Our approach to sales at Cotton Bureau is simple: find people who want what we have, or, at least, need what we have and just don’t know it yet. That’s worked out well so far, but if we’re being honest—and, you know, that is the theme—our sales efforts have been pretty lame. Sure, we’ve hooked a big fish or two, but the “sales team” here for the last four years has been Jay and I finding a spare hour or two each week to hammer out a few quick emails.
We know we can do better, and, more importantly, we know there are people out there who would really benefit from working with us if someone here had the time to spread the word, so for the last year, we’ve been looking for just the right person to steer sales at Cotton Bureau.
We needed someone who understood the value of merchandise to communities, content creators, and causes. We were looking for someone who valued relationships over commissions and could see the big picture, someone who believes in what we’re doing. We wanted someone who cared as much as we did about what was best for sellers on Cotton Bureau not just driving temporary revenue. In short, we wanted someone who could have real, honest conversations with potential sellers about why it does or doesn’t make sense to work for us to work together.
The way we do things here is a little weird—and it’s kind of important to us that it stays that way—which is why we are thrilled to welcome the latest member of the Cotton Bureau family, our new Director of Partnerships, Web Smith.
Web’s a real pro. You might know him from his work as founding CMO of Mizzen+Main, or, more likely, the hyper-smart eCommerce newsletter he runs, 2PML. He’s ready to hit the ground running here, and there’s nobody we trust more to represent us. If you’re looking to add merchandise to your revenue mix or just want to say hello, there’s never been a better time to talk to Cotton Bureau. We’ll give it to you straight.
We have a confession to make: our women’s t-shirts suck.
Alright, maybe that’s a little inaccurate, let’s be more specific: our women’s t-shirt sizing sucks. It always has, and if you’ve ever bought a women’s t-shirt from us and it was way too small, we apologize (chances are, this is not the first time we’ve apologized to you for this). It’s time we did something about it. So all we need to do is switch t-shirt suppliers, right? Wrong.
You see, finding a wholesale t-shirt manufacturer that fits all our criteria has been…challenging (to say the least). We need a brand with modern fits, a wide range of colors and fabrics, ethical manufacturing, reliable quality and consistency, always-available stock, and it’d be reeeeal nice if it was made in America. Finding a brand that checks all those boxes and oh yeah also fits women is damn near impossible. If you can find a women’s brand that comes in our preferred colors and fabrics, it’s only available in mega-tiny junior sizing. If it’s sized to fit most women, the cut is awkward, the fabric isn’t anywhere near our standards, and it comes in whatever color you want…as long as that color is pink. It’s frustrating for us as a company, and every bit as frustrating for you as our customer. We know how demoralizing it is to buy one of our t-shirt designs, wait weeks for it to arrive, then hurriedly try it on only to find out that it’s about six sizes smaller than you expected. It shouldn’t be like this, and it kills us that we haven’t been able to find a women’s t-shirt that works.
So we’re gonna make our own.
Today, we’re lifting the lid on Blank, our project to design and produce better t-shirts from the ground up: our sizes, our fits, our fabrics, our colors. Over the last six months, we’ve been building relationships with people all over the garment industry: pattern makers, fabric suppliers, cut-and-sew operations, industry consultants, full-service apparel factories, fit models, and more. We’ve even produced a few samples. We’re going to need all the help we can get, which is why reached out to Indie.vc for funding last year (remember this cryptic line?) and hired a project lead to give it the attention it deserves (we’ll introduce her in a bit). Exciting, huh? It’s something we’ve been talking about forever, and the fact that it’s actually happening is a bit surreal. Let’s answer some questions.
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OMG will your women’s tees finally fit me?
We hope so! We have a lot of goals with Blank, and #1 is “make t-shirts that fit most women.” We know that we can’t design a single t-shirt that will fit everybody, but we can make something that’s a hell of a lot better than what we have now. And it won’t just be limited to women…we’re making men’s tees too (and if you like how our men’s tees fit, we have good news: we’re not changing them much).
