The time has come… to sell off my FLP Tees inventory! Which means all tees are marked down to $18 — that’s $30 off their original price of $48.

Five percent of sales will still go to the Not For Sale Campaign, and I’ll still package and send each one in my hand-stamped chipboard envelopes, including my favorite-ever hangtags that were letterpressed on sustainable birch veneer by Treasa at In Haus Press.

As much as I’ve enjoyed running my own line, it’s time to retire the stock I have, and I’d love it if you’d help me clear my shelves!

Shop all $18 FLP Tees now!

As promised… the FLP December sale is here! For the rest of the month, all FLP Tees are buy one, get one free!

That’s one for you, and one to give to a friend. 5% of profits still donated to the Not For Sale campaign. Merry Christmas indeed. :)

Shop the Fashion Loves People store now »

This Saturday, I hope those of you in San Francisco will be able to make a stop on Fillmore Street! From 11 to 3, HELLO by Candystore Collective will be hosting a Holiday Trunk Show & Brunch for three local brands, including Fashion Loves People! Like usual for events, I’ll be selling my shirts at wholesale rates, and I can’t wait to get to know Jené Despain’s jewelry and Serial Cultura’s separates better.

I still don’t know a boatload of people in this city, so if you are here and can make it, it will mean the world! XO

Thank you, Willo, for the personal introduction to Candystore!

How incredible is Alyson Fox? These photos she took of her newest necklaces blow me away — everything about them is perfect, from the models to the setting to the outfitting.

She told me that she partly makes the jewelry just so she can style and shoot. Adorable, and amazing. What an eye.

Five of Alyson’s designs are available in the FLP store right now: Rectangles, with a long rectangular bead and acrylic beads on a mustard cord; Squares 2, a new variation on her wood bead style on gold-fill ball chain;

Black Geometric, a bold black piece with a vintage bead; and Color Tribe 1 & Color Tribe 2, with acrylic and brass beads on awesome new two-toned cords. These new designs are inspired by colors and shapes — “Frank Lloyd Wright,” Alyson said.

The necklaces range from $45–$100, and each are made in limited runs of 24–30.

And of course, our Seeing Dots White Burnout tee is now available! Back in August when I launched the Seeing Dots design, some of you were disappointed you couldn’t buy this specific tee in the FLP store, which was because we’d created the black-and-white variation exclusively for Haught Style boutique in the Kansas City metro.

Just for the next two weeks, I worked out a deal with Laura at Haught Style to make them available here. The fit and feel of this shirt has become a fast favorite of mine — the burnout is so fabulous. It’s not made of organic cotton, which was the main reason we didn’t offer it as an official FLP piece, but once it came in we realized that it was manufactured in the U.S. Win!

These six items will be available here ONLY from today through Tuesday, November 30, so get them while you can!

» Shop the Fashion Loves People store

Drumroll please…

The latest Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk design, Seeing Dots, is now available in our online store!

And possibly even more exciting is that for the launch, I’m lucky enough to be collaborating with four of my favorite jewelry designers in the world: Alyson Fox, Manimal, Early Jewelry and Adoura Demode. Limited-editions and pre-releases of their pieces are for sale in our store.

For now, I’m going to let you read the press release for more info. (Which I wrote of course, though I do my darnedest to make it sound like I didn’t!) I’ll be hitting you with plenty more details, and even a few events, soon enough.

***

Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk partners with indie jewelry designers to launch newest design

This morning, Wednesday, Aug. 4, Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk introduced its newest design: Seeing Dots.

In collaboration, four indie jewelry designers — Alyson Fox, Manimal, Early Jewelry and Adoura Demode — have contributed limited-editions of their work, which are for sale in the Fashion Loves People online store.

Alyson Fox is exclusively pre-releasing four necklaces from her fall additions to her A Small Collection, each an evolution of the forms and innovative use of materials her designs are known for. One of each style is available. http://asmallcollection.com/

Manimal designer Kristen Lombardi is exclusively pre-releasing two styles from her fall collection, titled Alaskan Winter, made of suede and other leathers and inspired by Inuit imagery. Beautiful new shapes and color palettes expand the brand’s down-to-earth repertoire. Three of each style are available. http://www.save-the-manimals.com/

Early Jewelry designer Kylie Grater custom-designed a variation of her classic horseshoe necklace to mimic the lines of the skirt in the Seeing Dots illustration, in black oxidized metal with a dangling quartz, as well as spotted guinea-feather earrings with custom round ear wires. Each design features 100% recycled sterling silver. Two of each style are available. http://www.earlyjewelry.com/

Adoura Demode designer Danielle Teller contributed her rosary necklace, made of new and reclaimed materials. A hint of familiarity and irreverence on a beautifully detailed chain. Three are available. http://adoura.com/

FLP’s design Seeing Dots design is a 1972 fashion illustration by J. Kirk Davis, originally inspired by Norman Norell evening gowns. The sophistication of the drawing is juxtaposed on grey heather jersey, available as a racerback tank or a v-neck tee. Polka dots in the subject’s skirt are accented in white.

