It’s the end of the year, and what a year it was. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone etc etc, and we just wanted to do a little wrap up of how it was for us, a few highlights, and mostly just to say thanks to all of you that bought some stuff off us, talked rubbish with us on facebook or done some tweets and stuff on twitters. You guys are cool, and without you we’d all probably just be digging holes somewhere (which wouldn’t be all that bad given the tan we’d get and the lunch bars we’d get to eat at).

When we were talking about what happened this year, the first thing that came to mind was the Christchurch Earthquake. While it’s never nice to see such tragedy and loss, I think the lasting memory will be the way NZ came together and the sense of unity, community and love that was shown throughout the country. It was humbling to just be a part of it, and we’re extremely proud to have such amazing customers that were happy to part with their funds to support four charities. To think that – together with you customers – we raised $124,000 for Victim Support, the Salvation Army, Canterbury SPCA, & St John is an amazing achievement – definitely our proudest moment as a business to date.

That was deep. Other highlights were the World Cup, and again being part of a collective community spirit cheering on the All Blacks. Being on the Official World Cup path was great, and getting involved with the Piri tees and all the rest was awesome. We didn’t sleep much on account of all the printing we were doing, but it was totally worth it.

As a business, we’ve grown super substantially this year; acquiring more equipment for screen printing, more heavy-drinking staff members, starting mrvintage.com.au, worked with some new business partners, added a whole range of new product lines, and just generally streamlining the business so we don’t make as many mistakes as we used to. We’ll continue doing this next year, where the journey will continue to bigger and better things – and we’re stoked to have an awesome group of customers that help us shape our business by telling us handy things like how big boobs don’t always work with the crew necks so we need to add more vees and scoops. That stuff’s helpful, and we always like talking about boobs as well, so it’s win-win.

So yeah – thanks heaps and look after yourself over Christmas and New Years. We’ll see you in January where we’ll be undertaking a heavy detoxification of the system.

Cheers, the team at Mr Vintage.

This is just one more big Caps Lock THANK YOU to all of you that purchased a Christchurch relief tee. Your support has helped Christchurch in so many ways and your generosity is truly appreciated.

As I write this, you’ve all helped raised over $99,000 and counting for Victim Support, Canterbury SPCA, St John and the Salvation Army. So I must thank all of you that have purchased a t-shirt or even just told someone about the t-shirts. We’re stoked to see so many of you get behind this.

We’ve been completely humbled by how many people have offered their support – from people on facebook buying t-shirts for people in Christchurch that have lost everything, to all the businesses that have chipped in and ensured as much as possible goes to Christchurch – it’s really special to see.

With that in mind it’s about time we say about thanks to all of the amazing companies we work with that have helped ensure more money from each t-shirt went to Christchurch. If I knew how to do one of those digital love hearts, I would have typed one just back there.

• AS Colour gave us free tees for the volunteers and reduced their prices for all the other Christchurch tees.
• Uniscreen hooked us up with cheaper inks. Man, we used so much ink on all those tees as well.
• Deadline Express have snuck tees on planes and driven all over town for us.
• Direct Payment Solutions removed the transaction fees for all the Christchurch tees.

It really is at a time like this that people stand up to be counted, and we’re absolutely chuffed that so many people are helping – the real NZ way of doing things. I think one thing that’s definitely struck everyone here at Mr Vintage is how caring everyone’s been; from letting out spare rooms, to volunteering time to help with simple things like care packages, to the UC Student Volunteers trading their beers for spades – it’s all been amazing.

We really feel that it shouldn’t take a tragedy such as this for people to show such love, and it’s really on our hearts to carry this loving and caring nature in to our everyday lives. We as a business are going to make a real effort to help out as much as we can, regardless of tragedy. Watch this space; we’re looking forward to keeping up this level of effort and community spirit in all our future endeavours.

It’s not every day that I say this, I assure you, but the other day something pretty awesome happened on facebook. I know what you’re thinking, and no, it wasn’t that Cindy that I went to Primary School with now has her 4^th child – it was just after we’d listed our Christchurch Earthquake Relief tees for sale...

There were a few people from Christchurch that – after expressing how much they loved the tees and wanted one – sadly didn’t have enough money to buy the t-shirts, as they had already lost everything to the Earthquake. Posting this on facebook, we got to witness some pretty amazing community spirit right in front of us; fellow facebook users from around the country volunteering to buy t-shirts for those in Christchurch. Amazing.

Sometimes I forget that all the little profile pictures and names on our facebook page are actually people, but they are actually all people – really good people! There were more than a few cases, and it was awesome to see – so we thought that there would probably be more people in this situation, and we might as well make it easier for them by matching them up.

It’s super easy, you just fill in a form with your details, and we’ll do the rest; matching you up with someone via a simple email and all you have to sort is the purchase details.

So, if you’re from Christchurch and want a t-shirt, click here.

And if you’re wanting to sponsor a Cantabrian, click here.

100% of the profits from these t-shirts will be going to four separate charities. We will not be making one cent from these t-shirts, and in addition the costs of the t-shirt are markedly cheaper for these t-shirts - meaning a whole lot more from each t-shirt will go to helping Christchurch. AS Colour helped out with cheaper t-shirts, UniScreen provided discounted inks, and Zeald.com worked on a live online counter for free. Their efforts are huge, and we’re stoked we work with such good people.

