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Two years ago, I designed a shirt using the face of the transfer case shift knob, and thought about printing some T-shirts to sell. I had a test print made and wore it to Nationals last year. A Scout vendor who attended the same show released a version of that shirt on their Instagram feed this spring. I’d also designed a series showing the grille faces from all iterations of the Scout II and set it aside because…life; they released a similar T-shirt design this summer.
For some reason, this really got to me. I should be making some money on my ideas. Several things were holding me back: I didn’t have anyplace to host the designs (I didn’t want them on my personal sites), I’m wary of the copyright issues around the IH trademark, and I didn’t want to be seen as a copycat. But it stuck in my craw.
The other night I saw a post by another Scout owner in Austin selling her own T-shirt designs and decided I just needed to pull the trigger: if they can do it so can I, and I figure my designs will look better. I bought the domain Oldlinestatebinders.com for $7 and I’ll be using that for a website and an Instagram feed, and I’ll use one of the T-shirt fulfillment vendors online for a while and see how things go. So far I’ve got the 4-wheel drive design, the T-19 shift pattern, the Oldlinestatebinders logo, and a series of grille designs almost ready to go. I figure some careful social media work might generate a little extra cash.
cmpelton says:
Feel ya. I do this all of the time. I’m a designer by trade, and come up with ideas for shirts, stickers, buttons, etc. and they just sit on my computer until I see similar designs elsewhere and say, “Aw, crap…” I write it off for myself as nothing lost, cause I’m not the entrepreneurial sort. I’m also the guy that doesn’t go to local meet-ups cause I’m not the social type either, and I don’t really get into “clubs”… but I reckon we all have our things… All that to say I’d probably chip in on a few of yours if you made ’em.
bill says:
I hear you. I’m half entrepreneurial and half lazy, and sometimes the latter outweighs the former. Plus, as a designer, you know how it is to have seventeen side projects going without ever finishing any of them. I’ll let you know when more of them are ready for prime time!