The shirts are ethically produced in Dominican Republic in line with the Fair Labor Association’s Workplace Code of Conduct, and certified by Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP). The fabric contents are 38% cotton (6.25% organic), 50% polyester (6.25% recycled) and 12% naturally occurring rayon. All previously released shirts are 100% organic cotton.

Each shirt purchased from the Fashion Loves People online store comes with a 5″x7″ print of the shirt’s illustration, signed and editioned out of 50 by Davis, printed on 100% recycled paper.

Additional highlights:

• All shirts in the FLP♥K line are printed with vintage fashion illustrations by J. Kirk Davis, circa 1960s-1970s.

• 5% of proceeds benefit the Not For Sale Campaign, fighting human trafficking in the U.S. and abroad.

• Shirts are tagless, printed inside the back collar with a “Fashion Loves People (loves) Kirk” insignia.

• Shirts are printed in the U.S. with water-based eco-friendly inks.

• Shirts ship in recycled chipboard envelopes hand-stamped with the FLP logo.

• In retail locations, new hangtags are made of scrap birch veneer, paper-thin slices of wood that are an excess of the Colorado furniture industry. They are letterpressed by hand in San Francisco by IN HAUS Press. http://www.inhauspress.com/

• Fashion Loves People is an ethical fashion blog first (http://fashionlovespeople.com, founded by Janette Crawford in 2007) and an archetypical ethical apparel line second.

• Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk was launched in 2009 by Davis and Crawford.

Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk will soon release details on several upcoming events in the San Francisco area.

All apparel graphics created in partnership with Heather Hale, http://twineandtwig.blogspot.com. Online store photography by Darius Monsef, founder of http://www.colourlovers.com. Modeled by Laura Ellner, editor of http://www.ontheracks.com.

For wholesale or general brand inquiries, contact Janette Crawford at janette(at)fashionlovespeople.com.

###

Last November, I launched the small business “experiment” of Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk, a line of organic tees printed with vintage fashion illustrations by J. Kirk Davis. Kirk and I are partners in it, and we release a new design every few months.

I set out on this venture for the sake of putting myself in the shoes of the designers I write about here, and my plan from the beginning was to share the process with you along the way. So in a fit of transparency, here’s what I’ve struggled with and, hopefully, how I’ve made the most of it.

This is a doozy of a post, but hopefully it sheds some light on the world of the independent designer. (Disclaimer: Not that I am one.)

Struggle #1: Price point

How pricing works. Brands like ours have two options for their pricing structures: Either direct-to-consumer (DTC) or wholesale. In a DTC model, your profits are the difference between your hard costs and your list price — so if the base cost of your product is $10 and the list price is $20, you make $10.

In a wholesale model, your profits are the difference between your hard costs and your wholesale price, and your retailer’s profits are the difference between your wholesale price and their list price. (Whew.) So if the base cost of your product is $10 and your wholesale price is $15*, the retailer will list it for $30**. You make $5 and the retailer makes $15.

*Sellers typically make a lower margin in a wholesale price structure than DTC.
**Retail markup is at least x2, sometimes more.

In the wholesale model, the sellers themselves most often still sell their goods online for the same list price as a retailer will use, because you don’t want to undersell your retailers. (Especially if your product hangtag has your website address on it, you don’t want shoppers to find your products for sale on your site for less than they paid at retailer. They’d probably feel ripped off.) In this case, when a shopper buys directly from the seller, avoiding the middle-man of the retailer suddenly gives them a wonderfully higher margin than usual.

Where we ended up. When we first launched our shirts, we had a DTC model and sold them online for $28. But, sales weren’t that great. People can buy graphic tees online for a lot less than that, so why spend that much from us?

If I may answer that — $28 covered the excellent organic cotton shirt we selected, the “upgrade” eco-friendly water-based inks, the custom-printed tag, the custom illustration and design and, of course, a touch of profit.

