Glee TV show Features Geek is the new Chic t-shirt!
The always fashionable and impeccably dressed Kurt Hummle, as played by Chris Colfer, was spotted in our Geek is the New Chic Guys T-shirt in Glee: Episode 3, Accafellas.
We are super psyched. Glee is one of the hottest shows on TV right now, and they're wearing Crooked Monkey t-shirts! Hip hip hooray!
Glee joins Weeds, Leverage, and "So you think you can dance" in the category of TV shows with awesome style. Eclipse, the third saga in the Twilight series, will be joining the category of Movies with the best style when Eclipse features our Sketched boombox t-shirt.
Big shout out to Cara, best former intern ever, for spotting this one. It wasn't an easy spot, as Kurt was wearing a blazer over our Geek is Chic t-shirt, but I guess we trained her well. She also is responsible for letting us know about Ryan Seacrest wearing our I'm not a gardener i just like hoes t-shirt. Three cheers for Cara. Well actually two cheers for Cara. She'll get a third cheer on her next spotting.
Don't be fooled by the name. The Fashion BS Podcast is about a lot more than just BS. The two hosts are a hilarious duo--Elaine Mensah and James Cornwell--that could entertain and inform for hours.
I met Elaine a couple months back at her Fashion Fights Poverty charity event and she invited me onto the program. The show was real fun--we talked about everything from how we got came up with the Crooked Monkey name, to James' disdain for fist pumping and Elaine's "suggestions" for how a t-shirt should fit. Good times.
I hadn’t heard of the popular t-shirt company Crooked Monkey until I was invited to an exclusive party they recently held. You see, even though they get great press from actors wearing their shirts in movies and magazines talking about their fashion styles, Crooked Monkey is based in Washington, DC – not widely known as the fashion capital of the country. And they wanted to do some local brand building.
This wasn’t just any party. Sure, there were attractive guests in a cool setting with great drinks and music all the usual stuff. It was what they did differently that made it the most memorable event Ive been to in a long time.
Lets start with how I even found out about the event – a secretive email from someone I didn’t know telling me that my friend recommended me as a guest for the event. This is somewhere in between Facebook and Eyes Wide Shut. Then, a request for my home address, to which was mailed a package containing an envelope with a paper invitation, and also a sparsely decorated white t-shirt, which I was required to save for the party two months later and bring with me to gain admittance. Finally, a bag of tart banana candies finished the package.
Further inspection revealed that the event was on a Sunday night (no night is safe from parties!) at a secret location to be given to us later. Keep in mind that I dont know the person behind the party, nor the other guests, and now also not the location. Still later I discovered by email invitation that the event would be in a warehouse in a not-so-savory part of Washington, DC and that we MUST bring our white t-shirts because wed be doing something with them on the night of the event.
When the day of the event came, I really couldn’t stand not knowing anything! I texted the contacts I had for the event to ask questions, but they revealed little. I emailed some socialite friends to try to figure out who else would be there we knew it would be all tastemakers of different sorts, but no one really knew who was going, which was exciting. I used Google Maps to investigate the location of the warehouse. I stressed about what one wears to such events (I think I chose well!).
Even the party itself was very engaging. An artist created a mural from our white t-shirts that we used for entry right in front of our eyes. An old-fashioned photo booth let us take pictures with each other, and the photo strips had (what else?) a Crooked Monkey logo on them. Even the name of the event Photoshoot at the Warehouse gave the party an active quality.
Do you detect a pattern here? Crooked Monkey kept busy, elite attendees who get invited to tons of events mentally engaged with their event for weeks. They made us part of telling their story. They got us to talk about their brand before, during, and after the event. And in the end, the event delivered with a cool venue, outstanding bar, fun atmosphere, and lots of fashion.
Photoshoot at the Warehouse is a great example of putting the public back in public relations and brand engagement. How great? Im writing an entire post about them – and I dont even like wearing t-shirts!
We haven't had a chance to write the follow up blog to the Photoshoot at the Warehouse, but I wanted to give a small glimpse of the night. We transformed a beat up warehouse in Chinatown into an impressive lounge--with lighting (pictured above), a full bar, a kicking DJ and a live graffiti artist. Everyone who attended said they were blown away with the ambiance--that this was probably the coolest party they've been to this year. Nice! Our 6 weeks of work paid off! On Monday we'll post a blog with all the details. In the meantime read up on the press that we got for the T-shirt launch party:
We're gearing up for the launch of our graphic t-shirts, with a "Photoshoot at the Warehouse" in Washington DC, mid-September.
