Scared Panda |

October 4, 2011

How Small Business Is Handled On The R Train

On the subway to work one morning a skinny 19 year old (give or take a year-they all look the same to me at this age) walked into the same car as me with a violin. A plastic cup labeled ‘Tips’ was dangling by a piece of string to his back. He wished everyone a good morning and said he wanted to fill our morning commute with some music. He played a nice tune and when he finished, to no one’s surprise, walked up and down the car collecting change in his tip cup; as they do.

But at the next stop, three older guys got on the train and just as they started asking people for their attention and future donations the skinny violin kid calmly walked over to them. he gave them a smile and said “Sorry guys I got this one”. That’s all he had to say. Immediately the three guys stopped mid-sentence, laughed and said “We’re sorry, man. We’ll get off at the next stop and take a different train. We won’t be getting in your way, you got this one kid”. That’s all he said, “sorry guys” and they knew right then and there that they were on his turf. They could have easily taken over the subway car with a panhandler-esque battle royale. But here on the Uptown R there is panhandler etiquette that I clearly was not aware of. It was awesome and inspiring. Some real life subway style respect.

It doesn’t matter you are hustling the New York City subways for change or trying to run a t-shirt company. Any small business owner knows that it’s important to have respect for your fellow business owners. Building relationships with your peers and community not only makes life a little sweeter, but you never know what kind of colaboration opportunities may come about.

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June 15, 2011

Small Business Thought: Getting In Front Of Customers

Retro on Roscoe For all you aspiring small businesses who are trying to make it in this online world, I have a small piece of advice for you; get offline and get in front of people. Like yours, our company is an online only store.

Right now we are in the middle of festival season and have been selling shirts like mad crazy. When we go to these markets we move a ton of product and make great connections. Getting your product in front of people gives customers a chance to talk to you face-to-face, to form a connection and learn what you’re about. This connection is invaluable because you suddenly become a real person to them, not just another online shop. It also gives them a chance to physically look at and feel your product. Feeling is believing.

One of the really awesome things about having a t-shirt company is that people will randomly come up to me and comment on the t-shirt I’m wearing. This gives me the perfect opportunity to tell them the Scared Panda story. We have put so much into our brand and it’s so rewarding to show people how much we care about making quality tees and getting involved in the community. This passion can be difficult to portray through our website.

Right now we are vending at the Hester Street Fair on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This is a small and intimate market. Over the past month, we have been fortunate enough to meet a whole bunch of Scared Panda fans and make new ones. The sales made at the festivals a great, but so are the connections – you never know who will make a purchase online. Or who might know a writer at Gawker.

Getting in front of your customers not only gets your name out there but it allows you to make physical connections with people with whom you would only know through an IP address.

January 20, 2011

Small Business Thoughts: Public Relationships

The Scared Panda brand has been around for more than a year now which means we are relatively young, but not so young that we haven’t made mistakes and learned from them. We’re growing more and more every day and starting to understand the ins and outs of running a start-up t-shirt company. It’s been no easy feat by any means – we both hold down demanding full time jobs and just taking care of the day-to-day stuff takes up a lot of our nights.

I spend a lot of time on T-ShirtForums.com reading, asking questions and taking in as much knowledge as I possibly can about the t-shirt business, or really any indie start-up for that matter. After a year I think that I can finally give something back to all the folks who have helped me out along the way.

We’re starting a new weekly series about some small business lessons we have either learned along the way. This week I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned about media relations.

A lot of “experts” will tell you to define your “target audiences” and then go after them. But how do you narrow down these segments for such a general consumer product like a t-shirt? Nearly every person all around the world wears t-shirts – so how do we determine who will like our shirts? If someone doesn’t like a particular design does that mean they won’t like something just a little bit different? I don’t think so.

Our main target audience (I’ll never be a fan of the that term) is made up people who like t-shirts, pandas and generally the same things we like (music, travel, cities, etc.). But that’s just one audience. Our Chicago-inspired shirts are geared towards people who live in the city or have lived in the city at some point. We try to get our food shirts in front of foodies and our bike shirts in front of bikers. Each of these audience groups read different publications, communicate in different ways.

Let’s take our Chicago audience, for example. Kate and I read websites like DailyCandy, Thrillist, Gapers Block and Chicagoist. By creating relationships with the people behind these sites, we are able to connect with their readers (Chicagoans) and let them know about our shirts, for free. My advice to other business owners: Get your name out there. Just the smallest exposure through a blog, newspaper or email will bring attention to your brand. This can lead to more exposure from other media outlets, too.

For example, when DailyCandy featured Scared Panda in its Weekend Guide, a producer from ABC Chicago’s 190 North contacted us about filming a segment for the show. Bob’s your uncle and we just filmed a segment with them that airs January 30th.

Once you build a list of target media outlets, spend a few weeks reading their posts/articles to familiarize yourself with their content. While you’re at it, leave a few comments here and there when you have something to say related to the post so that the editor begins to get to know you. Then, when you send the editor an email to introduce yourself and your company in a few weeks he or she will already be familiar with you. Make sure your email is sincere and has a connection to their site, otherwise they won’t care and your email will be deleted right away.

One last word of advice: Don’t spam websites or blogs with comments promoting your product, I’ve tried it and it only pisses people off. Instead write comments that pertain to the post or article with a link back to your site in your profile.

