AD – have you actually purchased a zippo or a bottle opener?

I like the styling of the tees and the graphics. Reminds me of strong, “less is more” graphic concept of Villianous Visard (though not implying in any way any sort of “biting”) which I really like. Love the full owl tee at top, the black and white at bottom, and the cartoon-like “Stay Up Late”. The key ring looks sick too. Nice releases guys!

Brandon – thanks for the kind words.

In response to your price query… my brand is still relatively new compared to some of the bigger more established brands. The market is very competitive and saturated at the moment so the price point I’ve chosen is to be more affordable to allow people to buy in to VIHMIRU, see how good the quality is and then continue to support the brand.

That being said, I do believe a lot of brands over charge. The next line of t-shirts I release will be a bit more expensive but not by a lot. The profit made helps to re-invest in to bigger and better lines, cut and sew especially which a lot of the bigger brands are doing… which may be the reason for their high price points.

Most brands that charge around the £30/£35 mark will most often have brick retail shops to pay rent on and all the overheads that come with that too. I suppose really you’re also paying to be part of the brand. The more exclusive and sought after a brand becomes, the more they can get away with in higher prices.

To qualm your concerns of quality… the quality of my t-shirts are like that of OBEY, IM KING and Diamond Supply Co.

The care instructions I provide are to maximise the t-shirt life but obviously if someone wears a t-shirt every day it will soon degrade through wear and tear.

Pricing is tricky… too low, it scares people off. Too high, it scares people off.

I hope you’ll take a chance and try your luck with VIHMIRU.

Generally brands selling at around this price point don’t wholesale and are therefore able to charge less.

My opinion is that £30 or more for a tee is too much. Yes I’ve paid that before. I’m 30 years old. I make enough disposable income to not worry. But I’ve resolved myself earlier in the year to not pay that money for tees as part of exercising my rights and sense of discrimination as a consumer.

Take Johnny Cupcakes for example… In USA, their tees cost $35. In UK, they charge £35. Being an American citizen I know a little the exchange rates, duty taxes, import fees, etc and I can guarantee you that J/C still making a bomb on those £35 tees. Fair enough, a majority of people obviously pay the money and that makes it sustainable for the vendor.

However, I’ve always questioned the ethics of balancing “entrepreneuralism” and running a sustainable business with producing and promoting a “youth” brand or “street” brand. I imagine a large part of the target market doesn’t have the disposable income to drop £30+ on tees left and right. Maybe that’s the point and is the brand’s way of making something “special” in the eyes of the consumer – I don’t know. But I’ve seen on my Twitter feed more than once people “going skint” or breaking the bank to cop just one more garment. That’s not the brand’s fault, but if brands charging that much dropped their prices to a more reasonable amount their sales might increase that little bit more.

I could be talking complete dross because I’m not a business and don’t have an inside insight into the industry but I think £20 – £25 is about the right price and what I’d expect to pay for a quality printed, quality material tee from even the most premium of brands. I firmly believe that anything more is just fat on top for the brand to cream. Fair enough but with the glut of big and diy/indy brands these days producing both tees and cut & sew, any consumer has plenty of choice without needs to be stuck to or loyal to a brand charging more than the rest of the pack.

I’ll never compete on the Apprentice, VIHMIRU, but my philosophy with any decision in life is “follow your heart” and “follow your gut instinct”. Best of luck with it – I really like these designs and the images of this drop and you’ll get my business.

Brandon / ATD – yea, the more I think about it and compare my brand to other similar brands my pricing is considerably lower.

I think I will announce on my blog and social network sites that the pricing will stay at £16 as an introductory price for a couple of weeks and then will be raised to reflect the quality of the print, t-shirt and overall design. I need to be viewed as a high quality brand because my products are high quality.

Like you’ve mentioned above, I appear to have unintentionally undercut myself. Perhaps by naivety on my part that people would not pay what I would have charged being a relatively new brand.

But I’ve had a fair bit of feedback now and the general consensus is the prices need to be raised.

Thank you all for your praise and helpful advice.

nice to see healthy discussion on here. but not nice that its all in caps lol.

Brands selling at crazy prices like £16 are setting themselves up for a hard time when they decide to wholesale. A retailer will want to make 2.5 min markup. This means you have to sell your tee to him at £10 for him to retail at £25…minimum. So a £16 tee has to be wholesaled at £6. It’s hard to produce a decent tee for £6 but it will be much harder will be having to sell to your current customers at double the price when the retailer demands you charge the same on your site as he does in his shop. As far as I’m concerned anybody wanting a £16 tee should do one to Topman and have the same garm as another million drones.

hey silver, thanks for the feedback.

email ben@vihmiru.com …and i’ll hook you up with a discount code that’ll allow you to buy a t-shirt for the original price.

hope to hear from you.