But, it turned out that people had to see and feel the shirts in person to appreciate what they were getting. So, we turned our focus toward getting into retail shops. To do this and make any profits, we had to increase our price point to align with a wholesale pricing structure. This was a really difficult move for me to make: I didn’t want to take me and my friends out of my own target audience, as I’m not usually one to splurge on expensive t-shirts.

But on the positive side, besides the benefit of the exposure of retail shops, a higher price point at the retail level would also allow us to align with other similar tees on the market — some even coming in a good $25 more than ours. (Some that use the same base tee that I use, even.)

We increased our list price in May to $48 per shirt, and so far it has been working at retail. Only time will tell.

Struggle #2: Selling myself

To potential customers. When you have a thing you want to succeed, who do you turn to first? Your friends and family. Hopefully none of mine are sick of hearing about new t-shirt design launches — but, there’s a fair chance some are. Or at least in my mind, there is. I hate asking favors of people. I’m also not crazy about getting such a low response rate from people I like — I have to tell myself that I’m just as bad at responding to mass emails. (Because I really am.) Anyway, it can be hard.

For our next shirt launch, I will be more discerning about my email list. I haven’t kept a Fashion Loves People follower / customer email list, but I’m compiling one now as a starting point for going forward. I will email people who have an interest in FLP, rather than, well, everyone I know. I think this will be better for both me and my recipients.

To retailers. Selling to retailers is an entirely different game… but also hard. Very competitive. Several months into the life of our line, as I was courting a few retailers, John McClain at Habitat Shoes graciously agreed to give me some much-needed advice on pitching to retailers.

He told me I needed a linesheet — a catalog of our offerings with their wholesale prices listed. In my next retailer meeting, though I rocked the linesheet, I learned that I also needed an order form. Now that I have my own of each, I feel so pro. And everyone seems to think I know what I’m doing.

What I still don’t have down is seasonal timing. Retail buyers place their orders for any given season months before it rolls around. (To allow for brand production time.) I’ve heard a lot of, “We’ve already done all our fall buying. Call back in a few months?” You’d have to ask someone smarter than me for what the buyer’s calendar is.

Kylie Grater from Early Jewelry will tell you the virtues of going to tradeshows, which is where she got her line off the ground. I’m not there yet, but her business advice in general has been priceless. Which leads me to…

Struggle #3: Asking for help

Contrary to the advice that many people will give you, I have had a hard time asking favors of friends. Maybe it’s that the friends I’ve asked are all so talented — I want to value them as highly as they deserve, and doing so monetarily can be difficult when I run a brand that makes no money.

So, I think I have solved this: The trick is to ask favors of people who aren’t already working as a professional in whatever area you’re asking them for help in. Ask the friend who wants to get into it, not the one who already is. This may make perfect sense to you, but I had to learn it the hard way. The work you get may not be quite as awesome, but at least you didn’t go into debt.

And remember: Advice is free. Ask for it constantly, from friends and from heroes. I so wish I did a better job of this.

Struggle #4: “Just doing it”

I’d like to tell you a story. Last spring, I approached many retailers about carrying my line, and one who graciously responded was Greenloop. Greenloop said, “send us your product images and let’s make this happen.” But I didn’t like my product images at the time. Greenloop probably would have gladly accepted them, but I was playing the perfectionist and ended up not following through on the opportunity altogether. That was DUMB. (And hopefully the door is still open.)

I have other stories like this. Many times, I am my own worst enemy. But I’m learning.

Struggle #5: Profits

We haven’t actually made any. Yet. But we’re working on it! And at least I don’t have any debt.

But, did you know that small businesses can’t get small-business loans until they’ve been in business for at least six months, and they can’t get a small-business line of credit for two to three years? This is what I was told at the Austin Small Business Development Center, anyway. That shocked me — what about a restauranteur, who would need loads of capital upfront? They have to have it saved up personally? I thought this was the Entrepreneur Age.

In our case, I was able to personally cover the costs of our first few print orders, and by the time I was ordering my fifth or so round of printing (including several reprints), I had them paid for in advance by drumming up a few pre-orders. I’m also lucky enough that my printer is deferring my payments until I have the money (retailers don’t pay upfront; pay-on-delivery is pretty standard), but not everyone has that convenience. And my payments have been for measly print orders — imagine if I were outsourcing the production of a full garment line, where the costs would be so much higher. I still don’t understand how small independent designers do it, like Samantha Pleet or Mociun or Lorick Lady.

