shirts off and come back in a month or so, collecting money for all that have sold. I get a good vibe from the guy - and I know both his business and home address - so I'm comfortable with the deal. Overall, he's taking five dozen shirts at a substantially discounted price, and he plans on selling the shirts for $21 each.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how this goes.

Sold shirt #1 yesterday...

...to a woman in Connecticut...she bought one Lies shirt in size large. I believe she found the site via a Google search, so she's a living breathing example of the customer I have imagined in my mind: someone is frustrated with Bush, wants a shirt that says so, uses Google to look for it, and finds what she wants on my website. I'm hoping there are a lot more of these folks out there!

The WackWear shirts were ready yesterday...

...so I picked them up and began folding and storing all 600 of them (120 shirts in each of 5 designs). Once I figured out a good system, I was able to process the shirts at a rate of about 100 an hour. As you might imagine, the process - folding, folding, folding, stacking, breaking down boxes, and back to folding again - was a bit tedious, but at the same time, manual labor can be therapeutic in small doses.

What am I doing with all these shirts? I've stored them all in my garage, in 68-liter storage bins, which are each about the size of the freezer on a standard fridge. The garage was too narrow to store a car in, so the space was available. Here's a shot that shows the bins as well as my more typical garage gear:

Google, Google, Google...

...the more I work with this company, the more I respect it. A programmer friend of mine told me he has "a man-crush" on Google because they're so ahead of the game, and as a Google advertiser, I'm starting to agree.

My friend Tomas, who works for a cell phone rental company here in San Diego, put me on to Google advertising and explained how it works. If you have a product that people will search for on the Internet - a product like "anti-bush shirts" for example - you can pay Google to show your site when people search for "anti-bush shirts" or "anti-bush clothing" or "anti-bush gear." Your site will show up on the right hand side of Google's results page, as a sponsored link.

But it's not just search engine users who will see your link. You can also have your website mentioned in Google ads, which many webmasters include on their sites to earn extra revenue. So not only would people searching for "anti-bush shirts" see your link...the link would also be featured in Google ads on anti-bush websites, on t-shirt websites, and on other sites that are somehow related to "anti-bush" or "shirt" or both. And you only pay Google for people who actually click through to your site and check out your goods.

I'll talk more about Google in future posts. For now, I've signed up with them and activated my account, so I expect my website to start seeing some traffic.

The website can now take orders...

...and though I don't have all the product shots incorporated yet, it's pretty much ready to go. I placed a couple of orders myself - one from the PC at the local library - to make sure everything works like it should. The order came into my inbox, I approved it and submitted it to the credit card processing company, and in a day or two the charge showed up on my online credit card bill...so it looks good.

When I get an order from a regular customer, the charge will appear on their card within a day or two after I process their order - but I won't actually be paid for a couple of weeks, as their credit card company pays my credit card processing company, who in turn pays me. And the amount I get won't be the full amount the customer paid...instead, I'll receive that amount less the commissions of the credit card company, the processor, and SBC/Yahoo, which total about 4%. I've shopped around a bit, but for a small operator like me, this slice seems to be a standard cost of doing business online.

Finished designing website...

...or at least designing the shell of it - there are still some product shots I need to fill in. So once the Wackwear shirts come in and I get those product shots, the website will be fully operational.

It was nice to have the site done, and I was feeling good about the accomplishment, so this afternoon I splurged and made my biggest purchase of the last few months - a new beach cruiser, to complement the rusty and wobbly (but still roadworthy) older one I've ridden for 4 or 5 years. This purchase went against the spirit of my spendthrift, bare-necessities-only ideal for the summer...but if you rode on her for a few minutes, you'd probably understand:

With help from my friend Tomas...

...I've obtained photos of actual shirts from each of the 4 designs in the King George collection, which I will use as product shots on the Wavelength Clothing website. Tomas, a professional photographer, did a great job behind the digital camera – and he was kind enough to do it without asking for any compensation. The male model we used (let’s just say he’s a close personal friend of the narrator) was equally inexpensive, but nowhere near as talented. Nonetheless, in a testament to Tomas’s skill, the shots turned out great. (Need a photographer in the San Diego area? His email: tomas at boardsnap.com)

At this point in the summer, whether I’m doing odd jobs like the photo shoot or more routine stuff like setting up the website, I’m typically working no more than 5 or 6 hours a day. Usually, I wind up the day’s work at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, perhaps running an errand or two before riding my bike to the beach to bodysurf. A few times a week, I’m even going to the gym before going to the beach. There’s no question that the short work days allow me to exercise more thoroughly than I have in years. In addition, the increased amount of free time enables me to move through my entire day at a more leisurely pace, which undoubtedly has health benefits of its own.

