29 August 2005

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.

26 August 2005

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.

25 August 2005

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.

24 August 2005

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:


10 August 2005

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.

02 August 2005

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.