Struggle #6: Making sales

Like I mentioned, sales haven’t been through the roof. Fortunately, affirmation has been, which has meant the world. But we wouldn’t mind getting past the point of just getting by. From my experience at Storenvy, I see brands all the time that print lots of merchandise and then don’t sell nearly as much as they’d planned… and as much as I’d hoped otherwise, we are not immune.

But for my next product launch, I like to think I have some tricks up my sleeve. I’ll be stepping out of the box and taking some chances, thanks to some very amazing people. Stay tuned. Here’s hoping it works!

***

I know myself enough to know that my role in the world is not of “creator,” but of “sharer.” That’s why I write this blog: To share good design with a good backstory.

I didn’t start this apparel line to become a creator. I started it to enhance my perspective as a sharer. And while I have always had such a soft spot in my heart for supporting independent designers…

I now have an even softer one.

(Like being a better tipper after you’ve worked the tables yourself.)

Thanks for reading.

Look familiar? The artwork from our our shirts made the cover of KC Magazine’s style issue this May! I just got my hands on the PDFs. For those of you just visiting the site for the first time, welcome, and I hope you’ll come back often. My goal is to help us all shop smarter by sharing news about fashion that respects people and the environment. And of course, you can buy our organic tees here.

From the magazine…

ON THE COVER: The vintage illustration that graces this month’s cover is one of three in the Fashion Loves People graphic t-shirt line designed by freelance writer and designer Janette Crawford. It was first sketched in 1970 by J. Kirk Davis, a Kansas City-based artist whose work was published in Women’s Wear Daily in the 1970s and ’80s; the mod subject’s angular, popped collar inspired Crawford to incorporate a bold, Native arts-inspired graphic that adds a fashion-forward edge to the overall composition. Crawford launched the line last fall with the goal of helping shoppers “do good” with their purchases by providing three main benefits: eco-friendly construction, donation to a nonprofit ($1 from the sale of each shirt goes to Not For Sale, a San Francisco-based organization fighting human trafficking in the U.S. and abroad), and the philanthropic support of fine art. All shirts in the series are ethically manufactured in Peru and screenprinted in the U.S. by Storenvy using eco-friendly inks. The tees are available locally at Halls Plaza (211 Nichols Road, 816-274-3222), Habitat Shoe Boutique (4569 W. 119th St., Leawood, 913-451-6360), Haught Style (6951 Tomahawk Road, Prairie Village, 913-677-0070) and online at fashionlovespeople.com. Fashion Loves People’s third t-shirt design will be released early this month; Haught Style will carry an exclusive variation.

Shop!

Feel free to spread the word! To celebrate the launch of our new tee design (and the success of our trunk show Saturday), all tees in the Fashion Loves People store will be marked to $20 on this Friday only. They are regularly $28-$32.

This price is crazy low for an organic tee, or even a fashion tee in general, but we are really loving the new designs and have been humbled by everyone’s support so far. So we’re feeling generous. We’ll need to sell at least 20 shirt on Friday to make this sale financially viable for us, so like I said — feel free to spread the word!

For any of you who haven’t been able to snag a tee yet, I hope this can be your chance! The rose-colored tees will be available on a pre-sale basis, as we sold out of them Saturday. The sale will last from midnight Thursday night to midnight Friday night CST, February 12 only. For more detail on the shirts, read here.

This second illustration in the line was my first favorite out of Kirk’s portfolio. He drew it in 1971, inspired by the Halston runways that have continued to define fashion as we know it.

The complementary graphic on this shirt was inspired by, you guessed it, my recent interest in cross-cultural weaving patterns. When we started our design process back in December, Heather suggested “something like the geometry you’ve been obsessed with.” Perfect. The inverted triangles mimic the lines of the popped collar in the drawing, and this general shape is one of the most common and distinctive I’ve seen, found in antique weavings from Afghani to Native American cultures.

We printed the shirts in two colorways: rose/tangerine (which is in limited run) and blue-gray/turquoise (the latter of which happens to be Pantone’s Color of 2010).

Once again, the 100% organic cotton tee is manufactured by Alternative Apparel, ethically made in Peru. The feminine fit has a soft scoop neck. They are screen printed with water-based eco-friendly inks in the U.S., and tags are custom printed with a “Fashion Loves People ♥s Kirk” insignia.

One dollar from the sale of each tee is donated to Not For Sale, an organization fighting human trafficking in the U.S. and abroad.

Signed/editioned prints of the illustration are also available.

Thanks, everyone, for your support on this venture so far. I hope you love this tee as much as I do!