Been Steph Curry with the Shirt

By etrain11

Well I'd be lying if I didn't say this has been quite the crazy past week or so. For starters, we hit the 200k mark for viewership, a fun mark to hit. Then we continued to gain momentum by adding a few other contributors and the existing writers continued to bang out fantastic content. Then, last night, I signed up for my first ever marathon back in Philly on November 22nd. Should be an experience for an 800m runner ...

Also big shout to our new corporate sponsors @dad_hat and the Dads: Bill Wilkerson, Dave O'Shanahan, Rich Brown, Ron Sullivan and Mr Howard McIntyre.

Those of you who have been following me on twitter (shameless plug, @jfetrain11) know that I have official ordered 30 etrain themed shirts that are currently being shipped to my residence in New York. 

I've had lots of positive feedback so far which I really appreciate, but I think there have also been lots of questions that came from my tweets that I have been negligent about answering. So, now that I have a bit of a clearer plan, here is some information. 

First off, there are currently 30 shirts. That means, for now, there is a pretty limited supply. If they are popular enough, I will likely order another round (possibly larger amount and varying sizes).

I don't have an exact price point yet for the shirts because I'm not exactly sure what platform they will be sold on. I'm not looking to make a profit off these shirts, just make enough to cover the cost I laid out to buy them.

I've considered a variety of options for the sales due to the fact that I'm currently living in New York and only make it down to PA a couple weekends a year. I have little interest in doing any sort of online mail order type system. It would make costs higher for both sides and it takes out the whole point I had in making the shirts: the personal aspect.

I think it would be cool to meet people who are readers, discuss with them their feelings/thoughts on the sport, the blog, Alex Fox's irrational hatred of Parker Stinson. 

But there are obstacles to face with this idea as well. I can't simply set up a stand at a meet without permission and sell shirts. I am hoping to get in touch with some meet directors about some type of shared revenue concept, but again, I'm not looking to make these shirts expensive. 

For the record, if there are any meet directors out there reading that have any interest, feel free to get in contact with me at jarrettfelix1130@gmail.com.

The most important meet for me to get access to would be the state meet, but I have no idea the costs or even the contacts that I would need to go through to get this done. That's going to be a big time work in progress, but something I'm certainly going to try to explore.

While I try and sort of all that out, I will still occasionally be tripping to PA for various meets (I already have Penn Relays tickets for all 3 days for example) and I will likely have a couple shirts on me if people want to check them out and see what they are like. When I do go to a meet, I will be sure to tweet which meet I am attending so feel free to follow me there if you are interested in learning about the shirts.

Now for the numbers. The plan is, if I can sell them on my terms, the price should be around 15 dollars. Any lower and I'd end up in the red. I may need to raise that price a bit depending on what selling method I am ultimately able to do, but I have no interest in selling the shirts for anything over 20 dollars. I went too many meets with absurdly expensive shirts in my day to have any desire to sell them for more than that. That may be an unrealistic expectation, but I'd rather give them away for free than sell them for more than 20.

So ultimately that's were I'm at. It's been a bit of a frustrating process trying to research what's legal, what's not and all that kinda jazz and there seems to be plenty of gray area involved as well. So for now, I'm being cautious and giving you my honest thoughts and opinions. If you have some of your own feel free to comment here or email me at the address I mentioned earlier, jarrettfelix1130@gmail.com. I'd love to get insights from others.