Cameesa - The Blog

At Cameesa we are always open to innovative ideas especially when it comes to T-shirts. The Swedish T-Post definitely possesses a unique model. It is based on a subscription model that is well known to the magazine world. Instead of a magazine you receive a T-shirt every six weeks based around a news topic. What I like most about T-Post is the idea of tying in narrative to t-shirt artwork. The news item that relates to the design is printed on the inside of the shirt.

I also like the consistent way T-Post presents each new shirt on their site, a couple wearing nothing but the shirt. One thing I dislike about the site the drop-down menu that functions as the main navigation. It’s somewhat cumbersome to use and can definitely be implemented in a different fashion.

I received Kevin Lyons’ new book “Pussy and Papers Poetry Power and Pistols” the other day from Amazon. It is a retrospective containing five hundred of his t-shirt designs. For those who don’t know Kevin Lyons is, he is a notable figure in the T-shirt design community whose freelance clients include Nike Basketball, Adidas, Jordan Brand, Stussy and Beams-T in Japan. A keen typographer, Lyon’s shirts display unique type treatments that convey concepts with impact. The hip-hop influence is clearly present in all of his work. I also find it extremely interesting when Lyons references modern art movements within the context of contemporary hip-hop culture. An example is displayed below for a shirt done for Commonwealth Stacks, a shout out to MC Shan with visual references from the Dutch De Stijl art movement.

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The blank sheet of paper, canvas, computer screen, etc can always be daunting. To get the ball rolling it is usually good to come up with as many ideas possible. This advice is important not only for our Cameesa artists but anyone in a field of endeavour that can be considered “creative”.

A methodological way to tackle brainstorming was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive and one of the founders of BBDO, with the use of the following guidelines:

1. Focus on quantity
2. No criticism
3. Unusual ideas are welcome
4. Combine and improve ideas

The guidelines encourage the quantity of ideas generated, which makes it dramatically easier to come up with a solution to a particular problem by then recombining and evolving these ideas. The biggest hurdle for most people is negativity or criticism. They think that their idea is not good and that therefore they shouldn’t share it. However what they fail to realize is that the initial idea can be evolved or recombined with others. It would definitely be difficult to combine and improve ideas if you had a small subset to work from.

IDEO, the multidisciplinary industrial firm that is geared towards innovation, has a set of rules for brainstorming that sound very similar to those offered by Osborn in 1930s.

1. Be visual
2. Defer judgement
3. Encourage wild ideas
4. Build on the ideas of others
5. Go for Quantity
6. One conversation at a time
7. Stay focused on the topic

As is apparent even in IDEO’s principles if the focus on quantity and the removal of criticism. These principles are one the factors that has made IDEO one of the most innovative industrial firms today with clients such as Apple, Intel, 3M and countless others.

I think Paul Arden in his book “It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be” puts it succinctly:

“IT’S RIGHT TO BE WRONG”

According to Arden, if you’re wrong the possibilities suddenly open up and anything is possible. With this mindset worry dissipates, as you are no longer trying hard to be right.

So feel free to be wrong and generate as many ideas as possible without any restraint and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

I initially started to write this post in praise of Founders at Work as a sort of book review outlining the important points from the book. However, in the middle of writing I realized a lot these ideas I’ve accumulated from experience and a myriad of other books. So instead I’ve outlined my ideas in regards to Entrepreneurship while citing some examples from the book as I feel it is an excellent resource. I can probably write a book around this topic. However, I need to make it into a blog post and keep succinct and informative as possible. I probably failed on making this post brief.

Founders at Work is a book by Jessica Livingston, a founding partner at Y Combinator, outlining the early days of various successful tech start-ups through a series of interviews with their founders. The book covers around 30 start-ups some notable names include: Adobe, Apple, Blogger, PayPal, Hotmail, 37Signals, del.icio.us, Yahoo!, Flickr and the list goes on.

1. Be passionate about your chosen endeavour

This is by far the most important thing that I’ve learned not only through “Founder’s at Work” but in all my studies and endeavours. This book has re-enforced my belief in the importance of this factor. If you lack passion your idea or start-up will not get very far. Part of this passion derives from solving a problem or developing a product you have intimate knowledge of. Examples include 37Signals and the development of Basecamp and Joshua Schachter’s creation of del.icio.us.

David Heinemeier Hanson described how 37Signals created Basecamp in order to solve a lot of organizational problems surrounding client work. 37Signals knew the problem intimately. They knew they needed an easy to use, lightweight web-based tool that would allow them to effectively communicate with clients and manage projects. They also knew exactly what they wanted in this tool. Due to this focus in tackling problem the tool itself is not only useful to 37Signals but to other small business that faced similar issues in managing projects and communicating with clients.

