Why It Fits: One Less Bully

While I was taking a shower yesterday evening (this is the location where my only cognitive, intelligent thoughts occur) I was thinking about how I’m going to start tweeting relevant statistics about bullying in schools and how it’s affecting kids today. I started wondering, what is our audience going to think of our emphasis on One Less™ Bully, Stand Together? How will our snowboarders react to these tweets? Will they unfollow us? What about our wolf girls, the ones who have bought our most popular shirt so far. Or our vamp girls? What about all of the new followers that are in the t-shirt biz? Will they be thinking “what the hell are they talking about? I thought they sold t-shirts.”

One of the reasons I was thinking about this is because we cover a lot of different groups. People who are passionate about things they love. And those people are more diverse than the difference between our surf shirt and our zombie shirt (wait, maybe they’re not so different…) Why do we have so many different designs and why are we focusing on One Less Bully now?

Then the answer came to me. I have friends who are into vampires. Friends who would never have anything but a Mac. Friends who only feel free when they’re on the slopes or on the water. Friends who read 50 times more books than me. As unique as we all are, as different as we all appear, we can appreciate each other for the very things that make us different. Those passions that make us read until 3 am or have us yelling at the top of our lungs because we’re a Husky playing against the Cougars. And that’s why One Less Bully makes so much sense. One Less Nemesis celebrates the rivalries that exist between people who really love what they do. They’re passionate about what they love. And they are very individual people. Unique. At some point, we were all that awkward little kid, just trying to figure out what we liked and what we were good at. Bullies don’t like unique. Bullies make it harder for us to find where we belong. They bring us down and stand in our way. But if we stand together, we’re bigger than the bully. We’re strong enough to stop the bullying behaviors that make kids feel so lost and alone. We want those kids to find their way, find their passions and have the times of their lives doing it.

So as we get ready for a presentation to an elementary school on implementing a One Less Bully, Stand Together day at the school (and hopefully many schools), my head is clear. My vision is acute. I know exactly where we’re going and why we’re going there. And I feel so good about it.

Sale on our One Less Bully Shirt!

We're having a sale on our One Less Bully Stand Together shirt. It's only $15 (regularly $24.99) through 3/25/11 whiles supplies last.

We feel like this is such a great and important message. The more people stand together against bullying behaviors, the less power those bullies have. Take away their power and the hurt they cause! One Less Bully - Stand Together!

Don't forget to "Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

LA Fitness Expo: Another One Under Our Belts

We recently returned from the biggest show that we have participated in, the LA Fitness Expo held at the end of January. Our goal for this show was to expose One Less Nemesis to a large group of people that are in our target market. We want OLN to be a brand people love and want to wear and that takes a lot of exposure. So off to LA we went and we were able to take some major leaps in the right direction (plus we got to drive the coolest, kick ass muscle car! I loved the Dodge Charger, doesn't it look like an OLN kind of car?)

First, we did in fact, build and create our biggest, coolest display yet of the shows we've done over the past year. It took us hours to get the carpet guys to get to our booth and then build the back wall structure completely wrong for 2/3 of it, finally figuring it out on the last tower ("um, these panels have a bunch of little squares and these have big ones....OH those are the sides and these are the bottoms, DAMNIT!") This day caused cuts, bruises, shaky hands and my favorite phrase from Ted, "zip tie the bitch." Of course he was referencing the tower we were building, not someone we held captive and tied to our booth. And in this case the bitch wasn't actually me. Promise.

We also got to meet everyone at Creation Entertainment and tour their office. These are some of the most awesome, entrepreneurial people you will ever hope to meet. We shipped a few things, including our very inexpensive but awesome looking banner there, to one of OLN's BFFs, Amy. Thank you, Amy! We saw Gary, Matt, Adam and the crew. Glendale was lovely.

We also went to the Target in Glendale. Our theory here (and we learned this from another vendor at one of Creation's Star Trek Conventions) was that it would be a lot cheaper to buy inexpensive display components at Target in the city of a convention (under $80) and let them be disposable rather than buy them and ship them all over (we estimated shipping at over $200.) So we went to perhaps the coolest Target I've ever been in. They literally have escalators for the carts. We were amazed (it doesn't take much.) We talked through our display and bought or organized all of the components. We had to ask 3 people to help us find zip ties...ahh, the glory of trade shows. We will always have zip ties in our bags now.

Finally it was show day. Thousands, literally thousands, of people came to the show the first day. A guy walked up to us the very second the show floor opened, told us he loved our tees and bought two immediately. Ted and I looked at each other and thought "here we go!!" We had a great booth, lots of really great feedback and we sold some shirts. Did we totally sell out of shirts like we had dreamed of? Unfortunately, no. Did thousands of people see our shirts and our brand who would have never seen it otherwise? Absolutely. Do we wish that we would experience a sold out, balls to the wall, oh my GOD we're going to run out event? Hell yes. But we have to be realistic. We really accomplished what we meant to accomplish and that was to further our brand. We absolutely believe 100% that this idea and this brand is going succeed. When people get it, they really dig it. And that's how we feel. So we dust off our jeans, take a few to regroup and hit it again with our next strategy because we just know it's going to happen. And by the way, Ted did seem to have some fun while he was there....