There are whole rafts of charities that are still in need of your help, and we encourage you to make a direct donation to any one of the charities listed (or any others that we’ve missed). They all need your help, and no one charity is more important than the other. We’ve chosen four that our customers recommended to us and that we felt personally compelled to give to. St John – They fix people, and they’re all volunteers. The Canterbury SPCA – We love animals; they take care of the ones in need. Victim Support – Help people suffering from trauma, of which there are many. The Salvation Army – Providing love, help, support, and clothes.

Our continued thoughts, prayers, and thanks are with those in Christchurch, those with family in Christchurch, and those that have volunteered their time and money to help mend Christchurch and the people of Christchurch back together again

   
 

When something like this happens, trying to put what you’re feeling in to words seems pretty useless. Reading a harrowing personal account (like this) from a survivor this morning, you get a glimpse of what these people are actually going through – but it doesn’t make it any easier – if anything, it just made me feel like we, as a company, still aren’t doing enough.

Doing the normal things like listing a new t-shirt on special, bringing out a St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt range, making reports – all seem wrong. Sure, we made some t-shirts for the volunteers yesterday, and it was really cool to hear them personally saying how much it meant to them, but there must be more that we can do. And we want to.

The obvious solution would be to make a Christchurch t-shirt and donate profits to Christchurch through an organisation. The other, perhaps more obvious attachment with that, is what happened last timeand the opinions people formed of our motives and intentions. I’m not going to re-hash over what’s been and gone on – because it quite frankly doesn’t seem all that important at this juncture. We realise that if we were to release a t-shirt this time round there will always be people that would deem it purely a PR exercise or an act of money hungry ‘vultures’ (as one NZ t-shirt company so nicely put it). I guess the underlying question is; do the opinions of these few prevent us from raising potentially thousands of dollars in assisting with aid and relief in Christchurch? Remember, we wouldn't be making anything off these tees, ALL pprofits would go be offered.

Seeing how much people want to help, through twitter, facebook, and conversations with family and friends – we’re convinced we can raise in excess of $150,000 for Christchurch. That’s what we’ve got in mind, and that’s what we’re aiming for, at least.

But nothing’s that simple, and before making any rash decisions, we figured we’d ask you all.  We’ve had a lot of requests – ever since the last earthquake on Sept 4, 2010 really – and even more so since Tuesdays’ tragedy, to make a t-shirt and donate proceeds to Christchurch. These people, like us, don’t wish to capitalise on another’s misfortune – they simply want to help. We’d be donating ALL of the profits of these t-shirts to an as yet undecided Christchurch organisation; we wouldn’t make a single cent off these t-shirts, we wouldn’t release any other t-shirts during this time – in essence all operations would stop so we could fully focus on raising as much as we possibly could for Christchurch. This isn’t about publicity, it isn’t about controversy – it’s about helping, and it’s about pitching in the best way we can. All we know is the t-shirt.

We’re ridiculously proud to see the way this country has responded; it really makes you proud to be a New Zealander – we just want to help a little bit more. Having said that, the last thing we want to do is so ruthlessly aim to raise money that we, in the process, offend those that are most directly involved – those in Christchurch. This has to be our main concern; it is after all those in Christchurch that we’re trying to help. I suppose it wouldn’t really matter if we raised $200,000 but offended even one Christchurch resident that suffered through this traumatic event.

So we want to know what you think, do we do a t-shirt? We’re thinking about selling the tees for $50 – at the end of the day, it’s all going to Christchurch, so we didn’t think anyone would complain. We also want to know which charity/organisation you think we should be donating to (if we do the t-shirt of course).

If not, what else can we do? we’re more than open to any and all ideas – after all, this isn’t about a t-shirt, it’s about helping.

Like the rest of you, we’ve been absolutely devastated watching events unfold over recent days. It’s a truly horrible thing, but we’ve been amazed at how much support everyone in NZ is showing – it’s really heartening to see.

Again - probably like most of you - we’ve been feeling pretty helpless about it all up here in Auckland, so we got in touch with the UC Student Volunteer Army and asked them if they were keen on getting some tees for the team. They were really stoked, and although something as trivial as t-shirts may not seem like it makes a difference, speaking to Sam from the UC Army Volunteers, it really became clear that it was a real lift to the whole team. He said they all felt blown away by the support, and it just really lifted moral – and with all of them sporting UC Volunteer t-shirts, just made them feel that little more united in their mammoth task of helping clean up Christchurch.

Talking to our mates over at t-shirt manufacturers AS Colour, they were really keen to help out. “With a showroom in Christchurch and staff, friends, and customers in the city – AS Colour feels very much personally affected by the quake. Helping out the UC Army with the tees is the least we can do for the cause – do some great work guys”! We’re totally stoked that they’ve come to the party – and with 750 tees in this first run, and another1200 odd coming for the second run – AS Colour have been incredible in making sure these volunteers are well looked after.

Now we just had to get them down there – Deadline Express got the job done. We got on the blower to Johnny at Deadline and he was only too happy to get on board. He got in touch with some of his mates, and the deal was sealed. He jumped in the van himself, picked up the tees from AS Colour, and they were with us within 15 minutes. If you need to get shit done, Deadline Express don’t muck around that’s for sure.

So we came in early this morning, printed the 750 tees in some kind of record time, and before I could email Johnny, he was at our doorstep loading the boxes. Amazing team effort; and I can’t thank enough the teams at AS Colour for their generosity and Deadline Express for their efficiency and generosity again.

Even though it’s only in a small way, we’re just stoked we could help out. Our continued thoughts and prayers go out to all of those in and around Christchurch, and we’re behind each 2,000 of you awesome UC Student Volunteers – you’ll deserve a beer after this for sure.