I usually don’t impulse buy, but I came across these nifty little trinkets in a Border’s bookstore checkout line today and couldn’t resist. It didn’t help that my girlfriend liked them just as much as I did, and monkeys are my favorite animal!

The trinkets, called MonKEYs, are stretchy key-covers with quirky printed monkey faces. A variety of colors and monkey faces come in a single pack. The packaging is awesome as well, made entirely of clear plastic with bold printed lettering. MonKEYs are a nifty way to distinguish your keys - no more guessing everytime - and the gel material is actually really comfortable!

-a guy named loren

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “First impressions are everything.” Well, in the world of indie clothing companies, this couldn’t be more true. First impressions can make or break a new brand, and most first impressions in this industry come in the form of a package on the customer’s doorstep.

If you haven’t picked up on it already, packaging and product presentation are kind of a big deal – especially when you’re starting out and trying to make a name for your indie clothing brand. This in-depth tutorial should give you several ideas on how to improve your packaging and product delivery efforts.

The single most important concept to consider when packaging is simple:
NEVER CUT CORNERS. If you cut corners, you may be saving time and money for now, but you’ll only be screwing yourself over in the long-run. Now let’s get started.

Product Presentation

If you’re trying to rack up those customer complaints, make sure your product is dirty, wrinkled, and covered in smoke/hair/breakfast before you pack it up and ship it out!

…But seriously. Clean it. Fold it. Simple, right? You wouldn’t believe how often this step is overlooked.

Tags + Goodies

Hang tags attached to your products serve two main purposes:

1) Branding. Hang tags that include a name and/or logo will familiarize customers with your indie clothing company. You can also include info about the brand, along with a website and other important information. Customers want to know about the people behind the product, where the product came from, and where to find other brand products.

2) Professionalism. Let’s face it: anybody can make a shirt and ship it out, but somebody who goes the extra mile to include a hang tag on their product gives off a much more professional appearance. To the customer, a hang tag shows that the brand isn’t just in it for a quick buck, but actually cares about the little details.

Including goodies in your orders is usually a great idea. You can throw in anything from a few stickers to vintage trading cards or tasty candy. Everybody loves when they get something they aren’t expecting – almost like an awesome prize. Be creative and have fun!

Documentation

Packaging slips with order details aren’t 100% essential, but it’s nice for the customer to have a record of the order – especially if there are several different products in a single package. Another pleasant touch is writing some sort of Thank You note, showing the customer that you are actually a living, breathing person, and not just another multi-million dollar corporation robbing them of their hard-earned dinero.

Product Packaging

Before throwing everything in a box and slapping on a label, I prefer to package each and every product in clear plastic bags – the kind with the self-sealing fold over cuff. If I am shipping several shirts in a single order, each shirt will have its own clear bag. Not only do these bags give off a professional appearance, they also protect the product from any dirt, debris, or water that may occur during shipping. You never know what the postal employees are doing with your packages!

You have several choices when it comes to the final packaging. Many of the more established indie brands, such as Johhny Cupcakes and Linty Fresh, have custom boxes and mailers to reflect their brands. While this is a nice touch, sometimes you just can’t squeeze it in the budget – especially when you’re just starting out.

If you can’t afford custom packaging just yet – that’s OKAY! All you really need is something that is durable and professional. Poly mailers are my packaging of choice. They are typically white or grey with silver lining and self-sealing flaps. Not only are they ridiculously inexpensive, they are also lightweight, water-resistant, and they look great. Believe it or not, I get compliments on my poly mailers at the post office!

Other packaging options are USPS Flat-Rate Priority mailers, bubble mailers, or cardboard tubes. Whatever route you choose to go, be prepared to stock up on a large amount of shipping supplies. If you run out of supplies and delay an order, be on the lookout for those customer complaints.

Shipping Labels

Other than packaging, the shipping label is the very first thing that the customer will see – so make it count! Because my handwriting is not the greatest, I tend to avoid hand-written labels. I decided to create a word document template that has been sized to fit my printable shipping labels, and manually input the recipient for each and every order. It’s kind of a pain, but it gets the job done and makes no room for mistakes. Your shopping cart system may have implemented a shipping label service, or you may prefer to write out the labels for that true indie vibe.

That’s about it!

Keep in mind that this tutorial may not represent the ONLY way to packaging and ship your products. While these techniques work for me, there are always alternate methods to everything. Be sure to research and find out what works best for you!

Loren - Beetnik Aesthetics

It’s a rainy day in Chambana and I’ve got four classes, but it’s the end of the week and girlfriend Chelly is coming to visit for the weekend so I can’t help but be ecstatic!

I just realized that I haven’t even mentioned Renegade! Renegade is a craft fair that takes place in Chicago each year, as well as Brooklyn, LA, and San Fran… and for some reason they decided to accept Beetnik Aesthetics as a vendor for the Chicago show! WOOOOOO!

Besides showcasing awesome and unique handmade goods from across the country, it’s FREE to attend, and they’ll have live music and raffles! You can’t get much better than that.

Here are the details:
The 7th Annual Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago will be September 12 + 13 from 11am – 7pm on Division St. between Damen Ave. and Paulina St. in Wicker Park! click here for directions

I’ll post more on this as the event draws closer, but for now I’m just planning, planning, and planning.

-A Guy named Loren

LOOK AT ALL OF THESE SPAM COMMENTS! My inbox was freaking out. Does anybody seriously think those comments are going to get through? Pish posh.

