I can’t believe I only have a handful of days to get ready for the Tail of the Dragon event the first week in May….it is quite a lot of work to get prepped. Point of purchase displays, lighting, signage, transportation, setup, running the booth, bringing the product, food, etc. etc….

I wish I could just run a virtual store down there and have everything magically appear in the customers hands so I could hang out more and get to know the people that have supported us over the last 5 years. That is my main purpose for going down to the event but everyone really enjoys having us there and love to check out the products we bring. It is the only event we do each year but may consider doing AMVIV (Biggest West Coast event held in Vegas) at some point, but it is quite a lot more work to get everything to Vegas vs driving 7 hours down to Tennessee from our location in Ohio. When we relocate to Charlotte (as soon as our house sells) we will be just a short drive from Fontana Village and it will that much easier to do the event. As of now, my wife and our 3 kids will be heading down for the 4 day event and have her parents watching the kids at our cabin which makes it a lot more enjoyable. Our kids love going down to the event and with both our families being in Knoxville, it is an easy trip for them to pop over and visit us while we’re down there.

Over the last few months I have designed a few tshirts that seem to be VERY popular. So much so I find myself running over to the local screenprinters shop to drop off a load of t-shirts about once a week and with it comes a bill for printing shirts and the hassle of the minimum order requirements, 1 week order prep time and all that. So, I thought I would try to bring that process in-house and bought a Heat Transfer press (on ebay for super cheap) and will start doing shirts in lower quantities so we can offer more designs. I would rather have 10 designs and have 3 of each size in stock than 3 designs and 10 of each size sitting in stock if you know what I mean. It’s a basic retailing concept called Wide and Shallow VS Shallow and Deep…I have typically preferred to run a Wide and Shallow especially with how quickly I can generally get restocked on the things we sell (in most cases 1-5 days on any given item). There are a few items that I stock hundreds and hundreds and some I stock dozens and dozens while others maybe 1-2 at a time….so anyways, having the capability to prints shirts at will and keep a few in backstock will be nice.

To top it off the owner of the company a few doors down that does nearly all of the label and decorative application sourcing for Victorias Secret, Abercrombie, Under Armour and a few other major retailers that are headquartered within a few miles of the OutMotoring World HQ is a good friend. Chris also happens to have patents on some of the most widely used innovative screen printing techniques and is a all around good guy who has all the connections one could image with Chinese printers, label makers, etc. So, he is the one that helps get our OutMotoring keychains made for us at a extremely good cost and is also helping get heat transfers printed. This will allow us me to design and offer about 6-10 new shirts and print them as needed and keep our inventory investment down while offering new and fresh designs.

And no, that shirt in the heat press below will not be one of the new ‘fresh’ designs…

I was thinking about how much money I pay the local sign shop to do stuff like make our hood stripes and stickers and the thought came to me to just start doing it in-house so I don’t have to wait 3-5 days for new stripes when I’m out of stock. Plus, we have added so many new stickers and other stuff that I thought it would be nice to have a vinyl cutter. So, I found a great deal on Craigslist and went to buy it this evening with my kids and wife in our trusty Mazda MINI van. It’s a pretty cool plotter style cutter that I hope will be put to good use. You gotta love Craigslist. This thing was a steal and came with a computer (running cough, cough, windows 95) but has the print software as part of the CorelDraw software that is loaded onto it well. I figure it will be paid for in about 3 months of hood stripes that we typically sell.

I did this front view of the MINI Cooper in Freehand. Just to back up a bit and fill in those non-graphics folds out there what that is..Freehand is a illustration program that allows users to basically create anything or any shape using arcs, lines, curves and shapes, etc. It’s a very cool program that has been out there for quite a while but was bought along with the whole macromedia suite by Adobe a few years ago. Basically Freehand was the biggest competitor with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe wanted to get rid of the competiton but more importantly they wanted Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver because their web design product had taken the very back seat amongst designers.

So anyways, I have used Freehand for about 10 years and know it inside and out and have used Illustrator off and on but am switching to it entirely as Freehand will be killed off soon by Adobe. So, I created this graphic that I just loved and wanted to do something with so I turned it into a shirt (actually two shirts). One has a heart on it and is called “MINI Girly Love” and the other is called “its not cute” and yes all the punctuation and such are designed to be wrong. I will take some heat for it but don’t care.

So, check them out. People love them!

http://www.outmotoring.com/mini-cooper/out-motoring-its_not_cute-shirt.html

Yes, I’ve gone a little overboard with this chrome letter deal, but this one was just begging to be done. I mean who markets a car as something but badges it as something else? Well, in this case MINI did. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with this kit that will turn your “Clubman” into what it should have been badged as.

http://www.outmotoring.com/mini-cooper/MINI_clubman_badge.html

I’ve been wanting to do something print related like this for some time now and finally found the right person to work with on it and am very pleased to announce that the Out Motoring Poster is available. Designed by John Weber, this poster has already sold way more than we ever thought in the first few days. As a limited edition run of 500, they are going fast!

Check it out on the site when you have a moment.

Check out the latest news regarding the launch of the NEW MINI Cooper/clubman at Motoringfile.com