I’ve been researching Chicago’s roller skating history since 2009. I have tons of information and wanted to present it to the world my way. On December 8, 2018, I’m sharing some of this information at my event, How We Roll: History of Black Skating in Chicago.
When I started planning How We Roll all I knew is that I wanted to have an event to commemorate the very first day black people were able to roller skate indoors. I put the deposit on the rink in May because I knew I was going to do it. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.
Now, what I didn’t know were the lessons I was going to learn with these flippin’ t-shirts.
Again, all I knew was that I had a dope idea – a roller skate word cloud created from the names of the rinks where black people skated. This is an original idea. I found an amazing designer on Fiverr who helped bring this vision to life. That was the easy part. Kinda.
I then had to find a t-shirt printer that used DTG technology? Do you know what that is? I didn’t either. It’s direct to garment printing, a digital form of t-shirt printing. And it is NOT cheap. But the skate really pops with DTG. It took a few weeks to find a reasonably priced printer. I wanted to work with a local printer but they did not respond in a timely manner.
Then I had to learn about brands types of t-shirts. Up to this point, I never gave this a thought. Now I’m familiar with brands, sizes and types of shirts. And let’s not forget the many colors of shirts. Who knew??? This was emotionally draining because I really wanted my shirts printed by October 15th, which didn’t happen.
AND THEN I had a little challenge setting up the store on my site, Real Skate Stories. I figured it out with the help of members of All About WordPress group. Thankfully, the store and the shirts are ready for purchases.
I have a few points here:
- Any idea you have will grow if you work it.
- But you have to be ready to work. I’m always in work mode but I wasn’t ready for the whole t-shirt thing.
- You may feel alone on your venture but you have supporters. Thanks to Shamatia Shawn Swanigan for staying on my ass to get the shirts out. I had to give weekly updates. Edmund Dantes for helping me find vendors and stuff. Allison McCray LaToya Pamplin Burney Brown Kim Kimberly Dequiana Brooks Jackson and everyone else for promoting my event and shirts.
- Finally, please buy my shirts. https://www.realskatestories.com/store/
Hope to see you at my event and in one of my shirts.