PROCESS before assessment

So far, 100 T-shirts have been sold. The news of the Charity Tee are all over the internet, fashion forums, and also about 30 have been sold through shops in London. Some are also shipped to countries like Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and Malaysia.

At the moment, I can say it has impacted the world, however how can I improve on this? Shall I make more? or build upon the campaign? The result amount I've raised was just over £500, which is something I'm really pleased about. Lets see how I can take this forward in the near future.

Posting out orders

I've managed to ship out some orders today. Most of the people who ordered outside UK are willing to pay extra for postage, therefore I've roughly estimated the cost as £5 for out side UK and £3 within the UK. Although the postage to the rest of the world ends up at around £6, but this broke even, when postage to the UK was cheaper than I thought. So, no loss or no gain here.

International Orders: Paypal

The easiest way in receiving money from overseas has to be using the Paypal medium. Luckily, most of the people who want to buy the charity T-shirt has a Paypal account, therefore its easier to give out my paypal account and let them to send me over the amount. To add to this, it handy to see whos paid up and the information they gave me with the amount (address and size of the T-shirt).

Sorting out orders

After waiting for the emails to die down from the response of the site, I finally starting to reply them with method of paying and more info on the t-shirts. Some of them did get back to me, regarding about payment details, but others didn't reply back. I guessed when the hype goes, some of them will fall out and looses interest. However, I'm still pleased with the results after all.

Orders flooding in

Due to the internet medium, the message of my Charity Tee quickly spread out to all corners of the world. Although it is good news, but without an online store set up, I have to go through each mail and reply them regarding their questions. Most of them were:

1. Postage cost
2. Will I ship out of UK
3. Special requests (meet in person)
4. T-shirts measurements
5. Option of 'XL'?

It is amazing to see such response, as I didn't expect people will email me and enquire about them. Some of the people who wanted the T-shirt are from: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Dubai, Berlin, New York, Singapore and France.

This proved that my message truly went round the world, and definitely made an impact, an impact to the world.

Haiti Tee featured on queeried

Through my facebook page for the Haiti Tee, Michelle Penny contacted me through the wall about posting my tee on her website. Therefore I directed myself to her website, and saw pictures of the Haiti Tees and a rather kind description:

Sometimes you can think that compassion and love in the world has died but when you see people come together to help people they don’t even know following the earthquake in Haiti it really does restore your faith in humankind.

And that help has come in so many different formats – the Hope For Haiti concert being one of the biggest, alongside the Haiti Everybody Hurts single in the UK and the We Are The World 25 track in the US.

But there are also some incredible things being done at grassroots levels, such as the “We Shall Love Again” t-shirt produced by Edward Chiu. Simple but very effective, these tees feature a simple image of a brick wall with the words “We shall love again” written across it and are currently being sold for £10 each with ALL profits going directly to the Red Cross Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

Read more: http://www.queeried.co.uk/charity-haiti-tee/#ixzz0gPC3GrjR

Available to buy in a range of stores across London, including Wholesome in Shoreditch and no-one in Kingsland Road, this tee can also be ordered internationally by getting in touch with Edward Chiu direct.

Haiti Tee featured on 00o00

As he promised, Joseph kindly updated his blog with my pictures of my t-shirt, info and stockists of the project. I am really excited by this, as his blog is one of the most popular ones in the UK regarding mens fashion and also is read all around the globe. He did put in my email within the post, so fingers crossed that I will get some response.

00o00's description:

'we shall love again' is a strong message for the people in haiti. working through facebook and at some stores in shoreditch london, edward chiu self initiated this project to produce charity tees for the Haiti Earthquake Appeal. to date he has sold over 75 tees in two weeks. the tees cost £10 each and all profits will go straight to the Red Cross Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

for those in london, the t-shirt is available at:

Wholesome
47 Rivington Street
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 3QB
T: 0207 7292 899

no-one
1 Kingsland Road
London
E2 8AA

for those overseas and keen on this t-shirt, you can email edward here. it's a simple t-shirt and doesn't cost the earth. i really applaud his efforts in doing so. fashion for a good cause, we love.

Emailing fashion bloggers PART 2

In the second attempt to get attention from known fashion bloggers, I've decided to contact the man behind 00o00. He is one of the popular menswear blogger out there, therefore is worth a try.
To my surprise, I received an email an hour later saying that he will post it tomorrow morning, which will include his view, the info on the tee, pictures and even posting my contacting details on his blog so people overseas would beable to contact me regarding the tee.
I really appreciate his effort into helping me, and I look forward to his post on the blog.

London METRO

While flicking through the Metro this morning, I saw the contacts info of the newsletter. It quickly got to me that why I haven't contacted any newspaper or bigger mediums yet. Therefore I emailed them straight away with the contents and info on the Charity. Again, is a long shot, but is worth trying anyway!

Dropping off extra stock

The initial batch of Charity T-Shirts were sold out in the space of a few days at the Wholesome store. As posted earlier, Kyle from Wholesome have contacted me on extra stock, therefore more were made and dropped off today, a total of 10 T-shirts. Is good to see its selling well through a store medium.

Third Order

Due to the extra stock request of Kyle from Wholesome and through the sales in the forum, I have ordered the thrid batch of 25 for the Haiti Project. The amount is still the same of roughly £94. Need to wait around a week for this batch to arrive.

