Today we interview Justin Hoehn. Justin manages LEADapparel.com, providing a broad range of apparel brands at the lowest prices possible. With 27 warehouses covering all regions of the U.S. LEADapparel.com has the ability to ship customer orders quickly to anywhere in the country and worldwide.
Fashion, internet and our society
Manuel Marino: The styles you present are sporty but also with an elegance touch, we can say unique looks, right?
Justin Hoehn: Absolutely. We try to give our customers diversity. We believe that the stylish consumer has different needs for different occasions. You might want to dress in an urban influenced t-shirt when bumming around town but tomorrow, you might have a tee time & need a nike dri-fit polo.
What can you tell me about your latest alternative apparel line?
We recently added alternative apparel to our product line and are extremely excited about the response we’ve had from our customers. Alternative apparel is in the same mold as american apparel. The line is made from high quality fabrics, fitted and fashion driven. They focus on core prodcuts and do a wonderful job at expanding on colors and certain fits. You’ll see awide range of celebrities sporting the line (Pitt, Timberlake, Leonardo, Clooney, Fergie, Walberg, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Eva Longoria) this is just to name a few.
What do you think about fashion in 2008?
Fashion is always changing, sometimes for the better / sometimes for the worse but at the end of the day, we like the classic / minimal look to pass the test of time. Although everyone appreciates a saville row tailored suit, the reality is you have more people working from home or in a casual office enviroment. They’re more comfortable in a tee & jeans, tee and designer sweats or some sort of combination. It’s no longer a sloppy look since designers have tightend up the fit & color options and it’s become more acceptable in the office, especially at younger companies.
What about fashion and internet, is it a good alliance?
The web has obviously been a wonderful alliance for all business. The consumer has more choices in a matter of minutes than they would in an entire day of shopping at the malls and you don’t have to pay for gasoline. The knock has always been that you need to try on / see in person what your going to buy. At leadapparel.com, we have made it a priority to make this a seamless process. The addition of images for each color and sizing charts for most products elminates the risk of ordering something that doesn’t fit or not the exact look the customer was expecting.
It’s only going to grow into a more sophisticated shopping experience. We’re looking into video displays for certain products and I’m sure by this time next year there will be a must have for online stores such as ours.
Is it really so important appearance in our society? is it really a good thing?
Appearance and style has always been important and always will. Call it vanity, expression or necessity, we all have style, whether it’s bad or not is up for debate. But there is no doubt in my mind that style is an important aspect in for living a more exciting and interesting life. People with a great personality seem to give off more style even if they are wearing the same get up as the next guy with a bad attitude who thinks style will carry him alone. If you are constantly following the crowd, it can become mondane but if you are diverse and comfortable with your style, it’s a major plus on how it comes off to others.
I think it’s only smart to keep your appearance looking good. Sure, there might be too much focus on “appearance” in some circles but I think there’s no doubt that someone’s overall appearance is a direct reflection of a person’s vibe and personality.
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Paul Baines is a T-shirt Designer and Blogger. Read his popular t-shirt reviews blog and read also about his highly original t-shirt designs. You can vote now on his latest Threadless.com submission or purchase pieces from his collection at Retrogod, Redbubble, Zazzle. This is his exclusive article for us, a kind of diary, where he talks about tshirt designing, internet and shopping.
The life of a T-shirt Designer
I’m a t-shirt designer, in fact I’m simply a designer, but I’ve found myself straying from the rather bland world of graphic and web design to the glitzy and glamorous world of fashion without even realising it.
I can’t say I’ve made a fortune from t-shirt design, but I will say it’s one of the most rewarding career shifts I’ve taken in my life so far. My time is split between conceiving and designing unique and original ideas for new t-shirts, and reviewing new and established t-shirt fashion labels on the Net.
My consumer market expands daily, these days savvy fashionistas realise they can make an immediate impact in any wardrobe with a few choice artistic tees, a frugal yet fashionable way to stand out from the crowd.
The beauty is there are so many sources for t-shirt design these days that you are bound to find a design you love, a design that no one you know and perhaps not even friends of your friends have yet discovered. Impact and individuality, artistic style and originality, these are the watchwords of the t-shirt fashion industry and its consumer base.
One explanation for the ‘t-shirt boom’ is a revolution in Internet technologies, with the arrival of Web 2.0, more and more websites, stores, business and consumer networks, search engines and directories realise they have to keep their audience engaged, and consequently interactivity has become the name of the game. It doesn’t really matter what you create or sell, if your potential buyers are bored they will leave.
Unlike the ‘real world’, the online shopping experience cannot rely on the vitality of human senses such as taste, touch, smell to inform their choices. Perhaps we’ll find a way in the future to replicate these essential components of the human and therefore shopping experience. Until then we have one vital advantage on the Net and that is the interactivity of community. Something unheard of in the modern world, a concept one might even describe as old fashioned, has created a revolution on the Web. The explosion in user-rated and user-generated content has changed shopping online forever.