Pursuiing our Passion: Sharing the Journey - Starting a Brand

In our first blog post about sharing our journey of building this business, we talked about where the idea for One Less Nemesis came from and how we've come to realize that our brand is truly about pursuing your passions in life. In this post, we're going to talk about the next stage of our brand development, which was the business of starting a business. Ted had this truly amazing idea but there was so much more to be done to put that idea into action. There are so many details, like hiring a lawyer to create a Limited Liability Corporation and then consulting an intellectual properties attorney to trademark the house mark of One Less™ (thankfully, Ted handled all of this before I was even involved).

With those initial important start-up business functions done, Ted needed an artist and a t-shirt printer. He was the man with the idea but he had to have outside help to execute it. First he met with a graphic designer and the ensuing discussion resulted in some interesting original logo designs. I'm not sure how the fighting snakes image first was introduced, but our early logos looked like the circular snakes above. Well....that didn't really work for us. There is a difference between an artist and graphic designer. The graphic designer can make visual art and design without necessarily being a free-hand artist. So we called an artist whose work I had admired for over a year. Tarl Lambson (see his samples and website/contact at www.tarlsscribbles.com) is actually an animator who is uber talented. He first started working on the One Less Skier designs that inspired Ted's idea in the first place. But we really needed a logo so he and I began researching snakes and went through a series of pictures for inspiration like this fighting snake picture. Tarl then gave us some sketches which did not end up being what we chose, but they were so cool...I'm not sure when or how we morphed beyond the snakes but I'm pretty sure Tarl and Ted expressed how they were digging on the bomb. Here is one of the early iterations of bomb variations: Love these guys!!!




Of course, I really liked these versions, but they were thought of as 'flying sp.....' well, you know what we thought.

At the same time, Ted was researching printers in the Seattle area and he met with Gorilla Screen Printing. Ted was adamant about using the discharge process when printing. This process actually removes just a bit of the shirt's dye and embeds the design so when you wash your tee, the design is actually part of the fabric, smooth and soft to the touch. We also went through a few different t-shirt vendors, searching for just the right super-soft, high quality, 100% cotton shirts (the shirt has to be 100% cotton for the discharge ink to work.) We tried American Apparel but in the end, found that JS Apparel shirts fit the best and were the softest.

So we worked to cooperatively design a logo we all loved, found shirts and a printer. We still needed some designs to print on these great shirts! In my next post about sharing our journey, I'll include some of the early designs and how our various passions inspired the wide range of shirts we have today.

Getting Ready for LA FitExpo!

We are only about 3 weeks out from the Los Angeles Fitness Expo and we are stoked! We're getting new shirts printed and tagged, ready for the big show. Because I'm in Indiana and my partner's in Seattle, one of us gets stuck dealing with all of the inventory. Well, that person is NOT ME! (*insert evil laugh here*) To show me just what fun I'm missing, Ted made this little video. He is not quite at ninja folding skillz, but I think he does better than I do...

One Less Bully Design Now Available for Purchase!!

We just added our new One Less Bully design to our website, now available for order! We're pretty excited about this design for a lot of reasons. We originally talked about a shirt with this theme a year ago, but we weren't sure that it would be relevant enough for people to want to buy and wear. A year later, it seems everyone from Ellen to Dr. Phil is talking about bullying. So we started getting feedback from our designers and our followers on Twitter about their ideas and what our design should look like and how we represent this idea.

This was actually a really challenging task. We are by nature kind of a violent brand. I mean, taking out obstacles that stand in your way is not always nice or pretty. But we wanted our message to be one of hope, unity and caring. How do we do that while wanting to stamp out a bully? Surely the little guy beating the crap out of the bully (while a fun thought) is not exactly the way to go here. Then Ted said "what if we had a group of people standing together against a bully? You know, Stand Together to end bullying?" So our crazy creative brief basically said that, along with a few other key phrases like "Bullies Suck."

Designer Daniel Alfaro (see his site: http://alfarodan.blog.com) was first to respond and we are so glad he did. Our One Less Bully, Stand Together design incorporates Ted's vision of people standing together, becoming a larger, stronger entity than the bully (in the form of our bulldog) without using a "violence to battle violence" message. We are truly proud to offer this design. Thank you to Daniel for an amazing job!

Our next step is two-fold: first we want to find an anti-bully organization that we can work with to share part of our proceeds of our shirt sales. @wildwashington on Twitter gave us a great suggestion and Ellen's website has a few organizations as well.

Second, we're working on additional bully designs to launch. We want to have choices with different design aspects to spread the anti-bully message. Look for new designs in this line soon!

To everyone who has retweeted, encouraged and helped us along the way, thank you. We want to make a difference in people's lives, giving them a laugh as they pursue their passions but also supporting the unique individuality that makes us all genuine, passionate people. Bullies are just not part of the program.

MMA Design Ready for the Holidays and Fit Expo!

We are totally stoked to announce the launch of our latest design, our MMA-inspired OLN Fist. New-to-us designer Daniel Alfaro (see his site: http://alfarodan.blog.com) developed the artwork for this one. You might be asking yourselves why we decided to have this design created. First, watching the UFC fights is a big passion of ours (well, of Ted's) Second, it's the fastest growing sport in popularity in the world (um, also per Ted...) Third, we're heading to the amazing LA Fit Expo in January and we'll be across the aisle from some of the biggest MMA stars around. We wanted to have a special logo shirt ready to go for that convention and really, One Less Nemesis as a brand is incredibly relevant to the competitive nature of MMA.

Ted was on a role when we talked about this: "Each fight represents a step for each competitor and each competitor's journey to elevate themselves in their sport, one less nemesis at a time." Yep, I'd say that sums it up. These guys are passionate about their sport and they don't let anything stand in their way. Makes total sense to me!