Happy Birthday to the big man

Our 'fearless' leader

So the story goes that one day, Ted was on the slopes of Steven's Pass with his son, boarding. There were a bunch of skiers doing what skiers do...getting in the way. Ted mumbled to himself "If there was just ONE LESS SKIER on the slopes today..." and thus our brand was born! Today we celebrate the birth of the man himself and say this: we hope no bastards get you down or get in your way today! Happy Birthday, TT!

Getting ready for Fremont Fair in June!

We are going to have a booth at our first outdoor event! We'll be at the Fremont Fair this June and we're really excited! The Fremont Fair will be June 16 and 17 in the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle. We're looking for ideas on how to display our t-shirts and make our tent exciting and enticing. If you have an idea for us, post it in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Zombies, Huskies and a cocktail

We're not in Indiana anymore, Toto.

It's not Jack, but we'll take it.

Booth at the Trend Show

It's been a crazy few weeks for us at OLN. I met up with my business partner in our home city of Seattle (I'm in Indiana - cyber work is awesome) and we got so much done! We went to Emerald City Comic Con, to our print shop - Gorilla - for more One Less Spartan and our new One Less Tourist Tee, then exhibited at a small apparel show. We went from checking out the huge Walking Dead table at ECCC to selling our One Less Husky and One Less Cougar tees to a store in Spokane. We are stoked! Where does the cocktail come in? One of the cool things about being involved in the fashion industry is that there always seems to be cocktails at all of the trade shows...

WTF? Who is that? Don't call me SHIRLLEY!

I was accosted by fans, bitching at me for not reading the comics yet...

Donnie Darko's bunny freaks me the eff out

The Oatmeal. Need I say more?

One Less Lannister

This one's for my boy, Adventure Time!

We're still winners...

Bite me...just kidding!

No. We didn't make it out of round 2 in TeeMadness 2012. Nope. We got our asses handed to us by a brand that has about 5 shirts. Yup. But we did gain 15 new likes on Facebook and our web traffic increased exponentially. So ultimately, we did not make it to the final round, pass go and collect $200 (or get lots of sticker $$ that we really, really could have used.) We did get our name out there, have fun and get more exposure than we could have hoped for. So thanks to TeeMadness and all of the awesome people who voted for us! You guys are awesome and we are so lucky to have each of you in our corner. Don't forget you can get our OLN Fist and our One Less Zombie tees for only $15 while supplies last, as a thank you for the support.

Round 2 - TeeMadness 2012

WE MADE IT PAST ROUND 1 - HUZZZAH! Now it's time to dig deeper (not really) and take the 1.7 seconds it takes to click on THIS link and vote for OLN! Round 2 lasts through Monday night, March 26 at 8:30 pm EST. Tell your friends, post it on Facebook and Twitter. Blog it.

We're against a bigger dog (FictionField) but we know with your support, we can be VICTORIOUS! BRING IT ON PEOPLE!! http://teemadness.iamthetrend.com/?r2game=11

Tee Madness 2012!

Who needs March Madness when there's Tee Madness?

If you haven't been following our Twitter and Facebook accounts (and why not? Come on, people!) then you may not be aware that we are in the middle of a battle to the death, just like those poor tributes in the Hunger Games. No, not really, but we are in a really cool competition put on by I Am The Trend and Blue Tide Productions (thanks guys!) called Tee Madness 1012. It's a competition in which independent t-shirt brands match up and duel it out, just like the brackets for March madness, except we win cool stuff from Storenvy, Stickermule, LaunchHype, Threadbird and Cheapest Buttons. Plus we get lots of great exposure!

We actually went through a match up drawing last Friday night and have been battling it our with Perfect Chaos Clothing (PCC). We're ahead right now (see my awesome graphic??) but they're catching back up. We've got until 8:00 pm EST tonight (March 22) so if you haven't voted, get to it! We're the fifth box down on the right, click the box and select the radio button by OLN. If it shows only voting percentages, then you or someone on your same IP has already voted. Only one vote per household per round. Thanks for the support!

Jump in, the water's cool at POOL

It's been a couple of weeks since we've been back from going to the Sourcing and POOL trade shows in Las Vegas, as part of the overall MAGIC Apparel Show - time flies when you're workin' hard! I wanted to share why we went to this show and what we learned while there.

This year our goal is to expand our distribution. The best way to do that is to get in front of retail buyers. How do you get in front of them? Exhibit at the most influential show in the apparel industry! And as we expand our distribution, at some point we'll need to start having our shirts manufactured for us. That's where sourcing comes in.

A little eavesdropping goes a long way

Sourcing is a show for people like us, looking for international vendors who make high quality apparel that they will print and label for us. Now here's the truth: if you are pretty new to a business and are trying to figure out what you even need to know when going to something like this, you just have to listen to other guys who are drilling the vendors with questions. Sure, there is a bit of a communication gap with some of the vendors there, but there is certainly a common ground of expected questions. And by our oh-so-stealthy eavesdropping of a power buyer (or at least he talked like one), we found out how to sound saavy too. What's the production time? What are the terms? What are the minimums? We walked the entire show, every aisle and soaked it all in. We took catalogs, felt dozens of samples, saw very cool labeling and know that when we're ready to order 500 or more pieces, we've got a great cache of vendors that we can work with when we do land the big fish.

We can be this cool, right?

Speaking of big fish, POOL is undoubtedly the biggest fish for independent brands. I also think it's imperative for a brand to attend a show in advance to get a feel for how other vendors set up their booths and for the kinds of traffic and layout of the show. POOL is extremely visual. Three years ago when we were just starting out and we first went to POOL, we were in awe. We thought we were such small fish in a big, BIG pool (ha). We then set about building our brand through adding designs, promoting our online store and presence and attending a lot of fan conventions and events. What those events did for us is invaluable. We learned what designs to take (um, everything), how to display, sell and promote.

We see stickers in our future...

This time when we visited POOL, we looked around in excitement. THIS is where we need to be. (cue Rocky music in the background...) This is how we need to get our brand out there.While feeling reassured that our brand is completely unique, we also felt a kinship with the independent brands there.We're all in this, working hard to get some attention and for people to come to love our brands as much as we do.

$180k is a LOT OF T-SHIRTS

Listen, if someone can sell a $180,000 Swarovski crystal elephant, I know we can sell some $25 custom designed, super soft t-shirts to the right stores. After Vegas, we know that more than ever.