Are you replacing your entire t-shirt line?
Not for a while, no. We’ll probably introduce Blank as a premium option alongside our current Next Level tees, starting with a very limited range of colors and fabrics and gradually expanding over time. It’s gonna take us some time to find our sea legs. We won’t become American Apparel overnight.
Where will your t-shirts be produced? Please say the U.S.
We’re gonna try our damnedest to make these in the U.S. There’s a chance they might even be cut-and-sewn right here in Pennsylvania.
When is this happening?
We’re launching Blank later this year with a Kickstarter campaign (right now we’re eyeing June–July 2017) and they’ll be available as Cotton Bureau graphic tees shortly thereafter. Sit tight. We’re not at the beginning of the process, but we’re also nowhere near the end.
Will I be able to buy them blank?
Yes! We’re not just saving them for our graphic tees. That’s actually something we’re most excited about. Note: we’re not planning on selling them wholesale (not yet, anyway).
This sounds complicated…is this really going to work?
It is complicated. We now know more about yarn gauges, fabric weights, and the finer points of dyeing methods than we ever wanted to (and there’s still so much more to learn). And hey, who knows if it’ll work? We could sink the whole company! But we’ll never know if we don’t try. And if it does work, t-shirts are just the beginning.
Who’s running this show?
Meet Michelle Sharp. She joined Cotton Bureau last September and has been running point on Blank since day one. If you have any comments, advice, complaints, or notes of encouragement, email blank@cottonbureau.com and it’ll get to her. Most future posts about Blank will come from her.
How can I stay up-to-date on Blank developments?
Keep an eye on this blog, sign up for our Blank newsletter at the bottom of this page, and follow the hashtag #BlankbyCB on Twitter and Instagram.
That’s all we have to share for now, but there’ll be plenty more in the coming weeks and months. We hope this makes you as excited as it makes us. Wish us luck.
The past four days have been extraordinary, both for the United States of America and for us as a company. Designers are using Cotton Bureau as a platform for t-shirts spreading messages of love and charity — and messages of protest and defiance. We’ve sold far more shirts since this past Friday than in any single month in Cotton Bureau’s history, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for deserving causes. We stand by these shirts, their messages, and their designers. We don’t all agree politically here at Cotton Bureau — some of us are very liberal, some of us are very conservative — and we don’t all agree with every shirt that makes it into our shop, but we’re proud to stand arm-in-arm with those resisting the normalization of fear, ignorance, and autocracy by Donald Trump and his administration.
To that end, today we launched a new tag on Cotton Bureau: #resist.
Many of the shirts you see tagged #resist are generating money for charitable causes, and on a number of shirts we’ve reduced our internal profit margin to maximize their donation (including the Rogue NASA shirt, by far our all-time best-selling shirt, which has so far raised more than $150,000 for Girls Who Code and the National Math + Science Initiative).
Under more moderate political circumstances, we’d prefer to stay neutral. Cotton Bureau isn’t really in the business of telling people how to vote or feel. Unfortunately now is anything but the time for neutrality. This is an unprecedented moment in the history of our country. It calls for organized and vocal opposition to the people who are unwilling to respect our tradition of law and liberty. We’ll continue to speak out as we can, and we hope you will as well.
Stay strong, stay safe, love each other… Your friends at Cotton Bureau
It's that time of year again, where brands (coughcough like us) try to sell as much stuff as humanly possible before the holidays are over. But last year, we decided that we wanted to use the weaponized force of consumer behavior for some good, and borrowing a few ideas from brands around the internet, we came up with the concept of a charity drive held annually on the Friday before Black Friday called Give Back Friday. And hey, wouldn't ya know it, that's today!
Here's how it works: today, Friday, November 18 (from 12:01am to 11:59pm EST), we've raised the prices of all our shirts by $3 (that's right, we said raised prices). If you buy a shirt today, that extra $3 will be donated—along with a matching $3 of our own—to charity.