Orders

This is just a few Private Message from other forum users regarding the tee, the support is there definitely and many kind words about the project have been said.

Selling through fuk.co.uk

I have been following this UK based mens fashion site/forum for a while now, and I was thinking why not try to sell some stock via this medium. Therefore I set up a page in its main fashion forum to try and get attention to any 'fashionistas'.

After only about 5-10 mins or so, the thread began to flood in with comments, orders and even views on the Haiti situation. I have to say most of the comments are positive, however some were somewhat against the whole idea making 'stuff' for Charity, which I find very offensive. As this project is not profit driven at all.

End of the day, I've received 10 orders through this forum, although you could say is small, but I feel to get 'fashionistas' to wear a Charity Tee is quite hard, and I believe I've done a good job via this medium.

View the page here.

Stock request

Just after a day since I left some stock over at Wholesome, I received a text from Kyle from the shop. He mentioned that there were a lot of request on the tees and was asking if I could bring in more stock. This is good news of course, but I didn't expect they sell out so soon. A new order would need to fulfill this request and maybe expand to the internet?

Blog post by Wholesome

After dropping off the batch of tees to Wholesome, Kyle kindly blog on the shops website regarding to the tee. This definitely helps the Tee to get a wider audience through other channels through the web.

Selling at no-one

As of today, the 'We Shall Love Again' charity for Red Cross Haiti Earthquake Appeal will be on sale at no-one around the Shoreditch area. Shop owner, Che has been really supportive on this project, and I'm glad the tees are now stocked at their store. More info below:

no-one

1 Kingsland Road

London

E2 8AA

Selling at Wholesome

The second store that will be stocking the Charity tees is Wholesome, again in the Shoreditch area. Met the guys of this store while working for Hypebeast, was a pleasure to know them, and they're also very supportive to the cause. Address of the store is listed below:

Wholesome

47 Rivington Street

Shoreditch

London

EC2A 3QB

T: 02077292899

Why You Haven’t Donated to Haiti Yet?

Came across this while researching on how & why people give money to charity, as I want to know the best ways to approach them apart from just facebook. Here are some of the key texts:

We give when it can help us directly. Some giving is quite self-centered. Alumni giving, to take one example, has been found to correlate in size and frequency to a less-than-shocking variable: the age of one’s child and the likelihood of his or her applying to the school in question.

We give when it can help us indirectly, by raising our social status — helping us appear wealthy or generous. In another study on alumni giving, Yale economist Dan Karlan found (in a paper delightfully titled, “Hey Look at Me”) that individuals were more likely to give when offered public recognition in a newsletter and that they were more likely to donate at a higher level if informed that donors would be separated into giving “circles” based on the amount given. While we may not want to believe that we donate to charity for recognition and social status, empirical research has found that anonymous donations are exceedingly rare (perhaps as low as 1% of all donations) — even though they’re eligible for the same tax treatment as other donations.

We give to feel good. One way we know this is indirectly: by the fact that people seem to give to charity with little to no regard for the effectiveness of their donations. We also have some direct evidence: Recent brain imaging studies have shed light on the theory that we get a “warm glow” from giving to charity. In one specific study, giving money to a food bank activated some of the same brain areas activated by rewards such as receiving food or money.

We give to alleviate guilt and repair our self-image. In a recent column I discussed how when people focused on good things about themselves, they felt less need to engage in good deeds, such as donating to charity. Well, the flip side of that same experiment — where people wrote positive or negative essays about themselves and then were asked to donate up to $10 to a charity of their choice — is that the people who focused on the bad things about themselves donated five times more than those who wrote about their positive traits. As the study’s authors put it, “when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.”

We give when it can increase our odds with the opposite sex. In another experiment, by University of Chicago economist John List, a team tested the effectiveness of various door-to-door fundraising techniques. One technique that had tremendous success: turning up the hotness of the woman who asked for money (“a one-standard deviation increase in physical attractiveness,” in scientific lingo). This increased average donations by 50% to 135%. As the paper delicately puts it: “This result is largely driven by increased participation rates among households where a male answered the door.”

Thoughts: All the factors mentioned above is very true. However, it doesn't relate to my method of giving to charity, which is to sell T-shirts. On the other hand, I've noticed people's feedback tend to be: I am getting something when I give this £10. Therefore is not that they are giving for nothing, but they are giving because they can get something back.

For more info here.

Shop fronts

These are the two shops that will be stocking the charity tees. As I mentioned before, their audience is really diverse, one is street and one is more conventional. I'm very happy with the replies I got from them, and they seemed to be really supportive to the cause.

Contacting shops

Upon selling the tees to friend and family, I decided the next step is to extend to a wider network. While working as an Editor at Hypebeast.com, it gave me a lot of opportunities to meet other people and gained a lot of contacts through the fashion industry. Therefore I've contacted a few shops to see if its possible to sell my charity tees at their locations.

After sending over some emails, I've got replies from two different shop, who are unique in their own ways. No-one is an independent shop stocking local designer products and also more well known brands like Transporter and Opening Ceremony. Wholesome is a streetwear store just opened around the Shoreditch area. Above inserts are the conversation we had in regarding the tees. And the good news is, they will be stocking my design for the Haiti relief.