Hi, this is Ron, founder of Nameswear.
Today, I want to share with you the story behind Story shirts, and how it all started.
I will share with you the lowest point in my life that almost plunged me into depression.
I will also tell you what happened on Feb 10, 2018, the day after my 40th Birthday... and how it all ties in together.
Ok, I am jumping ahead of myself. So let us start from the beginning :)
Ever since childhood, I have seen some of my close family and friends suffer from various debilitating diseases, many of which have no cure. Moreover, it pained me to see that there was so little awareness for some of these diseases and conditions.
But one particular incident, that I still remember as if it was just yesterday, started me on the journey I am on.
A few years ago, a friend's mom died of Lupus, an autoimmune disease where your body's immune system starts attacking your own organs. Like many autoimmune diseases, Lupus doesn't have a cure.
I knew her very well, and it was heart-breaking to lose her.
Her passing pushed me to do whatever I could to help spread awareness for Lupus.
Having had some basic designing skills, I started coming up with creative ideas that I put on T-shirts and sold them at Lupus Awareness events.
Seeing people wear Lupus Awareness shirts designed by me filled me with joy. Knowing that my small effort was helping serve a larger cause, was deeply satisfying.
Over the next 2 years, I started designing shirts not just for Lupus Awareness, but also for a dozen other diseases and causes.
I got encouraging feedback from people who wore my shirts, and that pushed me to work harder.
To automate some of my processes, I migrated to a print-on-demand platform that would take care of logistics and fulfilment. I also hired 2 part-time designers to help me come up with more creative ideas for my designs.
In order to reach more people, I even started exploring and learning about advertising on Facebook.
Facebook advertising opened up a whole new world for me. And we started doing more sales. People loved wearing our Awareness shirts!
100% of the profits from the sale of the shirts were invested back in advertising. This went on for several months, and sales started increasing.
But little did I know things were about to change, almost overnight...
I really don't know what exactly happened, but in October 2017, my FB ads suddenly stopped reaching the right audience. I was spending money, but was hardly making any sales.
I dipped into my personal savings to run more ads, hoping sales would pick up. But they didn't.
FB advertising can be excruciatingly expensive, and before I realized, I had already put in over $10,000 in FB ads. Unbelievable. But yes, I did that, hoping things would turn for the better.
In retrospect, I feel embarrassed to even think how I could be so reckless in spending this money. I could have easily gone slow and could have exercised some caution.
That was a lesson learned... the hard way.
I later learned that FB had made some major changes to their algorithm around that time, and maybe this was the reason my ads were under-performing. Not sure...
...but whatever the reason, I finally ended up losing almost all of my savings.
This was the lowest time of my life, ever. I was anguished, and felt lost and dejected. I was almost in depression.
I decided to give myself a break from creating any designs.
I also vowed never to run Facebook ads again.
And for 4 months, I did not.
And here is what happened on Feb 10, 2018, the day after my 40th Birthday...
...I got a surprise mail from a lady asking me to custom-design a Multiple Sclerosis Awareness shirt for her. (Like Lupus, MS is an autoimmune disease too)
She wanted to honor 5 of her friends, all of them MS warriors, by putting their names on the shirt.
I felt it was a cool idea. The design was very simple. So I quickly designed the shirt for her and gave her the link to purchase, but...
... I never heard from her after that. Till this date.
Maybe the Universe made her send that mail just to plant an idea in my head!
Since I liked the idea, I wanted to test if it would resonate with others. And the only way I could properly do that was to run Facebook ads again...
...and as you can imagine, after burning my hands just a few months ago, I was very, very reluctant in doing so!
But a persistent gut feeling prompted me to give it a shot. So, I ran my first FB ad in 4 months to check the viability of this raw idea.
To my utmost relief, Facebook seemed to have gotten back to delivering my ads to the right audience!
Furthermore, my audience loved the thought of honoring themselves or their loved ones by putting their names on the shirt!
And that lay the foundation of our Story Shirts.
As months passed, we listened to the feedback we received and improvised the idea to where it is today.
Every day I thank the lady who planted this seed of an idea in my head, and to everyone else who helped us refine the idea.
It was only later did I realize that since every name on our shirts had their own unique story to tell, these shirts were more like a rare collection of silent, deeply-moving, personal stories... unspoken stories of honor, hope, strength, determination, resilience, passion, love and joy... and sometimes, even of loss, pain, fear and sadness.
And even though you cannot actually get to know all these people and their stories, you know deep in your heart, that in many ways your story is similar to theirs. And this knowing is powerful. It connects you to everyone else on the shirt through an invisible thread of love, support and understanding.
And that thought inspired us to call these shirts 'Story' shirts.
I realized that in order to take Story Shirts to where I wanted, I would be needing help of someone with more experience than me. So I invited my long-time friend Abhishek to be a co-founder in this venture. Abhishek has 15+ years of experience in marketing, strategizing and building funnels/automation
With him taking charge of many aspects of the business, we have seen tremendous growth in our reach campaigns. In a few short years, our Story shirts have given hope and strength to over 200,000 people... while at the same time, helping them honor themselves and spread awareness.
So that is the story behind our Story shirts!
We believe each and every one of you who submits their name and wears these shirts is an advocate for what you (and we) stand for.
And I thank you for that!
