What would be cool, and a nice courtesy gesture since HN gave you so much traffic, is if you shared actual numbers with us. Data we can use. I'd like to see:
Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.
I totally agree with you, it's the least I could do. For now, some of these rough figures are in my other responses scattered around here. In the next day or so I plan to do a detailed writeup on my (currently blank) blog http://madebyloren.com - and I'll post on HN when the writeup is available.
if I understand this model, he has to get a certain number of orders (say 100) before he can actually print. the price of each shirt depends on a bulk amount and if he doesn't hit that, he can't ship the shirts. for these shirts I'd suspect it costs about $10 each (silkscreen printing), plus whatever shipping and handling. maybe $3-$4 profit each shirt x 100 = $300-$400
I've mentioned this several times, but I'll bring it up again because I'm legitimately surprised at how expensive many seem to think these shirts are. Screen printing should absolutely not cost $10/ea for a 2-color print, especially for anything over 36 shirts. If you're paying this, then you're being robbed. End of story. I have had many shirts printed before so I know where to look, but it's really not that difficult to find a decent printer with fair prices. Right now my costs are below $6/ea, and that's for medium-grade, fashion fitted tees. If I went with cheapy Gildan tees, I would be at less than $5/ea, but I'd rather not sacrifice the quality to squeeze out a tiny more profit. I want people to be pleased with what they're buying. I'm thinking of myself in their shoes.
i just realized you do other shirts on your main site, so maybe you have a special deal arranged to do shirts. if so, that's really cool. plus i didn't realize you went to the same school as me ;)
Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.