Shipping

To charge for shipping or not?

In order to keep things simple, we decided not to charge for shipping.  To compensate for this, we did increase the price of the T-shirts.  We feel this is a fair trade-off.

First of all, everyone likes to receive free shipping because everyone likes free!  Secondly, there is a post office nearby to our business location.  We can easily walk packages over to the post office, let them weigh them and ship them- easy.

We experimented to see how many T-shirts we could fit inside a white poly mailer bag.  We discovered that three shirts would fit easily.  More than three and we will have to ship inside a flat rate box.  This is not that expensive as small and medium flat rate boxes ship for around  five dollars and can hold around 15 shirts.  If someone wants to buy more than 15 and we have to pay more for shipping, that is OK too because we are just glad to be selling that many shirts.

Selling Shirts

As many people know, there are lots of sites online with which to create shirts.  And we tried a few of them.  Again, and again, and again.  There was always something we disliked about each of them. And that problem is inherit with why we decided to create EvlovE in the first place, but that is for another time.  It was so impersonal, we couldn’t meet any of the creators, artists, or even salesman from any of the websites.  Fortunately, we had remembered seeing a local manufacturer in the months before.  Driving by the company, we decided to hop in and see what they could do for us.  It was amazing!  We met the salesman, the artists, the receptionist etc.  They could give us a better shirt, for a lower price, and with a smile.  It was great.  We had our shirts ready to go, and with great customer service to boot.

                

Last problem, our store.  While our shirt designs were being finalized, we were undergoing the new (to us anyways) problems of getting a business license and starting an online store.  With this came unique problems of being able successfully explain what we wanted to do with our business, and creating a friendly atmosphere for people to come, look around, maybe shop, but hopefully learn something about the Primal lifestyle.

EvlovE idea

No joke, EvlovE came to one of us in a dream. We had really been focused for a few days on making a shirt relating to Crossfit. When Matt went to sleep that night, he had really been running through this idea, but it came to him in a dream!  By the time he woke up in the morning, he knew that we had to use cave art in our shirts, and he knew the company would be focused around the Aurochs.  Why the Aurochs?  Well you’d have to read the website for that!  http://www.evolvebackwards.com/category_s/1820.htm

After piling through various cave paintings, we finally settled on the picture we use now for the Aurochs.  Charlie came up with erasing the background and leaving the outline, which became a big focus for each of our drawings.  The three of us, after much debate came up with various ideas for what our shirts could look like.  We had a few ideas ready for shirt development but were unsure where to go to create the shirts.

The idea to use cave art is one that came to us as we tossed around the options with EvlovE.  None of us are artists and we don't like shirts with a lot of writing on them.  I'm not sure exactly when ancient cave paintings were realized as a great design, but, we were lucky to see that no one else really used these pictures on shirts.

We think the cave paintings are perfect to represent our industry.  The theme is to inspect your life to try and be happier and healthier by living simpler.  We believe that our ancient ancestors lived this simple life and were happier and healthier because of it.

Sure, they were dirtier than us and didn't have all the great luxuries/technologies that we use regularly today, but, they had the important things - the basic necessities.  That was all they worried about.  When they weren't hunting or working around the campsite they were enjoying one another's company and relaxing.  They really did live a wonderful life.

This idea is gradually being realized.  We want to be a coal in that fire.

T-shirts!? What?

In the beginning, there was…boredom.  Left with very little to do before our next assignment, we were resigned to thinking of grander things when a simple audio book about small business was brought to our attention.  After listening to the book to and from work for a few days, we were convinced that not only could we start and maintain a small business, but we could succeed!  

So um, what would our business be?  Well we had a few criteria to meet.  The first was that it must be a low maintenance concept.  Soon to be working 60 hours a week and faced with a 45 minute 2 way transit time, it must be something simple for us.  That removes consulting and service from anything we would be capable of completing.  One of our founding members, Matt, has enjoyed living the Primal lifestyle for years and has felt, also for years, that he should do something related to that.  

Living with Matt allowed the remaining members to see the benefits of a primal lifestyle (delicious food with a healthy but simple workout!)  Naturally, it was the logical thing for us to do but we still had one thing missing, a product (seems kind of important!)  It was Matt, once again, to the rescue.  Why not sell shirts?  What better way to reach to the broader masses than on our bodies.  Ok, so we solved the problem of what we were going to sell, but we were still unsure how, why, or what it was going to look like.