Amazon.com and Ebay.com are the most likely pioneers in this way of selling, consumers turning to the opinions, comments and reviews of past buyers and contributing their own. The difference is that this methodology has moved far beyond seller ratings and book reviews, and I’m proud to say that the t-shirt fashion world is leading the next stage of the Internet’s development as a fully-rounded experiential shopping platform.
Until recently t-shirt designers had two choices, firstly they could set up their own independent store with ecommerce capabilities and secure hosting and hope and pray they can cover their costs. The second choice was Cafepress.com which has been running for over a decade now and provided designers a way to economically begin to sell their unique t-shirt designs to a worldwide audience, whilst keeping costs as low as possible for their consumers. The problem with Cafepress.com and Spreadshirt.com (a later arrival offering higher quality screen printed tees) is that neither offers any real quality control. Yes Cafepress.com still sells a basic white t-shirt with the design of your choice from only $9.99 but they have serious limitations on the size and placement of any contributed image. Essentially you’re talking a 10″ square box in the middle of your t-shirt, no matter what the design may look like.
Some years back a new company, formed originally as a thread on a t-shirt forum burst onto the scene, and it completely revolutionised the way that people buy fashion. Threadless.com introduced the idea of totally empowering the customer, not only enabling them to rate the current collection on sale and communicate personally with each designer, but more so, the customer can decide if a t-shirt is ever even made! Yes, before a new design is printed users of Threadless.com can vote through a 7 day process that defines the fate of every t-shirt they sell.
I can imagine a bright future for the online consumer, more and more choice, variety, control over design and production. The only problem is the rising cost of fuel. The ‘virtual shopping’ experience may always be able to compete with smaller items, but as the world runs dry, shipping expenses will become highly prohibitive. The future may be far less complicated than any of us can imagine.
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Jared W. Olen, founder of OlenJewelry.com, made an intense trip and his story is featured in this article. Olen Jewelry is an international retailer of high-quality, sterling silver jewelry. Jared told me a fascinating story about the campaign he will start soon and that will have the name Fair Trade Silver.
An intense trip in the profound Mexico
My idea for Fair Trade Silver came from a trip I took in May of 2006 to Mexico. My best friend, Kim, and I flew into Benito Júarez International Airport in Mexico City. We had worked since that January to plan a trip to see the “real” Mexico, that is, a trip that did not include staying in Americanized hotels and resorts.
While reading Jared story I thought, well, this is a really nice experience, in Mexico, culture and tradition are seen as central to life and society and Mexican people are profound and warm, not at all superficial. But you can’t understand their traditions if you stay in hotel. I continued to read his story…
My main goal for visiting Mexico was to visit Taxco in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
Taxco de Alarcón (Taxco) is a former colonial silver-mining center in the northern part of the Mexican state of Guerrero on the western arm of the Sierra Madre del Sur. It is located 200 km southwest of Mexico City along the old highway to Acapulco at an elevation of 1,800 m (5,900 ft).
…Taxco is known by many as the sterling silver capital of the world for it is home to countless shops that sell beautiful machine- and hand-crafted sterling silver jewelry made from silver mined just outside the town.
Taxco reminds me of quaint European town with its narrow, cobblestone streets and white-washed buildings that are perched on the side of a mountain. When one visits Taxco it is shocking to see how purely “un-Americanized” it really is. There are no Wal-Mart nor are there other corporate giants.
I love corporate giants :) and I would love to see a Wal-Mart in Italy, but this time I really envied Jared for this experience. The Aztecs founded a city they called “Tlacho”… what artistic treasures Jared will find?
…the silver trade in Taxco relies on buyers that travel from around Mexico, the United States, and the rest of the world to Taxco with cash in hand to purchase goods to bring back to their stores. I met many buyers there on their annual buying trips for stores in the United States and Canada. What really struck me, however, was the indigenous population that lives nearby.
Taxco has an “Indian Market” where indigenous people descend from the mountainside every day to display and sell hand-made goods to the citizens and visitors of Taxco. I thought to myself what a great idea it would be to establish a reliable international silver trade network between the silver shops and artisans in Taxco and the rest of the world.
As Olen Jewelry moves into the future, I am exploring the possibility of opening a community crafting center in or around Taxco where local artisans can use the workspace for free to create their jewelry. I will then bring their goods to the United States where they can be sold to the mass-market. All artisans will receive the majority of the proceeds from the sale of their jewelry. In this way, those people who do not have the money to invest in equipment and raw materials can still put themselves to work creating jewelry that truly is an expression of themselves and of Mexico.
This is admirable… well, a good business idea, of course, but also admirable, indeed. And we wish Jared to succeed in this project! We’ll post an update about this in the future.
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