Honeybadger Blog: January 2012

New Year's Resolutions are cheap. Everybody talks about them and nothing much happens except the gym suddenly becomes overly crowded for about a month. That being said, I've resolved to write more Honeybadger blogs this year, so here goes!

It's time to get some new designs out there methinks, but I'd love to get some feedback from you -- the few, the proud, the Honeybadger Army -- before ordering shirts and going to print. First up, St. Patrick's Day! Our Irish flavored shirts went over well last year, so we're going to give it another shot. Here are the two design ideas that have risen to the top so far:

This would be our first "word shirt" as far as I know. Personally, this is my favorite.

Also pretty sweet. I may be biased for the first, because this would be a little harder to print.

But of course, before St. Patrick's Day, there's that other saintly day that's not quite as fun. We happen to have some women's heather black shirts lying around, and I thought this simple design about love might be something Saint Valentine (and the mystery "tagger" in Des Moines) would appreciate.

Too simple? Or awesomely simple? What do you think?

Here's another idea for these shirts that's not quite so Valentine's Day themed:

Did you know there's a Honeybadger constellation? It's science.

Looking ahead a bit, we'll be attending the Sycamore Market in Iowa City on March 31. I thought it would be nice to bring something that Hawkeyes would appreciate, without getting into all the messy trademark issues with school logos. For those who don't know where Iowa got its nickname from, here's a fun fact for you: In 1838, Iowa approved the nickname the Hawkeye State in homage to the scout Hawkeye in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. That should help our design make a little more sense.

The original "Hawkeye."

Finally, the cold weather makes it hard to wear t-shirts all the time, and it can get old wearing the same Honeybadger hoodie everyday, so I thought we might add a jacket to our repetoir. With the recent announcement of the Urban Assault Ride date here in Des Moines (which coincides with a certain t-shirt company owner's birthday), we were inspired to trade the track theme for a bike theme. Team Honeybadger anyone?

That's all from the Honeybadger studios for now. Let us know what you think. Positive feedback will move these from the drawing room to the printing room in a hurry, while criticism is always welcome, and we will work to make the design better or scrap it all together. Either way we want to hear from you! Feel free to post comments here or on our Facebook Page. Thanks!

Dave Murrin-von Ebers
Chief Entertainment Officer

The year that Honeybadger grew from the smallest t-shirt company in Des Moines to a slightly bigger, more sophisticated and more well-known t-shirt company that still happens to be, for all intents and purposes, the smallest in Des Moines.

Mat hard at work on a screen-printing order for Carrier Access in Des Moines.

At the beginning of 2012, the Honeybadger web store had been officially launched (and we had thrown a big bash where we got our friends tipsy and sold them shirts), we had amassed a small, but sufficient inventory of original graphic t-shirts, and we had enough social media pages to keep us busy (read: dizzy) for hours every day. After spending much of the winter months completing small screen-printing orders and building upon our own inventory shirts, it was now time to get down to the real business of making shirts and gettin' people in 'em.

As we all know, t-shirts are one of the most vital means of human communication proclaiming such important messages to the world as "I'm with Stupid" or "This is my drinking shirt," so we decided to let our shirts sell themselves. The key was to have them worn in a highly visible place. With St. Patrick's Day around the corner, we "Irished-up" our logo and designed an Irish clover shirt. Then we got the most popular people on St. Patrick's Day--bartenders and servers--to wear them. In the immortal words of Guinness: "Brilliant!"

With help from the fine folks at the Royal Mile and Hessen Haus, our two Irish-inspired Honeybadger tees were on display all day as the Irish and wanna be Irish population of Des Moines got good and sloshed. Though we didn't immediately start selling shirts like hotcakes, our first interactive marketing foray got a lot of people asking, "What's Honeybadger?" Some more YouTube savvy Des Moinesians laughed and asked if the shirts were based on the Honeybadger video that had recently gone viral. They weren't, nor is our company name, but thanks for laughing along and taking pictures of our shirts anyway.

After St. Patrick's Day, we went back to the drawing board and came up with a slew of new designs to add to our web site for the Spring/Summer. As we built a substantial inventory of shirts (read: Holy Smokes, Batman, how are we going to sell all of these?), we caught a big break when applying to be a vendor at the 2nd annual Market Day. Though this popular event usually has a waiting list to participate, the stars aligned and vendors dropped out just in time for us to sneak in. June came and we eagerly set up shop and officially had a physical location to sell shirts.

The Honeybadger booth at this year's Black Friday Market Day.