It's going to be as much a launch of our graphic line as a celebration of how cool DC has gotten. Over the last few years I've written a lot about DC--how it's become hipper and funner everyday. It's about to get a lot cooler.
The party, featuring our t-shirts and all that DC has to offer--from Emperor Vodka to Mi n Yu in Georgetown to graffiti artists--will be a true testament to Crooked Monkey's roots in Washington DC. Now all we need is a professional sports team that can win games.
Details about the party--including the invitations, timelines and guests--will be on the blog throughout the month.
DC bloggers and trendsetters Ebong Eka, Kate Michael, and Pamela Sorensen have a bi-weekly webisode called "The district Dish." They feature individuals with interesting stories/businesses/charities/lives.
This week they decided to interview yours truly. I was honored to be asked to be on the show. Kate Michael writes and produces K street Kate, Pamela Sorensen writes and produces Pamelas Punch and Ebong Eka owns a men's fashion line called Mi Chiamo Eka.
Great group of people. I discussed t-shirts, the origins of Crooked Monkey, where we get inspiration and celebrities wearing our t-shirts.
Michael Wilbon was filmed that same day--so I got to meet him. He's a real real nice guy and very interesting to talk to. He's got a few more views for his edition of The District Dish than I do, so go watch my edition so we can beat him out.
Crooked Monkey was the first business to ever use Facebook. We launched in the summer of 2005, just when Facebook was hitting the college scene in a big way. Back then, Facebook was much different. There was no tagging of pictures, no fan pages, and no global groups. You could only view profiles of other students who attended your school.
But somehow, even with all those restrictinos, we created 20 "Crooked Monkey Hotties" groups at campuses across the country. We had over 4,000 beautiful women, spread across the USA who were part of our group. I still meet people today who tell me that they are part of that elite group. What a legacy.
It wasn't easy to accumulate all those groups and hotties. We had to borrow our friends usernames and password, create the groups, and then find hot girls on campuses to join the groups. How did we do this? Since we didn't actually know anyone on that campus, we had to be quite wily. We searched hot names, like Heather, Melissa, Kirsten--don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. We also searched thru the good looking sororities--those are obvious. And then we sent out the invitations--and voila 20 Campus groups with at least 200 of the hottest girls on campus all clamoring to be Crooked Monkey Hotties.
4 years later, Facebook makes our lives a lot easier. We have a universal fan group and are not forced to commandeer our friend's logins. Our Fan group now is a lot better--everyone's invited, we run promotions and contests, and let you know about new t-shirts. So join it, and make our life easier.
Four years ago, on May 4th 2005, Crooked Monkey launched at a bar in College Park called Cornerstone. The world was without Crooked Monkey. And having a "monkey on your back" meant something totally different.
Four years ago I was a senior at the University of Maryland and my former business partner had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. We drove around town selling shirts out of the back of a Honda Civic. And we were the only company innovative enough to use Facebook for business purposes--launching "Crooked Monkey hotties" groups on 20 different college campuses. Four years ago, Seventeen magazine had to use other t-shirt vendors and were forced to fill their pages with less awesome t-shirts. Ryan Seacrest had to look elsewhere for funny t-shirts. And Miley Cyrus, well Miley wasn't around back then.
A lots happened since we started four years ago. We've accomplished so much and we're extremely grateful for the opportunity to be able to provide you guys with funny t-shirts and cool graphic shirts. There's a lot still to come in the years ahead--so stick with us!Thanks to everyone for allowing us to grow and for appreciating our sense of humor. And above all, for giving us the ability to keep on Livin' the Dream.
We're going to run a 20% sale for the week as a small thank you. But the real thank you, is that we promise you will love us, and our shirts, even more this year.
This is actually the 206th blog post, but who's counting?
To celebrate our 100th blog post we wrote an awesome post, but promised a few things that we didn't follow through on. This blog won't be as good as that one, but it will follow through on all those empty promises. Specifically rating our top blogs.
If you notice, on the bottom of all of our blogs, we assign different labels to make it easier for our readers to search through our different topics/subjects. And to direct readers to our favorite blogs, we invented a label entitled "top blog posts" that we give to posts we deem hilarious. Its a bit presumptuous, considering the fact that we assign that label as its published, before receiving any feedback or before anyone's even read the blog. But I guess we really only make jokes that make us laugh anyways.
