Big favour to ask - we wanna be the Tee of the Day over on our favourite tee design blog-thing, emptees. We’re on the front page already, but there’s some stiff competition and we need some serious help!
So please go over there and ‘heart’ our Strange Aeons design and help us make our mommas proud!
We’re thrilled to finally drop Batch.04 / Obscurity, just in time for summer. As always, if you’ve got any feedback whatsoever we’d love to hear from you. Email us or hit us up on twitter, @the_affair.
Strange Aeons (left) is based on H.P Lovecraft’s very particular form of cosmic-horror in The Call of Cthulu.
Whilst We (right) comes courtesy of our insatiable fascination with dystopic fiction, this time via Zamyatin’s novel of the same name, widely agreed to be the inspiration for Orwell’s 1984.
We updated Corto’s Crash with a fresh new colourway for summer. These aqua beauties definitely won’t last, and will never be repeated. So be sure to get yours now!
Big shout out to Tom for those “come hither” eyes!
If you’ve been cursing your own existential indecisiveness, we’ve also re-printed the J.P. Sartre inspired L’Enfer c’est les autres.
Even though the world is falling apart at the economic seams and inflation is officially falling, the unfortunate reality for us is that costs are rising. Both American Apparel and our screen-printer have increased their prices by around 10% this year.
In the two years we’ve been making tees, we’ve always been considerably cheaper than the average high-street tee, both in the UK and in Australia. We’ve also never once increased our prices even though our costs have been steadily increasing.
For example, last year we added inside neck prints which represented a 27% rise in production costs. We chose not to pass this on because the print is a vehicle to deliver the story behind each design, and as such is an integral part of what we’re about as a brand.
Anyway we debated long and hard here at the-affair HQ as to how this affects us, and whether or not to pass on these increases. And of course there are pros and cons either way that are pretty obvious. In the end, it boiled down to the fact that like any other business, our future depends on being profitable today.
So we’ve decided to raise our prices by £2 (8%) on all new shirts bringing them to £27 RRP. All old stock remains at £25 until sold out.
Those of you following us on Twitter got a blow-by-blow account of the Batch.04 photoshoot that took place last Sunday, including some rare never before seen production/process shots that we twitpic’d at the time. Follow us and find out more.
For everyone else, here’s what a teaser trailer in the t-shirt industry looks like :)
All comments welcome.
Now if we had all the money in the world the marketing budget of H&M, the-affair website v2.0 would probably look a bit like this - of course on black not off-white, and without the abstract red shapes and weird particle effects.
As you can see from the Perfect Fools’ case study, they’ve taken our core thought and added about a gazillion Euros to the production budget - and voila! - a pretty cool evolution of the idea behind our site.
Apart from the RED camera and greenscreen (cheating!), check out what kind of a studio setup all those Euros get you. For those following us on twitter, you’ll note that our setup looks pretty much exactly the same :-p
All in all a damn fine effort, the only thing I’m slightly gutted about is that there is no credit to the-affair for the (strategic) inspiration.
Really, it’s the least they could’ve done :-p
The sun’s coming out more regularly this side of the pond (let’s hope it lasts) and we’re gearing up to drop a load of fresh new designs in time for summer proper. As a result we’ve decided to try a little experiment via twitter to help clear out the stock-room.
All you have to do is follow us @the_affair and we’ll hit you back with the 40% off sale link. Dead simple.
And while we’re at it, just a quick shout out to all the twitterers who took it upon themselves to spread the good word - @purplesime, @kleonhard, @mmcneive, @Alexome, @nickad, @outsidejane - very very much appreciated!
Stalks and Cranes aside, we thought it would be an interesting exercise to see where you - our customers - actually come from.
Unsurprisingly, the great majority of you are in the UK (47%) and USA (19%). Interestingly, the rest of you are to be found in Australia (9%), Sweden (6%), Germany (5%) and Canada (3%). With the remaining 11% scattered across the great expanse in between…
No need to fear though, the only chance you’ll meet someone else at the same party wearing one of our shirts is if it’s either Dave or myself!
They’ve been far longer in the making than necessary, and if you’re lucky they’ll be available before the summer wanes - but Batch.04 / Obscurity, is finally at the printers!
If you’re into unsung novels then you’re in for a treat - we delve into Lovecraft’s peculiar brand of cosmic-tentacled-horror, and explore one potential outcome of the dastardly R-ecession and the increasing nationalisation of industry.
The anticipation is killing us…
Its been a long while since we’ve been religiously checking our site stats, wondering who might be looking at our site and which blogs had picked us up, or not…
One blog that we never seemed to get traction with was Tcritic. Written by the esteemed Karl Long, and with an RSS readership above 5000 it was a no-brainer for a start-up to want to get posted.
But try as we might, we just couldn’t get through.
Karl didn’t want to love us and we didn’t know why. Was it the fact that our designs stood for something more than stupid slogans? Was it that we were based in the motherland? Or maybe it was that his chihauha was viciously mauled by a crocodile on a family trip to Australia as a child? We just could not work it out. Still haven’t in fact…
Which is why its all the more exciting to be finally featured on Tcritic.
Reading the comments I can’t understand why Karl never wanted to post about us. And we’re not at all bitter that it was the result of a distinct lack of dumb slogan tees coming through his inbox that day. Nor the fact that it had to come from @stiricide. No way. Just thrilled beyond words to be in the hallowed halls of t-shirt fame.
About a year ago, the lovely Melody contacted us to see if we’d like to be a part a book they were putting together on e-commerce experiences. We said “Hell yes!”, and then promptly forgot about it until the other day when we got our copy through the mail.
Entitled iCatching, its just been released by Page One publishers in Singapore.
If you’re in the business of selling things online you should definitely check it out. Then as a courtesy, at least email the people you decide to totally rip-off and say ‘thanks’.
Great read over on the Guardian about the books we (collectively) most lie about reading. And guess what, Orwell’s 1984 comes top of the list!
“Asked if they had ever claimed to read a book when they had not, 65% of respondents said yes and 42% said they had falsely claimed to have read Orwell’s classic in order to impress. This is followed by Tolstoy’s War and Peace (31%), James Joyce’s Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%).”
That’s almost 3 times more people than the Bible! Not that I’d be very impressed by someone who has read the Book - rather i’d run the opposite direction as fast as my zealot-fearing legs would carry me - but a hefty figure nonetheless, and one I’m sure Orwell himself would giggle raucously about.
Of course this dismal state of collective fibbing will surely drop now that the eponymous Shepard Fairey has designed the latest jacket…
But that aside - Fear not all you liars out there! You need worry no longer, because our ‘Miniluv‘ tee is the perfect solution and includes a free crib sheet on the inside neck to save you from those embarrassing moments when someone asks if you think that Julia was in on it or not…
Finally, I can’t not mention the dread instilled here at the-affair HQ over the seemingly flippant comment: “When asked to name the writers they really enjoyed, 61% of people ticked JK Rowling and 32% John Grisham.” My God, if you didn’t already suspect we really are all doomed to ignorantly walk the deserts of Europe as global warming turns Frank Herbert’s Dune into reality.
But that’s a completely different t-shirt…