Hoodies.

[nelsonic]

Its time. 🕙

[nelsonic]

#**fail**

[nelsonic]

Such a shame this is Gildan ... https://www.shirtworks.co.uk/products/gildan-ladies-heavy-blend-vintage-zip-hooded-sweatshirt-gd81/

But something like this would be _amaze_!

[nelsonic]

This could work: https://www.cottonroots.co.uk/product/245/268/womens_vintage_full_zip_hoodie

[iteles]

Just found what fairtradewear would have turned into: http://amcustomclothing.co.uk/about/ (also a good source of ethical hoodies).

Emailed them for a quote and also spoken to Epona 👍

[nelsonic]

"would have" indeed ...

[iteles]

Finding ethical hoodies has actually proved quite difficult.

Bella & Canvas hoodies

Our t-shirts are of this brand and they are certainly the best bang for our buck at [£15.60 each]( (without prints) but unfortunately the reviews for them aren't great - they seem to get old really quickly in the wash.
A shame because the guys who printed our t-shirts were great and these are the only ethical hoodies they provide.

AM Custom Clothing hoodies

AM Custom Clothing have a **minimum order of 25 for screen printing** but do offer _Direct to Garment (DTG) printing_\* for smaller orders. These prints end up looking washed out after the first wash however.

They have both ladies and mens organic fair wear zip hoodies.

Epona Clothing

All Epona unisexhoodies are fairtrade cotton and they use only factories recommended by the Fairtrade Foundation.

Awaiting final screen printing quote. Hoodies cost £13.50 each + VAT, plus delivery of £10 per box of 20 hoodies.

[nelsonic]

Ok. great work requesting the quotes! but how can we _MVP_ this...?
What's the lowest possible price we can pay to trial this?
I don't mind spending (investing?) the £712.36 ... but do we have to?

[nelsonic]

What if we could retrofit all our existing hoodies to with some _dwyl_ ...? ❤️ ✅

[nelsonic]

This is what eye was thinking... http://www.thestudio.com/

We each have a handful of Organic Hoodies... we could sew/iron on the patch at a fraction of the cost of getting (the minimum order of) new hoodies...

[iteles]

👍 Actually I have exactly 2 hoodies, but that sounds like a good plan - we really don't need hoodies at this stage.

3 inches seems a little small?

Are you on getting this sorted or am I?

[nelsonic]

3 inches is bigger than our current Hex stickers, but you decide what is a reasonable size.
I think we should go with the Hex (with white border)
You're getting it sorted because you like doing this kind of thing...
Given the numbers I think it makes sense to get 100 pieced printed.
I don't know how many people will make the effort to sew them on themselves...
But we could do a session at a a dwyl dinner (for people who _want_ to work with us) where Natalia organises to bring sewing needles, thread & thimbles and each person brings their favourite hoodie...

I've forwarded you the email. thanks for organising it. 👍

[iteles]

I think we should test it but I can't think of many people who would want to sew patches onto existing pieces of clothing. Especially none of the women.

I'm not convinced that the patches will actually make it onto any items of clothing, most of them will get lost in the ether. We should ask Dias what the motivation behind the LXJS ones was. Having said that, the difference between ordering 10 and ordering 100 is just ridiculously small so we might as well.

[nelsonic]

Ah... you see, you're thinking about it from the "wrong" angle...
What if we start a Trend whereby everything you learn you get an actual physical badge (in this case _patch_) ...?

So that you can recognise someone with a certain skill set from a mile away...
Sure, people might not want to add them to their existing hoodie.
But... we could pick an ethical hoodie which we could source single units of and give one to each person that joins dwyl. either we could sew on the patch or they can do it themselves. but we should make a ritual of it...

[nelsonic]

Its clear from your silence that you aren't keen on the Sew-on-Patches idea...
Do you have an alternative suggestion that will get us a Warm Wearable by the end of this month...?
( #_HardDeadline_ )

[iteles]

This is our fastest route to something wearable.

The only reason I haven't ordered them yet is because when I went to place the order on Friday (3 days ago), I realised The Studio is based in California, so I emailed them to check that even with a rush order it would make it to the UK on time.
I also got quotes from 4 other UK-based companies (https://www.madebycooper.co.uk , embroidered-patches.co.uk, patchdepot.co.uk, aspinline.co.uk).

Today I was waiting for California to wake up (it's 10am there now as I type this) to call so I could get an answer. They can get them here just whereas the UK ones doubled the order charges to get them to us by the 30th October.

@nelsonic Do you want to change the colour or can I place the order?

[nelsonic]

This is still alpha.
You like teal...
Lets just get them done.

[nelsonic]

@iteles do we have budget to re-vive this project? 💲
who do you trust to take on the task of organising printing Hoodies for everyone in dwyl...? ❓

[iteles]

We decided at the last minute to not go with patches as all simulations of this pointed to them not looking great.
We ended up with a homemade alpha ones, recycling hoodies we already owned for #websummit in November 2015 which turned out pretty cool!

[iteles]

I'll be going through the accounts and we can define priorities mid-April at the latest.

[ghost]

@iteles ok to close?

[iteles]

I haven't even updated this with the hoodies we actually got printed yet. It has to stay open until the info is captured 👍

[nelsonic]

Once the info is captured about the hoodies that did get printed
including the colors, softness vs. durability and price
we need to get people's sizes and do a print run ASAP!

[rub1e]

Many hoodies, zoodies, hoodoo, voodoo, and fleeces have been inquired about. So, so many. I'll collate the best candidates and find a sensible way to display them all when I've had the quotes back.