My next 3 designs are ready and look good...

...so I've ordered 120 each of the Wackwear line, though I suspect that at least 2 or 3 of these designs might not sell very well. My thinking, however, is that I need to take advantage of the cost savings – and I bolster this argument by also telling myself that if Wavelength is a long-term success, the shirts will eventually sell, even if it takes a long time.

Update on 23 August 2005: Within a couple of months I would regret starting with such large orders, as it turns out that 2 or 3 of the designs would hardly sell at all in my opening months – and I would end up missing the big gob of cash I spent on the designs’ large runs when funds would start running low. I decide that I will not start with such large runs in the future, even if it means facing some higher per-shirt costs initially; with my limited capital, I can’t afford to invest close to $1000 in a 120-shirt order without testing the design’s market potency first.

One month into the new venture...

...and not a whole lot has gone down. I've got the So Money shirts printed, and I'm waiting on 3 more shirts to come from the print shop. After that, I'll have to get the WackWear collection printed before I'm ready to "open" my Internet storefront.

With that opening in mind, I've begun tinkering with Yahoo's free web design program, Sitebuilder, and with the online Store Manager that comes as part of my web package with SBC/Yahoo. Because I was already an SBC client for my apartment phone's line, I get a nice discount on the SBC/Yahoo package...for $30 a month, they provide me with the domain name and the hosting services required to have a storefront on the Internet. The credit card processing company they're partnered with charges another $20 a month, bringing the total monthly cost to $50. (I should mention that both SBC/Yahoo and the credit card processor take a percentage of sales, as well...those commissions add up to about 4% of revenues, in addition to the monthly $50.)

Living in Ocean Beach...

...is as close to heaven as I think living can be. Newport Avenue, the neighborhood's main street and always a great place for peoplewatching, is pictured at right. Walk straight ahead for a few blocks and you'll reach the Pacific Ocean, with about a 1/2 mile of wide beach extending to the north.


While residents of Ocean Beach are typically white, they're all different types of white: homeless people, hippies, college kids, families, senior citizens, and so on. What many people in the area seem to share is a non-judgmental perspective and an appreciation of the beach lifestyle. I'll write more on OB in future installments. For now I'll just note that, in this environment, it's been easy to slow things down to a lazy summertime pace.

After a slow Friday afternoon bike ride...

...with a buddy through nearby Mission Beach and Pacific Beach, I stopped in at the screenprinting shop and picked up the So Money shirts, which looked good. I gave an XL to my friend, telling him that he would be the first person in history to receive a Wavelength Clothing shirt, and that he should be honored. He humored me with a little faux excitement.

When I got the shirts home, I undertook the meticulous task of folding all 120 of them, sorting them by size, and packing them away. I had decided to use 68-liter storage bins (each about the size of the freezer on a standard fridge) for storage. Each bin held about 40 shirts, so after an hour of folding, sorting, and packing, the So Money line was safely stored in 3 bins in my garage.

All the folding and sorting and whatnot allowed me to get a good look at all 120 shirts, and I noted that the shop did a very good job. I went back and gave them 3 more designs - the rest of what I've decided to call the "King George" collection - ordering 120 shirts in each design. As I wait for the shirts over the next couple weeks, I will finalize the five designs I've come up with for my "WackWear" collection and also begin to design the Wavelength Clothing website.

"So how is he financing this thing?"...

...you might be wondering, and that's a good question indeed. My plan involves my past experience with credit card debt, today's low interest rate environment, and about 15 large I've set aside in an account at my credit union. (That's right - credit union. Lower interest rates and no fees...as my Aunt Phyllis likes to say, there's a reason why "bank" is a four-letter word. Though I do love Washington Mutual's superfriendly ATMs.)

