I actually feel sorry for them and assume that one or more investors lost their shirt (pun intended).
What happened was there was a great poker boom and all sorts of poker related businesses showed up. This continued to happen even after the poker boom had slowed way down and most of these businesses are now gone. And for those of you critical of their product, I'm sure during the boom times it was plenty good to have nice sales numbers. But once the boom ended, I doubt that they could have been successful no matter how terrific their clothing line might be.
don't know 3bet them but i do with agree grand pooh bah seeing reputable businesses go down sucks
most of my outerwear with themes are I "visited other countries" brag. i
was never offered a stars or full tilt patch but i hope to hit you up for a twoplustwo patch for my home game.
I never did wear my i knocked out Artie Cobb full tilt T. still have it.
I don't really understand how these businesses can ever make that much money. I think at absolute peak Upswing was doing a few k a month in shirt revenue (maybe more like 4 or 5k, cant remember tbh), and then your margins are 50% or so. With nonstop promotion around the clock across every platform we probably were only selling 3-5 items a day. Maybe if you have some stuff players really like out the gate you will make more but eventually you will need new ideas and will probably run low on them.
Then you think about trying to come up with designs, having someone make them, and the effort put into marketing... I think this is easily one of the worst poker businesses. I think if you have a large YouTube or twitch presence it makes sense as a way for your fans to support you, but as a business it does not have much potential.
Yeah I can relate to what Doug is saying from my own small-town experiences with Keychain/Koozie/Bumper Sticker stuff for local b&m marketing. It's visible, but supplemental in the end, enjoying far less penetration/impact on consumers/drivers that are already inundated with licensed McDonald's billboards that have been erected along bypasses.
The same maybe could be said for t-shirts, and hoodies in card rooms, which probably aren't going to compete with a full size Celene Dion cut-out inside a casino.
Most of this stuff I dealt with WAY back in the day... so it's has-been experience. Things change. But Doug's post reminds me of the logistics/infrastructure that local "printing shops" back then were burdened with (often having to outsource some of the design or actual printing to bigger shops, Office Depot, Dunder Mifflin, etc.).
Customized orders were a pain in the ass just like apparel sizing and physical warehousing might be for a medium-scale niche industry clothing operation, and of course the bulk manufacturers have a clear interest to offload mass product.
So that's where some of the madness of ordering 50,000 bumper stickers came in. Local businesses getting sold on a "because it's cheaper per unit" pitch in towns that might have 10x less people than that, or b&m retailers (pharmacies/barber shops/auto repair) that might get 100 people per day passing through.
B&M poker rooms might get more traffic than that, but still.
3Bet's problem was always that they were charging for stuff that people get for free in comparable areas.
I worked in the games industry for years. Games industry T-shirts were always free. We got them from the marketing dept and wore them at trade shows and washed our cars with them afterwards. There was the odd shirt that actually became collectable, like the original EA Sports T-shirts. I was actually offered a couple of hundred pounds for one back in around 1994.
3Bet are lucky that they lasted as long as they did.
I actually feel sorry for them and assume that one or more investors lost their shirt (pun intended).
What happened was there was a great poker boom and all sorts of poker related businesses showed up. This continued to happen even after the poker boom had slowed way down and most of these businesses are now gone. And for those of you critical of their product, I'm sure during the boom times it was plenty good to have nice sales numbers. But once the boom ended, I doubt that they could have been successful no matter how terrific their clothing line might be.
Best wishes,
Mason
I literally transcribed related as ******ed at terrific as horrific while reading mason's post, as that made more sense to me.
Looks like this is an insider “nerd” level line of clothing in a hobby/pastime where that level would go out of their way to avoid identifying themselves as such.
Was a horrible idea to begin with imo as far as poker attire goes. Who, that is actually an aggro grinder, wants to advertise as such?