(The only one I left out was rapanui clothing cos they were silly money)

[rub1e]

Some cracking contenders in here, more to follow pending a couple of replies (like one of them tried to sell us Micro-fleeces and I'm like it's chunky or it's nothing.)

Doc

[nelsonic]

Of the hoodies, Prefer the Certified Fairtrade hoodie. http://amcustomclothing.co.uk/shop/a-m-fairtrade-clothing/mens-fairtrade-zip-hoodie

Still keen on Fleece ... for the reasons outlined above. ⬆️
The Pier 32 Fleece http://www.pier32.co.uk/product/sw700-fleece-jacket/
appears to have a 50 items minimum order ...

were you able to confirm this with them? 50 feels like a lot ... 🤔
However given that these are cheaper we it could end up being a similar total cost. 💭

[iteles]

@rub1e 🎉 I would also be keen on the AM Clothing hoodies (either or, not sure whether air miles or fair miles win out yet). Would they be happy to sell and ship us a single hoody so we can check quality and have samples for when people make their order?

(I'm not a fan of fleeces, but happy to have a small number of them made if they're not exorbitant)

[rub1e]

OK so why don't I request a sample of both the Hoodies and the Fleeces mentioned above so we can take a more informed view - and then we can get them ordered! (I'll also inquire about minimum runs)

[iteles]

@rub1e Yes please! I don't mind paying for the samples if we get to use them later. Make L hoodies in red for example.

[rub1e]

I've asked for samples BTW, just waiting to hear back about that and minimum runs.

Question @iteles:

Make L hoodies in red for example.

Is the L "large" or "Ladies"?

[nelsonic]

@rub1e, L = "Men's Large". 😉 (good to seek clarification) 👍

[iteles]

Make = male 🙄 #typo

[iteles]

Sample (no printing) hoody and fleece have now been ordered, thanks @rub1e .

@nelsonic @sohilpandya Fleece is already at Focus Hub if you want to come and take a look.

[rub1e]

If anyone is following this thread but not on gitter, here is the spreadsheet with size/colour options - please fill it in asap!

(For colours, please tick the ones you're WILLING to have and we'll narrow it down from there)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p1ufSyfZ_koFsqCr7SvJOrvyIV0f3crrArw7gWeOZps/edit#gid=0

[rub1e]

The files for the branding are saved in the dwyl drive > marketing - the ones marked FINAL are editable so can be used in the future, and the ones marked FINAL-outline have the text converted to outlines so that the font doesn't change, and therefore aren't editable.

That's right, I'm a graphic designer now.

[rub1e]

UPDATE: having received very disappointing fleece and hoodie samples from AMC, we've requested a sample of the Chunky Hoodie which will be delivered on Friday

[rub1e]

The chunky hoodies are winners: robust but soft, casual but fierce. They remind me of a young me.

We've also narrowed down the colour options, so please revisit the spreadsheet and repick a colour.

Quick note on sizes - I've tried on the Large and it's a good fit even for me. Given that I'm by far the largest and funniest dwyler, I humbly suggest that the XL size shouldn't be needed

EDIT - please only pick one colour - this is the final choice before we order, not as before when we were trying to narrow down the colours

[rub1e]

UPDATE: After much ado, followed by even more ado, our order is finally being processed.

Because of the outrageous service we've received, we don't 100% trust Shirtworks so we're requesting to see the first batch from the print run before we approve the rest - just to be on the safe side

So I'll update this with the ETA when that's been approved

[rub1e]

And yet more ado: the mockup we were sent says:

This mockup is representational only and does not show true scale or relationship between objects

Perhaps controversially, this is information we need before we can sign the order off. So I've sent it back to them asking for a proper mockup, will update

[rub1e]

UPDATE: we've approved the mockups so we're just waiting for the results of the first print run so we can double check that it's exactly as we want it - expected on Monday 9th

[rub1e]

The hoodies arrived a little while ago

Is there anyone who requested a hoodie but hasn't yet received it?

(I'll close this issue shortly and chase people on gitter)

[rub1e]

Closing because we have our hoodies, and they are awesome 💟

[iteles]

@rub1e Please add to the readme, including a little historical context from #17 (comment) ;)

It would be good to have all the steps so that next time we know exactly:
a) What to expect, and
b) What to watch out for (like the conversations we had on the positioning of the logo, etc)

[rub1e]

What to think about first

Hoodies or fleeces? We did look at fleeces, but we didn't find any we particularly liked - they all have a quite cheap look & feel. It's safe to say that hoodies are what most people like. (That said, it's on my list to investigate and find a source of decent fleeces.)

Weight / gsm Weights are measured in grams per square metre, and we found that anything below 250 gsm feels flimsy. (I personally think that a significant amount of polyester is uncomfortable - go for cotton if possible).

Colours Most places let you do a mix of colours and sizes at no extra cost, but unfortunately purple isn't allowed.

Printing

We went with the dwyl logo in white with dwyl in white underneath on the left breast (front), 6cm wide:

And on the back a dwyl logo in white with dwyl.com next to it, 21cm wide:

As for positioning...

The printing on the back needs to be low enough that it isn't obscured when the hood hangs down - ask the printer to confirm this.

The printing on the front you'll have to look at yourself - the distance to the zip changes depending on the size of the garment. Best thing is to get a sample and look at it yourself, and make sure the printers send you a mockup and ideally a single garment from the initial run so you can check before you give final signoff.

Files

The files for the branding are saved in the dwyl drive > marketing - the ones marked FINAL are editable so can be used in the future, and the ones marked FINAL-outline have the text converted to outlines so that the font doesn't change, and therefore aren't editable.