Cameesa - The Blog

Cameesa would like to Congratulate Andy and Ari!!! This wonderful couple made a life-long commitment to each other and decided to get married on June 21st, 2008. Congrats.

What else happened this weekend? The Fab Five members of Cameesa were physically united for the first time. Qasar flew in from Boston, Justin from Austin, Vik from Canada (eh) and I drove to Michigan with Andy. It was a glorious afternoon for a wedding, some Polka dancing and a memorable night of shenanigans. We were together one minute and separated the next. As I type, Andy is relaxing with his wife, Ari, on a beach in the Caribbean, Q is in Australia hunting crocodiles, Justin is sweating in Texas, and Vik is probably working.

It was great to see everyone. Pictures will be posted once Q gets back from vacation.

P.S. It was also Justin Lewis’ birthday on Saturday, so Happy Birthday Justin.

Many entrepreneurs get their business ideas in the following way : a) find problem, b) think of solution, c) base a business around the solution.

Are there any daily tasks that while undertaking them, you think to yourself “there’s gotta be an easier way of doing this.” If so, then these are perfect startup business opportunities. Next time that thought runs through your mind : 1) write it down, 2) let one day go by, 3) think of a solution.

Here is a recent example in my life :

I was recently folding my laundry and pairing up my 40 different pairs of white socks. I thought to myself, “I HATE pairing socks together, what a brainless, waste-of-time task. There has to be an easier way to do this.” A few days went by and then the ANSWER suddenly popped into my mind. I threw out ALL of my white socks, drove to Wal-Mart, and bought 40 mid-cut, white Hanes socks. I don’t pair my socks anymore because they are all identical so I can just grab two white socks from my dresser.

The business idea you ask? To create a David Allen style Getting Things Done book for the home. It would contain time saving tips for around the house chores like the sock example mentioned previously.

This is just a small example but there are probably hundreds of opportunities you encounter on a daily basis. If you start writing down a couple a day you will have amassed a giant list of ideas that you may be able to convert into an entrepreneurial endeavor.

As time goes by you will find that small problems arise all over the place, you just have to keep your eyes open and be ready.

Most are familiar with the work of Shepard Fairy that he produces under the name Obey Giant. I found this Obey shirt on Karma Loop:

Is it Shepard’s Illustration? Or is it the gold print? All I know is I have to buy this Tee. For those who don’t know Shepard here’s some background. An interview on the Henry Rollins show:

Rumplo is a platform that let’s people rank and track their favorite T-shirts and T-shirt designers. It was built to be a promotional platform for those whose business is T-shirts to potentially receive a larger following. I haven’t gathered any background information on traffic numbers yet but it does look like they have a fair bit of content on there. About 21 pages worth of T-shirts. I also found our friend Joe from Fantastic Bonanza on the site. The platform seems promising and I’ll need to give it try.

Came across Coltesse on the T-shirt Island Blog. Founded in 2006 in Paris, France, Coltesse assembles it’s collection on a seasonal basis with a group of selected international artists. One piece that caught my eye was one from the French Toronto based artist Ndeur. Design in the bottom right. There is some dimensionality to the piece that makes it interesting. Ndeur became well known for his pattern designs, notably on shoes.

June 13th is our launch, even though we’ve had something up for a couple of days for testing purposes. Anyhow, our merchant account/payment gateway provider put our account on hold because of inactivity. Since we are live we have asked them to expedite our request to re-enable our account. The initial estimate was a two to three day turn around time prior to our request to expedite. I feel confident that it will be up and running by June 15th and everyone will be able to buy our first Cameesa shirts. Yeah! I will make another post confirming that all is in order and letting everyone know they can start buying and supporting.

As you read this post, you’re probably thinking “something is not right and I can’t really put my finger on it.” Let me help you out, Vik has redesigned the look (not the feel) of our Blog. Great work Vik.

Is that all? NO. In addition to the video, there is a little ‘About’ section at the bottom of the page…just scroll down.

“I like it. I like [it] a lot.” -Lloyd (Dumb & Dumber)

Once again, another brilliant quotation by Joel Spolsky from the book Founders At Work.

Livingston : Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently [in your startup]?

Joel Spolsky : [All of those coupon, 50 cents off, 25% off, 2-day sale] schemes were all marginally good marketing ideas. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time chasing them. The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product. Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things–although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them–was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it. If we had taken all the effort we put into these crazy schemes and put it into moving our software development schedule ahead by the equivalent amount, it would have paid off much more. That was probably the biggest mistake we made.

Does this advice pertain to all types of products? Well, Joel currently sells FogBugz software for $200 per license. If coupons are not recommended for $200 software should they be used at Cameesa? Cameesa is a clothing company that sells each product for approximately $20.00 doll-hairs.

I do believe that people will enjoy getting a price-break on their t-shirt. I don’t believe that a $2-off coupon will make or break a sale. People that are returning customers and truly enjoy a design will pay $20 for it.

This brings us to the next question, which coupon-methods/tricks do you chase and which ones do you avoid? How do you determine this? Is it experience and a learned-skill? Or do you just avoid ALL OF THEM unless proved otherwise?

If we were to take Joel’s advice this would mean that we would constantly improve our product and wouldn’t worry about giving people $2.00-off for every shirt on the third Thursday of June.

Let’s think this one out loud.

How many times do you actually go to a website because they are having a sale? Sometimes. How many times do you go to a site because you like their product? Probably often. How many times do you stop halfway through a t-shirt purchase and say, “i’ll wait until this shirt goes on sale?” Probably not often. I think it boils down to the following : “if you have a killer product, you won’t need to put it on sale, and you won’t need to spend time on schemes, and coupons.”

The next question is : How do you get your co-founders to agree to the “no coupons, just a killer product” motto?

I see it now : “Cameesa. No Coupons. Just a killer product. “