Basically I've mentally split the 15k into 10k for the business and 5k for my personal expenses for the summer. I'll spend the personal 5k as slowly as possible, though a Hawaii wedding I'm attending in September and recent work my car has needed are going to put in some substantial dents early.

As for the business's 10k, I'm actually going to keep it in my account while I make the business's first 10k worth of purchases on my new credit card, which offers no interest on purchases until June of 2006. I figure that once I've invested 10k in the business, I'll have a good idea of whether it's a going concern or not...and if not, I'll pay off the credit card with the 10k from the credit union and throw in the towel. But if so, I'll have the option of keeping the credit card debt on the books as a very cheap loan and using the 10k in cash as additional capital for the business. We shall see!

So here's where I work now...

...it might not be an upper floor of a neato office building, but please note that the easy accessibility of my DJ gear and speakers allow me to bathe my self in high-quality music whenever I deem necessary. Whereas at my former place of employment, I was not even able to listen to the radio "at a reasonable volume between nine and eleven."

Just finalized my "So Money" design...

...and took it to my local screenprinting shop, who will print it up over the next couple of weeks. My plan is to see how they do with this job. If I like the results, I'll ask the shop to print my subsequent designs as well. The shop is within a few blocks of where I live, and is owned by a local family, so I hope to be able to partner with them going forward.

By ordering a batch of 120 shirts, I pushed the per-shirt price for this order down to the lowest level the shop offers. Overall, I'm getting 120 white t-shirts - 60 XL, 40 L, 10 M, 10 XXL - with the design on front and my logo on back for about $700. The cost would go up if I wanted to print on a colored shirt or if my design used more than one color of ink.

The shirts are going to be ready in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, I'm going to finalize 3 other designs that I've almost completed, and I'm hoping to finish off some other designs that are in a preliminary form right now.

So why Wavelength Clothing...

...why did I choose that name? Well, first of all, it was available, which I confirmed as well as I feasibly could by searching the Federal Trademark Database, the California Secretary of State's trademark database (which, oddly, you search by phone - 2 names per call), and search engines like Google and Yahoo.

In general, I didn't think I should go with a name that actually mentioned Bush or otherwise anchored the company to something ephemeral. Eventually, I hope to move beyond anti-Bush shirts to other messages, including more positive ones, so the name's got to offer flexibility and timelessness, while at the same time capturing a key element of the company's identity.

My first preference, Remarkable Clothing, was taken by a company in Malaysia, which is far away geographically but, in the Internet age, might as well be down the street. I ended up going with Wavelength Clothing. I like it because my shirt designs will always be on a similar wavelength - one of peace, justice, and progress - and I think my customers will be on that wavelength, too. For the logo, I put the name of the company's website in the Airstream font, above a sketch of one wavelength of the sine curve. With that, the whole name thing was done!

I took a trip to the Coachella music festival...

...to help out a friend who would have had to eat the cost of an extra ticket. Getting away from home for a couple of days turned out to be a great way to get some perspective on my new situation. Here's my elegantly simple plan:

1. design anti-Bush shirts on my PC
2. have shirts printed at a nearby shop
3. sell shirts on an Internet site
4. ship shirts from the nearby post office

After returning from Coachella, my first task was to "create" my new company by registering it with the city, county, and state governments (no federal filing is necessary for sole proprietorships, which are companies with only one owner/employee, like mine). My small business start-up book from Nolo helped me figure out exactly which offices I needed to visit. With this list in hand, I headed to downtown San Diego at 9AM on a Tuesday to dive into the bureaucracy.

I was home before lunchtime. In quick visits to three different government offices, I registered my business name with the county ($20), paid the city its registration fee ($70), obtained a seller's permit from the State of California (no cost), and arranged for a local newspaper to publish a small notice of my county filing for four consecutive weeks ($20), as required by law. In all, these visits took less than 3 hours, mainly because the people I worked with at each office were notably fast and friendly. I was particularly grateful to the woman who helped me get the California seller's permit, which allows you to collect sales tax from California customers. She expertly explained the nuances of the sales tax rules and made sure that I understood how to remain in compliance.

