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.)
Crooked Monkey wins BB&T Invitational with Under Armour
Crooked Monkey was established in 2005. In May, it will celebrate its 4 year anniversary. We've accomplished a lot in our short history--featured in magazines, picked up by department stores and trendy boutiques, and put a smile on over 120,000 happy customers. And now, finally, we can add, "receiving an oversized check (a la Happy Gilmore) to our list of accolades."
Starting in 2006, Kevin Plank (the founder and CEO of Under Armour) has hosted an annual business competition for the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, called the Cupid's Cup. In its first year, Crooked Monkey was nominated for the award and finished as a runner up in the competition. This year, Crooked Monkey could not compete for the award because our annual sales volume exceeded the upper limit.
Luckily BB&T launched the BB&T invitational--which features companies connected with the University of Maryland. It allows us to showcase our businesses, and invites students, alumn and other entrepreneurs to get a taste for each company. The attendees then vote for their favorite company and the winner is announced at the Cupid's Cup, in front of the entire Under Armour Executive team. There was stiff competition from a list of other strong, thriving entrepreneurs. But in the end our Funny t-shirts were a fan favorite and we took home the prize money and an oversized check!
Than you to: Kevin Plank, Asher Espstein (from the Dingman Center) and BB&T.
Crooked Monkey is run by under 30 year olds, so sometimes, shady retailers like to think they can take advantage of us. It's time to think again.
A store that carries our shirts on the East Coast, (We're going to keep the name under wraps for the time being) buys a lot of our shirts. They've been buying our shirts for over 3 years now, but have only been paying for our shirts for 2.5 years. Jerks.
For some reason, they decided not to pay invoices from April of 2007 (2 years ago) until February of 2008. Before, and since, they have paid all their invoices (always late and never without incident, but at least they paid). During that span, they decided to take a break from paying for the shirts we sent. I believe that's called stealing.
Over the last two years we have sent them countless notices, invoices, and statements. In return they have avoided phone calls, not responded to emails and played dumb.
Two months ago we decided to take it to another level and demand payment. They then told us that they disputed the invoices, "I totally dispute all about 2007 story. and i will not even look at it."
In comes our legal team.
Here's an excerpt from the letter, "Should we fail to receive payment in full within thirty (30) days, we will be proceeding with legal action which will not only mandate interest and attorney’s fees, but the cost of enrolling the Judgment in New York."
Take that, assholes.
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Christmas has come early for Crooked Monkey. Nine days early. Today we shipped a record number of online orders, making sure that you guys will be able to give your t-shirts on time this holiday season. The most fun part of holiday shipping, is the gift-messages we get to write on behalf of our customers.
Its a fun exercise, as we hand write each letter, but are not allowed to correct or even question the messages posted. Most of the stuff is composed of indecipherable inside jokes, replete with LOLs and OMGs. And usually its just wishing someone a happy Kwanza or Ramadan.
But today we got an interesting one. The t-shirt purchased was Dead Man Walking, and the gift card read: "Will U plz marry me, ring 2 follow."
A bit impersonal, but we're happy to help in anyway we can. Sometimes, a t-shirt making fun of marriage is the best way to get someone to marry you. Playing hard to get--even up until the last second. I admire that.
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.
ShopFlick interviews Micha Weinblatt from Crooked Monkey Funny T-shirts
Courtney from ShopFlick interviewed us for their blog, shopflick.com. Enjoy!
SF: What does your brand stand for?
MW: Crooked Monkey is about fun. We strive to put smiles on people’s faces by providing them with funny t-shirts. At the end of the day, the goal of Crooked Monkey is to remind people how awesome College and bring people back to their glory days.
SF: What is the inspiration?
MW: College students, the college lifestyle. We try and take the best four years of a person’s life and express it through soft, vintage style tees. Its college-inspired humor, and college kids are who we aim to please.
SF: Who are your customers?
MW: The college student, obviously. But we also recognize that guys and gals who are just about to enter college, and who just left college, have a strong bond with Crooked Monkey as well.
SF: What’s new this season?
MW: We’re introducing a line of hoodies, flannels, and sweat pants. We also just secured collegiate licenses so look out for Crooked Monkey’s irreverence to hit the college mascot scene in a big way. And like always, count on us for hilarious, humor graphic tees.
SF: What items are people responding to most?
MW: For girls our environmental and political screens have been doing really well for us. For the guys our classic humor t-shirts have been very strong this season.
MW: We started at a bar in College Park on May 5, 2005. That was our launch party and the rest is history. Our first big account was National Jean Company in Long Island, and we’ve never looked back.
SF: What is your must-have item?
MW: Scarves. They’re functional when it gets cold outside and they can dress up a t-shirt or dress down a cute dress. They’re the absolute best day-to-night staple.
SF: What are you wearing right now?
MW: Plaid. I can’t get enough of it for fall. And Crooked Monkey tees, of course. They’re perfect for day time - comfortable, effortless, and chic. Not to mention the wearer of a funny t-shirt always gets a ton of attention.
SF: Is there anything else you would like to share with the Shopflick community?
MW: Keep checking www.crookedmonkey.com for our newest t-shirts. We produce t-shirts like its our job, so we’re always coming out with new hilarious stuff for you guys. And if you have any questions or comments, post them or email me.
Our warehouse, while effective and functional, was in desperate need of a little TLC. Despite being the home to dozens of funny t-shirts, and the place where ideas for funny t-shirts are born, it is also the sacred home to the Crooked Monkey staff, and recently, it has been a little neglected.
Thats why, the other day, we decided to put a little love, and elbow grease, into the C. Monkey office. We did a major clean up/throw away,rearranged the shelves, and redecorated a bit. Most importantly, we put up the 10 feet wide by 10 feet long poster that intern Emily Kahn drew for a trade show last year. It was exactly what the Crooked Monkey Warehouse needed!!
These videos will give you a little taste of life at Crooked Monkey. Enjoy Chloe whining, Amy giggling, Ben chilling, Micha supervising and Erik sighing sadly. Also, enjoy the in-depth discussion on the nuances of duct tape.
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