by Bear » Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:20 pm
Yup! Oh how we will ever have extras Crispy. XD
All in all, we had a lot of success and we got a lot more mileage out of the funds because I didn't anticipate we would get so many commission orders, which helped out a LOT. Our numbers were something like this:
Design / # of KS Orders / Spares
EQ / 32 / 149
ILRR / 25 / 110
Gas Prices / 9 / 98
Because of the Kickstarter funds, we were able to use the profits and money from commissions and what not to build a small stock pile of shirts for all 3 designs and even some women's cuts for Endless Quest and ILRR. So in that pile we have the following spare t-shirts:
Sand EQ: M-3XL
Black EQ: M-3XL
Women's Black EQ: M-L
Carolina Blue ILRR: M-3XL
Black ILRR: M-3XL
Women's Carolina Blue ILRR: M-L
Ice Gray GP: M-3XL
I decided not to stock small based on research showing that orders for small are relatively low and people typically being okay with buying one size larger (but never lower, obviously). Having to stock so many different design and color choices was important to me so we had a decent selection. It was all about getting the most bang for our Kickstarter bucks. I can't tell you how much time I spent researching and pouring over numbers. The more time I spent looking at it, the better I felt since everything is a big gamble on what will and won't sell and what sizes to stock and whatnot.
Since the price of cotton for hoodies went up sharply after the New Year, we weren't able to stock spares for those, but since Winter is ending it might be for the best - we want to re-run EQ and ILRR hoodies in fall of this year though.
So we have a TON of spares. The big reason for the high numbers is that they have minimum print quantities and higher print quantities also means bigger price breaks on printing costs. ILRR would not have been feasible if we didn't have at least 140 shirts printed due to the number of inks in the design.
If you guys remember the , this was ultimately why we had to drop it. Too many colors and on two sides made it ridiculously expensive to make. Though printing it on white or another light color shirt MIGHT be feasible, but I didn't want to bank on that.
We were originally going to go to the Kickstarter with only 2 designs, but I was really not happy with it. I didn't want to settle with just two designs. So near the last week or so before launch, I had some inspired thought on a design. I mocked it up and had Pie draw it. Originally it didn't turn out so hot, but then we experimented with it and wound up with the current look pretty quickly and I knew that we had it. I was really excited about it and thought that "YES! This design MUST be printed!!!!" I was insistent that we include it and damn am I happy that I did because of course it was our most popular design. That's why the EQ design was launched at the exact same time as the Kickstarter. Good times haha
I better make sure to hide it! 
