Cameesa - The Blog

We decided to ask some friends like Demographic, AssaultShirts, as well as ourselves a magical question that may be handy for Tee Printers:

As a t-shirt company, what do you value most?

Speaking with John and Shane from Demographic (wareyoufitin.com) they gladly answered our questions.

Demographic is run and operated by graphic designers, so like most, we have high expectations when it comes to detail and quality. In a printer, first and foremost, we look for someone who is a true craftsman and is willing to push the boundaries on the production end. Collaboration and communication are also very important. If a printer isn’t passionate enough to present some of his/her own ideas to a certain challenge or isn’t willing to involve us in the production process, then they’re probably not going to be the right fit for us. Price is also very important. Being a start-up, we’re always looking for the best way to create quality products as inexpensively as possible. Having said that, quality still comes first. We could cut corners, but we ultimately choose to create superior products and take less of a profit.

Currently, we’re doing most of our printing with Tattooed Tees – a small design/printing company in Wicker Park that happens to have a few graphic-t lines of its own (tattooedtees.com). Since graphic design is also in their background, you could say we speak the same language. They are very passionate about their business and are great to interact with. Their niche is specialty printing techniques like vinyl, foils and oversize prints, so they’re always up for helping us push the design envelope Tattooed Tees is not the most inexpensive printer out there and they’re not really equipped for large print runs (5,000+) that demand a quick turn-around time. That said, depending on your needs, those could be considered negatives. Thus far, it’s been an ideal match for us.

In addition, we spoke with Tim and Craig from AssaultShirts (assaultshirts.com) and they added further to our conversation.

As a Tee company we look for Skills, Reliability, Quality, Availability, Experience, and Price.  We went through about 10 possible candidates for printers and none could print a good portion of our shirts. The ones that could print our shirts quoted us at nearly 11-12 dollars per shirt. The other problem we have run into with other printers was that they weren’t as readily available to us as we had wanted, and sometimes they are completely unreachable which is unacceptable when you have 25 pre-orders out for new shirts.

We still do all of our printing with the same print company, Merchspin.  We believe we have found as close to a perfect match as we can with Merchspin, and we’ve always pimped them whenever we got the chance because they have the best prices, and nine times out of ten they get our product delivered on the date estimated or earlier. They’re not perfect, but they’re as close as you can get in the printing industry.

Finally, Cameesa put our heads together and came up with a few answers ourselves.

We believe that quality is the most important factor when it comes to our printers.  They should provide us with a product that they have mocked out, as to where we are happy and the supporters are happy.  Unfortunately, we have had a few horror stories where the wrong colors have come in on tees.  These are probably the worst scenarios imaginable.

In addition to quality we feel that responsiveness is a huge factor.  We want to hear back from our printers that everything is working out as expected and that we are on schedule.

One tough issue with Cameesa is that Supporters already have to wait a long time to receive their Tees, so responsiveness for our printer is crucial.

Last but not least, as John mentioned, being a start-up, we try to get a great price for the Tees.  We have recently been trying to find the most cost-effective ways to get things done around Cameesa, without suffering in quality.

The biggest lesson learned is that as time goes by, we know that we are progressing because people continue to support us from every angle imaginable.  There are surely mistakes that we have made, but we try our hardest to correct them, and as long as the communication is clear between us and our printers, AND OUR SUPPORTERS, then we are in the clear.

This past Wednesday, Andy and I were very fortunate to be interviewed by Jeff Woelker from The Chicago Tech Report.  This was our first video interview and we actually did not know what to expect.  To tell you the truth, I was a little nervous.  Andy says that I get really goofy when I am put in a serious situation (I guess it’s some sort of defense mechanism, a good one at that.)

Jeff did a great job as an interviewer asking great questions, and keeping things informal (nice work Jeff).  Since we were a little anxious, we stuck to the format of the interview and didn’t branch out to talk about much more.  One thing that we regret was that we failed to mention YOU, and we learned this very quickly.  YOU, our Supporters, our families, and friends……a huge reason why we are still running Cameesa.

So, we want to thank you all for everything that you have done for us.  From responding to forum posts and Buying Tees, to telling your friends about Cameesa and putting stickers on your MacBook laptops.  2008 was the beginning of Cameesa and we look forward to our first full year as Cameesa in 2009.  Thank you.

1. Watch the interview by clicking here, The Chicago Tech Report Cameesa Interview.

2. p.s. WE WISH THAT WE WOULD HAVE SAID THIS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO:

I want to see the coolest Chicago t-shirt ever on Cameesa.

If you are not an artist but have been in Chicago before (or live in Chicago), go to the Chicago Tee Post  and give us your opinion of Chicago, or let us know what would look cool on a Chicago Tee.

If you are an artist, design a cool Chicago tee and check out the rules on the Chicago Tee Post.