And sell shirts we did! It's safe to say that Market Day was the biggest thing to happen to Honeybadger Shirts since we discovered Strip-E-Doo Emulsion remover. Not just because we sold a significant amount of shirts--we sold out of 24 moustache shirts in several hours--but because it was a great way to infiltrate the local/indie shopping culture of Des Moines. For that we can't thank the organizers behind Market Day, Cat and Dani, enough for all the hard work they put in marketing and organizing the event. We can't wait to be a part of Market Day 2012!

Still flying high from our first Market Day experience, my relentless use of social media as our only major means of marketing paid off in a big way--I scored free VIP tickets to 80/35 thanks to Dwolla! I had already planned to rock out at Iowa's best music festival in my Honeybadger garb, but now I could do it in the comforts of the VIP section, while enjoying free food and booze and turning my nose up at the general admission hipsters.

Hipsters cram in at 80/35, while I enjoy so much more room for activities in VIP!

Turnning my nose up (and drinking waaaay too much red bull) was great, but the highlight of my 80/35 experience, was on the second day of the festival when a stranger, recognizing the Honeybadger logo shirt I was wearing, asked if I was with Honeybadger. I was thrilled that anyone would recognize our logo, but I was even more excited to learn that this stranger was none other than Ben Anderson, an owner of 8/7 Central, the downtown screen-printing company.We talked shop for a bit, and Ben was nothing but friendly and supportive of our efforts to bring another t-shirt and screenprinting company to Des Moines. Having your "competition" all but cheer you on, is one reason among many that Des Moines is a great place to start a business. If there is a more supportive community out there, I'd love to see it.

The summer rolled on and before we knew it, it was slipping away. Determined not to let that happen, Mat and I took a break from designing and printing and rocked the New Belgium Urban Assault Ride as team Honeybadger.

Great ride! Now where's the beer?

This crazy race, which consists of biking all over town, completing somewhat bizarre team activities in order to get a clue about the next checkpoint location, and washing it all down with New Belgium beer, inspired us not only to drink lots of beer, but to think about the possibility of hosting our very own Honeybadger extreme race some day. It may be long down the road, but this is definitely something we want to do, and if you have any ideas or would like to help make something like that happen, feel free to let us know!

Moving into fall, Honeybadger got busy on the screen-printing side of things. We designed and printed Oktoberfest shirts for Hessen Haus, which were a big hit, selling out in the weeks following the festival. We also teamed up with a friend of ours to make motorboat t-shirts to support breast cancer awareness. (We still have shirts available if you want to support the cause!) And we printed shirts for our friends at Party! Party! Karaoke Band. If you haven't been to see Party! Party!, then you are missing out on a genuinely awesome Des Moines experience. Sing karaoke with the band on Thursdays at People's downtown.

With the cold weather coming we geared up on new Honeybadger designs including our first hooded sweatshirt, a beanie hat and a line of scarves. Then we put our cold-weather gear to the test as Team Honeybadger tackled the Living History Farms Cross Country Race, another awesome outdoor adventure race, this time using two feet instead of a two wheels.

Honeybadger teammates John and Signe close in on the finish at the LHF race.

Before we knew it, the holiday season was upon us, and as a retail store, we had no choice but to participate in the craziness of Black Friday. Fortunately, the Black Friday Market Day is a much more sane experience than the stay-up-all-night shopping binge that occurs across that country and generally results in bloodshed (or at least pepperspray) of some kind. With some help from our first official seasonal employee, Black Friday Market Day successfully launched Honeybadger into the Christmas season of conspicuous consumption!

Throughout December, we were inundated with screen-printing orders, web site orders and even special requests to make sure that everyone got the Honeybadger present they were looking for this Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza or other holiday. It was a bit hectic, but Mat, Luke and I kept our heads on a swivel and worked like oversized elves to make sure everything was completed on time!

Phew. That about wraps it up. To all our friends, family, fans, patrons, and supporters of any kind we would all like to extend a very VERY big THANK YOU! Whether you bought a shirt, designed a shirt, helped us set up for Market Day, wore a shirt in public and told someone about it, posted a picture of yourself in a Honeybadger shirt to facebook, or just said, "You own a t-shirt company? That's awesome!", thank you, thank you, thank you for your support.

To start our 2012 off right, Juice Magazine featured Honeybadger in their made in Des Moines article for Jan. 4. Check it out! And then if you haven't had enough of us yet, or you're looking to kill more time at work, take a look at some more Honeybadger pictures from 2011.

Cheers to a happy 2012,

Dave