After witnessing the efficiency of the government agencies involved in registering my business, I couldn't help but think of George W. Bush, his fellow Republicans, and the anti-"big government" theme that permeates much of their thinking. As a first-time small business owner (with admittedly only one day on the job), I was impressed and reassured by the operations of each of the government agencies I worked with today.

Today was my last day at work...

...or at least my last day working at my old job. My 6-person work group had already had a teambuilding event planned at San Diego's Wild Animal Park, and the event became a kind of a send-off for me. It was nice. At a monkey enclosure, I snapped the shot at left, where one monkey seems to be taking a time-out as the rest of the crew carries on with the hunting and gathering or whatever. "I know what you're feeling, buddy," I thought. "I'm ready for a time-out myself."

I made the decision to leave several months ago, and I have watched excitedly as April 29 has drawn closer and closer on the calendar. In the preceding year, I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with my job, both because of changes in it and changes in me. Overall, however, my 5 years with this firm have been good ones.

With pleasure, I bid farewell to certain aspects of the job I had come to despise. With sincerity, I bid farewell to my co-workers. With some trepidation, I bid farewell to paychecks, which arrived twice monthly with a consistency that one could build his or her life around.

I began researching the logistics...

of putting my anti-Bush designs on t-shirts. Over the course of a few months, I checked out everything from website fees and t-shirt printing costs to copyright laws and first amendment rights.

I learned that a basic web storefront, which I planned on designing myself, would cost me about $50 a month, while the cost of printing shirts could vary from $5 to $15 per shirt depending on how many I would order at a time. Some Internet research helped me confirm that the first amendment protects my right to criticize the U.S. president and his supporting cast. From what I read of copyright law on sites like www.copyright.gov, I realized that I would not be able to simply alter photographs of Bush and re-distribute them; instead, I would need to create my own illustrations of Bush from scratch. This was a setback, but not a deal-breaker, as I had some experience with computer-assisted illustration and knew I could produce what I would need.

The last leg of my research focused on the basic steps involved in starting a small business. With the help of a great book - Nolo's Small Business Start-Up Kit for California - I figured out how to register with the city, county, state, and federal governments, and how to pick a proper name for my company as well.

Bush's re-election in late 2004...

...was quite a stunner to me. I looked at the vote as a referendum on the Iraq war, which was Bush's baby, and which seemed more and more like a bad idea every day. But alas, I misjudged my fellow citizens, or at least those in many of the smaller cities and the towns and the rural areas, and Bush squeaked out another very close (and very shady) victory. For a few days there in mid-November, I was really bummed out.

In the months that followed, I became increasingly exasperated with Bush’s policies and proclamations. News of continuing death and misery in Iraq continued to flow, and on the homefront, Bush trumpeted his plan for "saving" our Social Security program - a plan that breathed new life into the old metaphor about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Behind both of these issues lurked Bush's budget deficits...thoughts of my share of the expanding federal debt began to chafe me like thoughts of my credit card balances used to before I paid them off.

Anyway, this anti-Bush angst led me to create a few twisted images of Bush on my PC using a common photo-editing program. I thought the images were pretty funny, and I thought they criticized Bush in a simple and straightforward way that might appeal to a lot of people. I started to wonder how I circulate the images and get my criticisms of Bush out there in the real world. It wasn't too long before I hit on the t-shirt as an ideal means of distribution.

In the beginning...

...I was an employee on the 6th floor of the building at right. I worked at a San Diego-based financial services company with about 500 other employees. 90% of the company was owned by the founder, who had started the place 30 years earlier, as a one-man operation in an office behind a Chinese restaurant. These days, he is in his early 60s and is a billionaire who owns the largest piece of property in San Diego's richest neighborhood - which is also one of the richest neighborhoods in all of the United States.

Now, not too long ago, I would have considered his achievement a perfect example of a vigorous and thorough fulfillment of the American Dream. Today, however, I define the American Dream - or at least my personal version of it - a bit differently. In a nutshell, I think the Dream is less about earning vast riches and more about living the type of life you really want to live. Of course, if I read that last sentence in five years, I'll probably be shaking my head at my naivete once again.

At this point in my life, however, I'm ready to leave my current job as a writer of marketing materials like brochures and newsletters and advertisements. I'm going to start my own t-shirt company, designing and distributing politically themed shirts from my hometown of Ocean Beach, California, U.S.A.