Hey Guys,

As many of you may have already noticed, the Christchurch t-shirts are no longer being sold. Unfortunately we’ve had to take down the tees, and we apologise to any of you in Christchurch that missed out on a t-shirt.

The Red Cross were in touch with us yesterday; and despite being extremely appreciative and thankful for what we’ve been able to raise for them and the effort we put in – they asked that the t-shirt be pulled from the site.

From the outset (despite what you may think of us), it was never our intention to upset anyone or capitalise on anyone’s misfortune. The t-shirt, as with all other charitable t-shirts we’ve run over the years – for both emergency appeals and standard charity appeals – was created to help people in need.

Obviously, we understand the position the Red Cross are in, and we’re certainly not wanting to put any further stress on what is already a terrible and traumatic natural disaster – so the t-shirts go.

At this point - and in no way is this a tooting of our own horn – we’d like to finish with what we’ve been able to raise for the Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal - with your help of course.

We’re stoked to announce that we’ve ended up raising $9,394.13 from the sales alone, and have also decided to top that up with a further $2,000 to make a grand total of $11,394.13 that will be sent to the Red Cross early next week.

We’d like to thank you for all the support, criticism and feedback we’ve received through the many blogs, emails, facebook posts and tweets. We’ve learnt a lot from the whole ordeal.

Cheers, the team at Mr Vintage.

Just to wrap things up from our end…

Wednesday morning it was a bit of a shock awaking to a raft of txt messages from mates informing me of Mr Vintage getting blasted in the National Newspaper via the sideswipe column. We thought, and still think, that the Christchurch t-shirt was a nice thing to do. It wasn’t really that cool of Ana to do her piece. Whilst what followed was, admittedly at times, rather emotionally charged – at the end of the day, we've raised in excess of $3,500 (at last count) from the t-shirt sales alone. And we’re really stoked about that. I think some dudes in Christchurch will as well.

Whether or not you view any sort of profit being made from a charitable t-shirt as being disingenuous or not, it isn’t for us to decide – and you’re free to your opinions.

What we will admit to and apologise for is a few errors of judgement and reacting immaturely. While we stand by a lot of what we said over the course of the day – there were statements that we now see were made in an over-emotive state. The whole issue really stems from a number of miscommunications – from both parties – and whether we should have sent out an amendment to the press release, whether she should have asked us before print; it doesn’t really matter now.

What isn’t cool is the people questioning our level of commitment to the cause – we’re not people who celebrate a tragedy, and we don’t want to be seen that way. So we’ll give some more money. Straight from our pocket. Straight to the Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal. No profits. No margins.

WE’RE DONATING AN EXTRA $1,000 OUT OF OUR OWN POCKET TO THE RED CROSS CANTERBURY EARTHQUAKE APPEAL. We’re not asking anyone to match our contribution. We just want to show that it's about the support - that's the main thing.

Cool.