This year, our donations will once again go to DonorsChoose.org, an online charity where public school teachers in America post classroom projects—like books, field trips, or art supplies—and donors like us can fund them. Last year we raised and donated just over $1,800 to nine projects, and this year with your help we hope to blow that away. Follow along on Twitter, where we'll be sharing our favorite school projects throughout the day.
Help us spread the word and let's raise some money for American public school students in need. We promise we'll get back to the shameless holiday promotions next week.
Hi there, friends. We're hiring a designer. This is a full-time, salaried position on the mighty Cotton Bureau squad. We're not actually sure what to call this position specifically, because, well, our industry isn't quite sure what to call it either. Web designer. Interface designer. UI designer. UX designer. Experience designer. Digital designer. Front-end designer. Ugh...maybe it's just easier if we explain who we're looking for.
Here’s who we’re looking for…
You’re someone who knows modern interface design in your bones, and you’ve spent the last 3–5 years proving it. To us that means design systems and pattern libraries, marketing sites, dashboards, onboarding flows, icons, and maybe even illustration/graphics, branding/identity, and app design.
You not only sweat the details, you sweat through your shirt. Seriously though, we tend to look at our product design from 10,000 feet. We need someone who comes equipped with a jeweler’s loupe.
Chances are, you’ve been on a larger design team at a startup/service/company/agency recently, but wherever you’ve been, you’re ready to make a bigger difference at a smaller company. We want someone to really own this (besides one of our co-founders, you’ll be the only other designer on the team for a while).
Maybe you’re not exactly a Designer Who Can Code™, but you’re at least capable of turning your designs into live prototypes of some fidelity. But hey, if you can crank out production-ready code, even better.
We have a tendency to fly by the seat of our pants when it comes to product design, so you’re either comfortable with that, or you’re someone who can whip our process into shape.
We're a small company, so there are a lot of opportunities to design things...everything mentioned above plus packaging, signage, even our new office (coming early 2017). This excites you, it doesn't scare you away.
You’re in Pittsburgh, near Pittsburgh, or at least Pittsburgh-curious. We’re not totally out on remote employees, but candidates who are willing to consider moving here have a leg up.
Bonus points for: writing ability, experience managing direct reports (or the desire to eventually lead a team), a working understanding of screen printing or garment production.
Fake bonus points for: an interesting hobby, a cute pet, being funny on Twitter, talking incessantly about food, winning a fantasy football league.
Here’s who we are…
There are a ton of crappy make-me-a-t-shirt websites on the internet, but we’re not one of them. We’re trying to defend the high ground in online apparel: quality products, quality partners, quality service, quality experience. That sounds trite, but it’s why we stand out.
We’re a three-year-old profitable company with a real business model. Our revenues have grown substantially year-over-year, and we only recently took a small piece of outside investment. You can read more about our partnership with Indie.vc here.
We’re pretty small in the grand scheme of things (seven people full-time).
We’re proudly located in Pittsburgh, PA, and we’re not moving.
Here’s what you get…
A fair salary.
A new computer.
Access to our company healthcare plan.
Generous time off and holidays.
Free parking, if you’re the driving-a-car type.
Relocation assistance if you’re not in or near Pittsburgh.
All the cool t-shirts that'll fit in your closet.
If you need a bunch of fancy Bay Area perks like free lunch and a ping-pong table to do your job, we can’t help ya (though we're at least considering a ping-pong table).
If this sounds like you, we'd love to talk. Send an email to us@cottonbureau.com with a nice note introducing yourself and explaining why you're a fit for this opening, a link to your work online, and any other materials you deem appropriate. We'll be evaluating applicants over the next few weeks, and hope to make a hire in October. Good luck, and we look forward to meeting all of you.
Cotton Bureau provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or genetics. This policy applies to all conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, leaves of absence, benefits, compensation, and training.