So here's the Top 10+1 list. We chose funny blog posts, informative blog posts, milestones in our history, and sometimes politically inspired posts. And of course all of our posts have a deep connection to our Funny T-shirts.
(P.S. The photo above is a picture of cupcakes that were made by Julia for my birthday last month. If you look closely, you'll notice that the cupcakes are monkeys. Amazing. Look out for her new cupcake shop coming to DC in 2011.)
As a wholesaler of funny t-shirts, Crooked Monkey has always found creative ways to get our t-shirts into the hands of the end consumer (that's you!).
In the beginning we used to drive around in our Honda Civic--making appointments and delivering shirts on site. Then we started attending tradeshows--really launching our brand further. We started to get recognized at these tradeshows and attending more and more of them. At the height of our love of tradeshows, we probably attended 20 shows/year. Buyers from retail stores all over the country, and the world, came to check out our newest lines and see what new wholesale opportunities were available for them.
Then came the recession. Buyers realized that a trip to Las Vegas, with all the associated costs, was just not in the cards, baby. They decided, and rightfully so, that they'd rather use their money on clothing, and not on frivolous trips. By August of 2008, we decided that Crooked Monkey would significantly reduce its presence at tradeshows and increase its direct contact with stores--either thru road trips (returning to the glory days), phone calls, emails, and other methods.
It is with a bitter sweet feeling that I report that we made the right decision. The Tradeshow is dead. They have become a waste of time. Crooked Monkey has managed to reduce its presence at shows, while still growing during this great recession--proof that quality and awesomeness at the right price is priceless.
Here's one other issue that really irks me about tradeshows. The slowing economy causes less retailers to attend tradeshows. Meaning that wholesalers, like Crooked Monkey, sell less clothes at these shows. The logical progression would be that Tradeshows should drop the price of their shows and offer incentives--yet they continue to charge astronomical prices. How does that make any sense? Not a sermon, just a thought.
Oh and the picture below is from our first ever tradeshow 3 years ago! That's Jon, Della and Me.
I know how difficult and time consuming it can be to type in the whole address, www.crookedmonkey.com. Now you don't have to. Once you subscribe to our feed, you just go to your regular homepage, or wherever you read your feeds, and you can see what we're up to.
We'll try and keep the headlines real interesting like: Barney and Big Bird finally meet.
So subscribe to it. And while you're at it, pick up a couple of tees. Our 20% storewide sale is still going strong and our Buy 2 shirts get free shipping just sweetens the pot.
Breaking News: Facebook has officially recognized Crooked Monkey as a network on Facebook. This is huge. This is bigger than when we made the Forbes 500 list last year. Crooked Monkey has joined the ranks of other companies found officially on Facebook like Nike, Under Armour, and Google.
Now when I tell people I work for Crooked Monkey, I know that I have the credibility of Facebook's Network system to back up my claims. If you'd like to join our network, email us a compelling reason (or post it here) and if we like it, we'll let you join it.
Crooked Monkey is a big supporter of the University of Maryland and its endeavors. I always like to remind people that Crooked Monkey got its start selling Fuck Duke t-shirts. What humbled beginnings. We ran through the dorms, selling from door-to-door, getting chased out of buildings by RAs and police. But that did not stop us. We wanted to make sure that ESPN and everyone else out there watching the game new that we hated Duke, and that Testudo bent the Blue Devil over and gave it to him from behind.
Since those early days a lot has changed, but a lot has also remained the same. We still produce awesome t-shirts--just now they're refined and legal. We still sell t-shirts--just now we sell to retail locations with business licenses and permits. We still run from the cops--just now its cause these guns are illegal in 48 states.
So yesterday we joined the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at their annual marketplace. We even made the front page of the Diamondback, the University of Maryland school newspaper.
University of Maryland features Funny t-shirts in Worldview magazine
The school of Behavior and social sciences wrote us up in their magazine, "WorldView." What an honor. If the picture looks familiar, it's because it is! It is the same picture from the Washington Post article in the Making It section.
Crooked Monkey has a special bond with the University of Maryland and they love our funny t-shirts. UMD is the first school for which we are producing licensed University apparel, and the students have responded in kind. My brother said he saw 5 kids the other day wearing our University of Maryland t-shirts.
We look forward to working with the Terrapins and to continue to provide the school with first rate products and the opportunity to sample our t-shirts before we roll them out to other schools.
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The always fashionable and impeccably dressed Kurt Hummle, as played by Chris Colfer, was spotted in our Geek is the New Chic Guys T-shirt in Glee: Episode 3, Accafellas.