Similarly, Joshua Schachter started del.icio.us to manage his 20,000 bookmarks in a centralized location through the use of tags. By solving his own problem he managed to solve this problem for everyone else. I knew I found it painful to have bookmarks in multiple places (at work, at home, etc.) until I found del.icio.us.

It is easy to be passionate about solution you know a lot about and are interested in. Plus you will be putting a lot of energy into making the happen. If you are lukewarm about the idea then there is no point in wasting your energy on it.

2. The initial idea is not paramount

The comment I usually hear from most trying to build a business around a particular idea is the strength of the idea. I do believe that the idea must have some basis in solving a problem for a particular market segment. If you follow guideline number one then you should be on the right track. Some examples from Founders at Work that illustrate this concept are PayPal and Flickr.

PayPal started off as a company that produced cryptography software for palm pilots, then moved to payment transactions between handhelds before finally focusing on secure payments online.

Flickr’s start is well noted in many books and blogs. It started as an online lightweight video game called “Game Neverending” with a social networking focus. Photo sharing was a feature of the game. Caterina Fake and her team saw the potential of the photo-sharing feature and spun it out into Flickr.

The idea doesn’t have to be perfect. It can evolve and change. However it is important to get out there and build something around your idea in order to test its viability. It also important to build a team of individuals willing to execute the idea which leads me to point number three.

3. The importance of an excellent team

I strongly believe that an A team with a B idea will beat an A idea with B team. The reason: The A team is an intelligent unit that can evolve the idea and find ways to adapt to keep moving forward.

Joe Kraus, an Excite co-founder had an interesting remark in regards to his five-person team of Stanford graduates:

“We decided to start a company together before we had any idea of what we were going to work on. But we were so committed to the idea of starting something together we knew were going to figure it out.”

Although this is an extreme example many start-ups could not have survived without strong committed teams. The examples are too numerous to mention.

I’m grateful that we have a solid team here at Cameesa: Andy, Qasar, Justin and Kamil. The team is the major reason we are able to accomplish so much. This leads me to my next point…

4. You can’t do everything by yourself

It is extremely important to realize your strengths and weaknesses. It is better to magnify your strengths then to try to improve your weaknesses. The chances are you will not be able to bring your weaknesses to a level where they’d be valuable. The other downside is that you’ll sacrifice magnifying your strengths. Plus improving your strengths is less stressful than improving on your weaknesses.

The solution is to find team members that compliment your skill set or outsource or hire the skill set.

5. Execution is crucial

I don’t have to write much on this point. If you don’t go out and do something nothing will happen. Everyone has ideas. I have about three or four notebooks full of them. Many other people probably do as well.

A notable example from Founders at Work is the interview with James Hong, the founder of Hot or Not. The reason I cite this example because it’s a relatively simple idea that many claim to have had. Which in all fairness they may have rightfully had but James did something about it. For those who don’t know (I’m sure most people do) Hot or Not is a web site that let’s you rate the attractiveness of a person based on a scale of 1 to 10.

6. Persistence

Starting a successful company is not an easy task, there is a lot of learning involved and things don’t always go as planned. There will always be obstacles and challenges and “persistence” is what keeps the momentum moving forward. Many successful entrepreneurs and CEOs cite this as the number one reason for their success from Michael Dell to Ron Gruner.

7. The willingness to take risks

Risk aversion is not conducive to starting a company or growing a business. Tough decisions will have to be made in order for your idea and company to become a success. There will be a point in time where you may have to invest your life savings, leave your day job, etc. No risk, No reward.

8. Embrace constraints

I will illustrate this point with a link to a chapter from the 37Signals book “Getting Real” as they do an excellent job of elaborating on this point: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch03_Embrace_Constraints.php

If you haven’t read Getting Real and your business involves building stuff for the web I highly recommend you read the book. The above link is related more to building software, however most start-ups are faced with a wide array of constraints and will always need to focus and be creative in the way they solve problems.

9. Outline goals for your business

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This applies in life as it does in entrepreneurship, your career or anything else for that matter. You need to setup goals to work towards not only to keep you motivated but also to keep progressing. It is extremely hard to work towards something if you do not have clearly outlined goals.

“And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”
-Khalil Gibran

The only way you can be successful is by finding a vocation you love and are passionate about. Otherwise it will be very difficult for you to achieve high levels of success. If you do not know what your true calling is, it may be beneficial to stop everything you’re doing and lock yourself in a room until you find out. Spending a week locked in your room is nothing compared to wasting years engaging in meaningless activities.

I feel entrepreneurs possess the willingness to pursue the things they enjoy as they are extremely motivated to take risks and initiative to get their businesses off the ground. It is not work, but a labor of love.

Cameesa is in the process of evaluating shirt printers, so Andy and I got a chance to meet with the wonderful staff of Sharprint, a t-shirt printer on the West side of Chicago.

