OK, here is the deal. On this artwork, which I will show in a few posts, I have literally well in excess of 150 (real likely over 200) hours of my time editing artwork since December 05. I am not an art genius or a savant so I had to go with my limited tools. But like S-B, I really can't look at it as an hourly wage or I'd get sick...
After starting and stalling on several T-Shirt designs, some by me and some by members here, I felt I at least owed it to all of you to do something truly special and celebrate one of the core parts of S-B that make this community tick like the well oiled and occasionally inebriated community we are. I chose the Plug Building community of S-B as I wanted to celebrate a group of people that the significant majority of us are in awe with. The only problem was that I ran out of canvass and was only able to get 20 something plugs on this shirt as there are NUMEROUS other deserving plug builders that should be by all rights on this shirt as well. This shirt will feature some of their work - I truly wish I could have included more - and their art will be predominantly displayed on the back of the shirt with a somewhat different, mildly artsy S-B logo on the front. I asked everyone on this shirt for their permission to do this though most I did not tell what I needed their permission for, other than it was a "project". The theme is loooosely based on a concert T-shirt.
Back in February I also had a few sponsors contribute to seed this shirt to help get it off the ground and they are listed on the shirt as well as sponsoring this shirt as they helped me get this off the ground.
For prices we are looking at roughly $18-19 for M-XL, 19-20 for XXL, and 20-21 for XXXL as the prices run $2 & $3 more per shirt for XXL & XXXL respectively.
The shirts will be a 100% 6.1 ounce heavy Cotton short sleeve shirt (they said better than Hanes quality). I looked at the shirts and they are better than 90% of the fishing shirts I have gotten. Much similar to a Guy Harvey. Have not decided on a pocket or not though that would probably add 50 cents or so, would need to find out. And shipping I have not figured out (and not sure if Clammer wan't that job - in fact I think he'll keel over when one actually gets printed
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Base color of the shirt will probably be either Stone Blue, Khaki, or Sand.
The minimum I can order at this time is 150 shirts because of the major artwork going onto it. The screen people I talked to today and I've talked to several shops - state it will use as many colors as they can put on a shirt, 13-14 on the back alone. It looks like I will be using the Bomba suggestion of East Coast Screen Printing (quite an operation). In fact these guys do the shirts for Gibbs so those that have their shirts can tell me what they think.
So, I will show you the artwork to go on this in a short bit and tell me if you will commit to these shirts before I lay out the couple grand to make this happen. S-B will make some money on these, probably around $5 each, as it is an expensive shirt. I will work up a real good deal for the guys whose plugs are on the shirts.