Take a look at our Talking Pandas page on our website. We’ve listed all the publications and blogs that have written about us. Feel free to use this as jumping off point and motivation for you.

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September 2, 2010

How We Give

It’s been a whirlwind year for us and as the end of our first year sneaks up on us, we have been evaluating the impact we’ve made in the local nonprofit community. Long story short, it’s not enough. So, we’re changing it up.

In order to really make an impact, we are going to partner with one nonprofit each year. Right now 10% of the sales from each design go to a different nonprofit. Starting in 2011 10% from all sales will go to one nonprofit that we will choose together. In addition to receiving a monetary donation, we will give time. Clint and I will both volunteer for the selected nonprofit on a regular basis and we will have Scared Panda volunteer days four times each year. This will allow our customers and friends to get involved in their community, to really make a difference.

In the next couple of months, we’ll meet with various nonprofits and narrow it down to three possible partner organizations. During the holiday season – from Thanksgiving until Christmas day – we’ll open it up to the public and let you vote for the nonprofit you’d like us to work with for the upcoming year. Consider your vote a holiday gift to the nonprofit you choose.

If you’d like to help us select a nonprofit or would like to be involved in Scared Panda volunteer days, sign up for our e-newsletter. We’ll let you know when voting is open to help us select a nonprofit and we’ll keep you up-to-date on events.

As we begin our search for our potential 2011 partner, let us know which Chicago-based nonprofits you’d like to throw in the mix.

- Kate

July 26, 2010

Half A Year Of Thoughts

It’s been just over six months since Katie & I shipped out the first Scared Panda t-shirt. Since that first tamale t-shirt went out the door we’ve created two more rounds of tees, shipped shirts to Austria and Australia (and all over the US), met some really awesome people and learned more about t-shirts than I ever thought possible. The first six months gave us the time and experience we needed to see what was working and what wasn’t.

What Works
- Get off line. The internet is a great place to communicate and find people, but we found that nothing beats solid face time with customers and potential customers. Getting out to festivals and art fairs has been an effective way for us to meet customers, artists and to generally pimp the Scared Panda brand.

- Limited prints. I never want a t-shirt that I know a million other people have and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels this way. Therefore we decided to make each Scared Panda t-shirt part of a limited collection. We are only printing 100 t-shirts of each design. Once that design sells out, its done and you now own a collectors item.

- Pandas. The Scared Panda logo tee is one of our most popular t-shirts. In fact, it’s so popular, we only have one left. The next generation of our Scared Panda will be more artistic and will reflect our brand more accurately. Since this is a new design, we will print another batch of logo tees.

- Social networking. Facebook, Twitter and Flickr have been great tools for us to spread the panda love and communicate with customers. Through these sites and applications, I’ve been able to meet and talk with different people from all over the world about our company, what we are about and what they think about our product.

- Women’s shirts: Our yoga t-shirt did really well and we’ve learned that a lot of ladies like our Scared Panda shirt as well. In the future we’ll print each design in both men and women’s t-shirts.

What Doesn’t Work
- Online advertising. Google Ad Words, Facebook and miscellaneous ad time online have led to very little page views from our target market.

- Assuming people know what I’m talking about. I do this all the time, I start talking about something and assume the person I’m talking to sees exactly what I do and they will automatically understand and just ‘get’ what I’m saying. When working with designers and printers its important to lay out every aspect of the design, t-shirt and process that I am thinking about and to double check to make sure the person on the other end is making out what I’m saying clearly.

- Expecting people to just show up and buy stuff. I have a kick ass product and just need to put it out on the web and people will start buying it up. Yeah, that never happens. Running a business takes time, dedication and lots of hours promoting and pimping the product, in this case, getting t-shirts in front of people want them. Part of this includes becoming friends with other t-shirt vendors and t-shirt review sites. Over the past six months we have become very close to some great t-shirt reviewers, bloggers and general fans through out the world and each have helped significantly in helping us promote Scared Panda.

A New Direction
With the popularity of the Scared Panda logo tee, we decided to create a more centralized theme for our t-shirts. The new theme will still involve Chicago, but we are expanding to incorporate other cities as well. In addition, each of our designs will incorporate the Scared Panda somehow – sometimes it’ll be obvious, sometimes it won’t. A few ideas we’ve been floating around: a Scared Panda climbing the Empire State Building, a Scared Panda conducting an out-of–control el train and a Scared Panda matador (Scared Espanda). The new t-shirts will be inspired by my travel experiences and from stories that I hear from friends, family and other random people I meet along the way.

We’re excited about these changes and hope you are too. Have any travel stories to tell that would make a great t-shirt? Drop a comment below and tell us about it!

May 28, 2010

Finding A Great Printer In Chicago

Hey everybody,

After printing three rounds of t-shirts I’ve been through three different printers and learned quite a bit about print process. When I first started Scared Panda, I had no idea just how much effort was needed when choosing a printer, not to mention getting the product that you expect from said printer.

When we contacted our first printer back in November I expected them to just “get it”. Ya know? I thought, “Take my image and print it using the best print technology that you have and make this an awesome t-shirt”. Right? I thought that sort of thing is assumed…oh how I was wrong.

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