The staff of Sharprint are extremely professional, personable, and humorous (humor is always a plus in my books). Upon arrival we met Lana, the Omega Team account manager, and received a tour of their gigantic facility, which produced over 6 Million Prints last year. With Cameesa’s help, they can definitely boost the number.

After our tour, we had the pleasure of meeting Sharprint’s artist, Tara Zanzig, who showed us the wide array of Sharprint’s printing capabilities, ranging from embroidery and embossing to foil and mixed media. Tara’s expertise were evident as she talked about Sharprint’s printing methods.  Thanks Tara, this will provide a large amount of flexibility for the artwork our Cameesa’s community will produce.

Next, we returned into the factory to get a real taste of the glory, a hands-on tutorial of shirt printing. Simon Perez, a wizard on the manual press who has been with Sharprint since 1993, gave us this lesson. Simon was very welcoming and even laughed with me as I messed up my first print.

I got a chance to print my first shirt….well….my second shirt…..I messed the first print by cutting off Harry Caray’s face half way down the shirt, Oops!

Before we knew it, our tour was coming to an end, on our way out, George Kilian, the owner of Sharpint, came over and introduced himself to us. As he inquired about Cameesa I thought to myself : “Kamil, you are looking at a guy that started a company in his garage with a vision, and today he provides over 100 jobs in West Chicago…..man that is admirable.” Back to reality, now we are in our garage trying to raise our little baby, Cameesa.

This tour made me realize two things : 1) I love meeting cool people, 2) I missed Andy (Welcome back to Chicago!)

I am actually wearing my Harry Caray t-shirt as I type this Post, it’s Sunday and I need to do the laundry.

The Behance Network is an excellent community for artists and designers. While admiring the work on Behance I came across some intersting t-shirts in the portfolios of Chris Gray, Jeff Finley of GoMedia and Jeff Hamada. I’ve posted some of the shirts below. They are linked to the full portfolios on Behance.

Andrew Lockhart at Thinking Interactive posted an excellent article on the 9 the nine types of brand communities expanding on Sean Moffit’s article at Buzz Canuck. Examining this model is definitely relevant for Cameesa and other community based sites.

The above diagram outlines the level of commitment and involvement a community offers and its effects on brand impact.

A quick overview of the categories is as follows:

Commitment

1. Open – Communities that don’t require registration and allow anonymous participation. An example would be an anonymous posting on a blog.
2. Registration – Most common, sign up to participate.
3. Purchase – Community based around the purchase of a product. The membership can also be the product. Example, pay a fee to join an exclusive community.
4. Outside Selection – Members are selected by existing community members or an organizer as registration is not open to everyone.

Involvement/Interaction

1. Spectators – Members who join a community to gain the benefits and contribute or participate very little.
2. Critics – Members that participate with comments, tagging, rating, reviewing, voting, etc.
3. Creators – Tend to be the most active members on community sites in terms of content contribution.

How the model applies to Cameesa.

I know the model as presented by Andrew and Sean is not rigid with fixed boundaries and is assumed that there is overlap and variety between communities. However, Cameesa’s model of Creating, Supporting and Buying is a tightly knit eco-system that needs high levels of participation from all its members and promotes high levels of interaction between all of them.

Broken down as follows:

Artists “the Creators”- upload their artwork to be printed on t-shirts (High degree of involvement).

Supporter’s “The Critics”- seek out designs that inspire them and fund it’s printing (Also, a high degree of involvement). The word “critic” is not as appropriate for the Cameesa community as supporters will most likely support artwork they enjoy,  actively moving towards the products they’d like to see succeed.

Buyer’s “The Spectators” – Seek out shirts they are crazy about and purchase them.

A community member can fill all of the roles as they are not exclusive. In terms of commitment, creating and supporting require registration while purchasing does not. On the whole each pillar is important in the Cameesa community in order to produce quality tees the design savvy will enjoy. Artists and supporters will collect the proceeds to sustain their activity on the site while providing an excellent breeding ground for high quality designs. All will have a significant impact on the Cameesa brand.

Being part of a startup, we are introduced to new people and new companies every day. I was recently introduced to the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center’s fashion program manager, Stephanie Niedospial. From the beginning, Stephanie was very response, enthusiastic, and eager to learn about Cameesa. She was determined to help us succeed in our entrepreneurial experience. Thanks Stephanie.

Moreover, Stephanie described the Stitches Fashion Program (within the CEC) as “a FREE business resource for fashion entrepreneurs.” The Stitches Fashion Program has been beneficial to Cameesa and is an excellent resource for fashion based start-ups in the Chicago area.

If you’re a fashion entrepreneur in Chicago, make sure to check out http://www.stitchesfashionprogram.com/.

If you enjoy reading about fashion and emerging styles read the Stitches blog at http://www.styleexpose.com/