After a month or so of being closed, the online Beetnik Aesthetics shop has FINALLY re-opened! I’m totally stoked on how it turned out, and I hope you all love it as much as I do.

To thank everybody for their patience over the past month, let’s celebrate with $16 TEES! Hop on over to the shop and snag one today, because this will only be going on for 24 hours.

-A Guy Named Loren

If you’re reading this right now, you can obviously tell that some changes have been made. It’s quite a bit of work to overhaul a website, and it doesn’t help that I just moved into my new apartment and fall semester began earlier this week. CHAOS!

Anywhooooo, I’m still working on things and I KNOW THERE ARE LOTS OF INCOMPLETE SECTIONS OF THE WEBSITE, but I hope you like it so far! The shop section IS complete, and has been for several days now, but I haven’t had a chance to go through and inventory all of the Beetnik shirts. I don’t want to sell shirts that I don’t have in stock!

-A Guy Named Loren

As I begin this blog post, it’s 3:32 in the morning. I am tired and my thoughts are scattered, but I’ve got to get this all out before I forget. I am going to apologize once again, like I have done a million times before, for not updating as much as I would have liked to, and for not keeping in touch, and for… oh, what’s up with the shop page? It’s shut down? Yep. I accidentally deleted each and every product, simple as that.

Fortunately, this accident is turning out to be a diamond in the rough. It’s acting as a catalyst to get me to do a few different things that I’ve been telling myself to do for a while now as well as sparking new ideas. Once the products were deleted, I decided it would make more sense to redo the product pages and t-shirt photos with my latest ideas. That led to wanting to redo the entire shop page, which meant redoing the formatting for the entire website to keep consistency, which led to redoing the overall design, and on and on it goes.

Basically, I’m starting from scratch. The general idea behind Beetnik Aesthetics is staying the same and I will be keeping existing designs, but that’s about it. I just filled about 5 pages in my mini-notepad with ideas for Beetnik and the direction it’s headed. Here are a few of them, in a nutshell:

1) New domain name. Aesthetics is just too tough to spell.

2) New layout. This one feels too cluttered and too narrow.

3) Faster and easier checkout. Nobody likes to sign up for ANYTHING, myself included.

4) Larger product images. Enough said.

5) Easier navigation.

6) Good ol’ backend SEO.

7) Fresh t-shirt designs. Expect 4 new shirts in the next 6 weeks or so.

That’s the gist of it, but there are sure to be many more surprises. This will take a heck of a lot of work, and there’s no doubt about it. I will be essentially rebranding the brand, but I feel like I’ve finally determined a direction for Beetnik and I want to fly in that direction at full force.

We’ll see what happens! As always, thanks for reading.

-a guy named loren

Sunday.
No school.
No work.
Clear sky.
Sunny.
Quiet.
BBQ tonight.
SHARK WEEK!

This is summer. This is what I live for.

=)
Loren

Every single time I come home from college, there seems to be a brick wall that absolutely and completely prohibits me from being productive. Honestly, when I am away at college, I should be focused on going to class, doing homework, and studying for exams. When I am home, on the other hand, I should have plenty of free time to check things off of my list of goals, but NOPE. Not the case. Why would I have a chance to get something done that I want to get done? That would just be too easy.

Summer week days are filled with working a “real job”, and weekends are usually spent helping somebody with something that they just absolutely have to get done and can’t seem to get it done without Loren. I have a growing list of ideas and goals, but no time to accomplish these goals. When I do have a few hours of free time, I am usually so burnt out that I don’t have the motivation or drive to get anything done.

When I’m off at college, I do spent lots of time going to class, doing homework, and studying, and the rest of my time is spent working on Beetnik or attempting something creative (making videos, building stuff, etc). I should have LESS time to work on Beetnik, but for some reason I’m so driven that I’ll stay up till 6 am every single night, sleep for a few hours, wake up and do it all over again. I love it. I can’t wait to go back to college.

Thanks for reading my rants.

-Loren

Today was another fun-filled day of vacation in Florida. We’re staying at a condo overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in Navarre Beach, but we made a trip out to Destin, a nice little town full of life and activity, and spent a few hours checking things out. First, we ate at AJ’s Seafood & Oyster Bar. The food was decent, but the place had lots of character and was situated right on the water, so it was exciting to see all of the charter boats coming in and leaving while we chowed down.

After AJ’s, we spent a few hours peeping the retail shops along Harborwalk - essentially a boardwalk chocked full of shops and restaurants that borders the marina. I love checking out shops and boutiques because it gives me ideas for Beetnik and inspires me to move forward. The entire time I was thinking about how I can push branding and marketing for Beetnik, and I came up with some great ideas that I hope to implement in the near future. It was also cool to see smaller brands in the shops, like Guy Harvey, Crooked Monkey, and Salt Life, along side bigger brands like Ed Hardy and Billabong. I had never heard of any of these brands so I knew they weren’t huge, which gives me hope that Beetnik can invade boutiques and shops in the near future =)

I was so excited in these shops that I resorted to snapping pics with my girlfriends PINK cell phone. I’m sure I looked like a huge dork, but I was doing “market research” as I call it, so it was okay. When I got home, I busted out the pics and Googled the brands to find out how long they’d been around and what steps they had taken to get where they are today. I find that this really helps me figure out not only which direction I want to take Beetnik Aesthetics, but also what I want to avoid with the brand.

Thanks for reading!
-a guy named loren