Wow, have we ever had a record week! The New York Times Magazine column about Destee-Nation has sent countless new customers our way, resulted in lots more press and inspired a whole helluva a lot of you to fill out our new Suggest a T-Shirt Form. We’re absolutely thrilled and hard at work printing and shipping and responding to all of you.
Here are a few of our favorite magazines, newspapers and blogs that have mentioned us this week:
When columnist and author, Rob Walker contacted our founder a couple months ago for a piece he wanted to do, we quickly did our research and discovered a kindred spirit. Rob’s new book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, strikes a deep chord and articulates so many of the original notions we embraced when we started this little t-shirt company. We feel honored to be the recipients of his attention and powerful words.
Go read Rob Walker’s great piece about Destee-Nation in his New York Times Magazine column Consumed! You can also visit his blog Murketing.com to read an archive of Consumed and so much more.
We’re finally ready to announce our big news: Destee-Nation t-shirts are now on sale at Nordstrom! After a few months of meetings, planning and some grueling production decisions, we shipped our first order to Seattle-area and Southern California Nordstrom stores earlier this week. Next up on the agenda: Northern California and Hawaii, with Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Florida all on the docket later this year.
In spite of its nation-wide presence and household name, at heart Nordstrom is a family-run and privately operated company, and we have felt that energy resonating from everyone who has been integral in this process. Everyone we’ve worked with has been super helpful and accommodating, and if you’ve ever shopped at Nordstrom, you’ll know the sales team members are knowledgeable about their products and take great care to assist their customers.
We feel confident our relationship with them will be lasting and rewarding for all of our Destee-Nation member businesses, whether their t-shirts are sold in Nordstrom or just benefit from the added buzz to our t-shirt shop.
We’ve been noticing that a lot of our new customers land on our website after searching for vintage t-shirts. Many of them find what they’re looking for and buy a couple t-shirts. Some of them, however, click away when they don’t see the t-shirts they were expecting. The way we see it, we’re one of three distinct varieties of vintage t-shirt shops online. There are:
- The place it represents has been around for a long time. Many of our member businesses have been selling their t-shirts since the middle of the last century.
- The represented business is a historic monument or landmark of some kind.
Recently, in our attempt to play fair with the shops that don’t have authentic vintage shirts, we decided to add our t-shirts with vintage styling to our featured list of vintage tees.
So check them out and, if you’re so inclined, let us know what you think about the term vintage.
A question our Kona staff heres over and over again is, “Do you guys have hats for these places too?” And now we do. Well, almost anyway. We currently have five of our favorite Hawaiian Destee-Nation designs (plus a couple from our store) embroidered on quality baseball caps, and more are on the way for many more of our member businesses.
Yet another way to show your local pride!
The Seattle Channel, a local television station that presents an eclectic series of shows about all things Seattle on cable TV (Channel 21 on Comcast and Millennium) and online, contacted us to do a piece on our t-shirt company. The City-a-Go-Go crew filmed a few days later and turned the whole thing around in a week. We’re thrilled with the way Nancy Guppy and her talented team put this together.
Visit The Seattle Channel for the complete City-a-Go-Go episode and much, much more.
As our t-shirt scouts head into some new terriotory in the coming weeks and months, Arizona and Kauai in the current and near term, I’ve been on the lookout for resources to help plan their missions. Finding places that locals love and patronize can sometimes be a challenge, particularly if they’re off the beaten path, but not anymore…
Tripadvisor has frequently been a top source of research for us, but now that we’ve ventured into their forums there’s no turning back. I posted a request for suggestions before we head over to Kauai in a couple weeks, and the response has been phenomenal. Check out all of the cool t-shirt ideas these knowlegeable locals threw out there for us.
Yesterday along with millions of other Americans, Destee-Nation took part in Take your Daughters (& Sons) to Work Day. Jamie, our silkscreen master brought his daughter Jessica, and Chris, our marketing guru and Seattle rep, was accompanied by his youngest daughter Rachael.
Having helped her dad from the wee age of two, Jessica is no stranger to a print shop. She’s a master folder and knows her way around the shop better than many people 3 times her age. 
It was Rachael’s first time at Destee-Nation HQ, and she made the most of it. She met with several of our member business owners, helped send emails and actually got to print her own shirt. And, it was thanks to Rachael that we took part in this nationwide event in the first place. She found information about it online and even wrote up a little reminder card for dad.
Maybe next year we’ll get lucky and be visited by all our Destee-Nation kiddos, including Peter’s baby girl on the way.
Chris, our lucky guy on the Hop Scotch scene, just sent in this tipsy report:
“Having never been to an event like this before, I was excited about what lay in store. The Fremont Studios proved to be an awesome venue—a real Hollywood style studio right here in Seattle. The humungous main tasting room was alive with cool music, lighting displays, and BEER! There were probably 500 people (average age about 27), and the crowd was very friendly and accommodating.
My ticket gave me 6 tastings, but lucky for me, my wife isn’t all that into beer so I wound up with twelve (don’t worry, the glasses were small). I have never had more varieties of beer in one evening.
From Maredsous Abbey Dubbel (brewed by real-life monks in Belguim) to Manny’s Pale Ale and everything in between; it was a beer nut’s dream come true.
My favorite beer of the evening was the Veracious Brew made by Shawn over at Lazy Boy Brewing in Everett, which, by the way, had some AMAZING beer. Their pilsner was one of the best I have ever tried. My wife and I chatted with Shawn and his wife for ages and were standing there when Lazy Boy ran out of beer! They had more interest than they anticipated and ran clean out. How’s that for advertising…
The best part of the evening was seeing all the Desteenation tavern and brewery t-shirts hanging up behind the cashier’s booth. Prost!, Tractor, 74th Street Ale House, Hales Ales, Nickerson Street Saloon—we had quite a selection, and they were going fast.
All in all it was a very fun evening with great beer and even better people. I hope to score the office tickets again next year.”
When Matt and Co. filmed the TV commerical in Kona earlier this month, Lyman Medeiros also interviewed Matt about Desteenation and our mission to sell vintage t-shirts from beloved, local establishments. We were pleased that they chose to include the bit about Teshima’s Restaurant and to include footage of Mrs. Teshima. She’ll be celebrating her 100th birthday this year, and we’re all excited to honor her and support such a terrific local restaurant.
You can watch the interview by visiting the Big Island TV website and clicking on the ‘Features’ link and then clicking on Desteenation.
Click here to see all of our Hawaiian t-shirts.
The Destee-Nation Shirt Co. Expedition is on a perpetual road trip seeking vintage t-shirts from locally-owned and operated businesses. With our trusty Nikons in hand, we capture images from these places to accompany the written story that is displayed with all of our t-shirts.
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