Keen IO are a San Francisco startup that makes it easy to create real-time data applications through the use of their API. What this means in non-tech terms is that 60,000 people use Keen IO APIs to capture, analyze, and embed data analytics into their products. It allows them to use all this data and present it in a usable way, through graphs, charts, tables etc.
Because they’re a technical product, their primary users tend to be developers. And to engage their audience they’ve hidden* a brilliant free t-shirt Easter egg in their API documentation – for our non-technical readers, this is the “manual” that their users must consult to know how to implement Keen IO’s code properly.
We all approve of motivated, engaged teams, right? Like this lovely bunch of humans from Bold.
Whether you’re a team member or someone who’s managing a team, having a group of people who enjoy working together in concerted way is absolutely critical to success. If your team isn’t harmonious and effective, you hugely limit your chance of achieving the team’s aims.
Or, to put it in another way:
“When you’re growing..[….]..the biggest challenge is getting the founders to understand that the team is the product”.
Thankfully there’s been a huge amount of research into how to improve performance, motivation, and job satisfaction in teams and organisations. There’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all approach, but there are some simple things that you can do in a quick and cost-effective way make your team’s life a little bit more fun and efficient.
One such way is through having a team uniform. And in our case, team t-shirts.
MindMate show off their t-shirts (and general good vibes!)
Firstly, we’re not saying you should provide a compulsory uniform of daily t-shirts for your team. While that certainly is a good potential approach in some sectors (e.g. catering and hospitality), many types of team will prefer to save the t-shirts for optional wear, or for special occasions like team-building or conferences.
But whether it’s every day, or once a year, there’s plenty of evidence that a uniform or a great t-shirt can bond your team, make everyone feel more valued. And make them better at their job!
T-shirts are an incredible tool for spreading a message of good charity causes, creating team unity, and rewarding volunteers. They are hugely visible, cheap, and reusable many, many times. They’re ideal for both marketing AND team-building.
Volunteers at music festival, Swn
With this in mind, we want to make it clear that Ramp cares about more than just helping you order t-shirts. We love music, fairness, friends, democracy and equality. And that’s why we want to use our business to help people doing good.
So, starting in March, we’re launching a new project for good charity causes.
Every month we’ll give away a bunch of free high-quality, screenprinted t-shirts to a project, charity, or organisation that is making the world a better place.
And each month we’ll write about this organisation, and follow the story of those t-shirts – where they went, who wore them, and how they benefited the project that received them. And then we’ll ask that project to nominate the next month’s recipients so that the t-shirt love is spread wider and wider.
Are branded t-shirts a justified marketing expense and one of the best best adwords alternative? There’s an endless stream of other things you could spend that money on – Facebook advertising, PPC, print, direct mail, you name it.
Now, I’ve never seen anybody dressed in a Google Adwords campaign, but a well-designed and well thought out company t-shirt can be a devastatingly effective and versatile business tool.
But here’s the big question – are t-shirts just a vanity thing, or are they actually worth investing money in? And are they really a better advertising medium than Facebook or Google?
We’re just starting to get ready for the influx of orders for this year’s beer, music, movies and tech fest that is South By South West in Austin, Texas. SXSW t-shirts are an absolutely vital part of this amazing event, and we don’t recall seeing more than a handful of people wearing much else during our times there!
So, for inspiration, here’s some previous great SXSW t-shirts that have been spotted wandering around the conference centre by day, and 6th Street by night….
Startup Repp got some brilliant conversations started in 2013 with this provocative number!
Update – if the article below doesn’t help, simply email your design to Neil and he’ll get back to you ASAP with an answer.
If you’re going to be screenprinting your images onto t-shirts, you need to know how many colours are in your t-shirt design. Now that should be straightforward, right? Well, yes and no. Let’s look at a few cases where it’s not quite so simple.
But first, why do we even need to know how many colours there are? Why can’t we just print your shirt, dammit?
You’ve got your logo ready to go. You’ve got thousands of people ready to buy. Your event is coming up soon. Time to get some screen printed t-shirts made.
Cool. We do that.
Ramp T-shirts’ co-founder, Neil Cocker, gives a quick walkthrough of the ordering process of custom t-shirts through the fastest, smartest t-shirt ordering website.
Anybody who wants high quality screen printed t-shirts for their teams or events can finalise their purchase in under 3 minutes.
Whenever you need branded t-shirts Ramp will save you time. Thanks to its smart data, the website suggests the sizes you may need – depending on where you are in the world (you can read more about that here).
In other words – we can predict the correct sizes for you and let you create your own t-shirt design.
Hit us up on the live chat at http://www.ramp.fm and we’ll answer any questions you have.
Product Hunt launches businesses successfully — scroll to the bottom for our key takeaways!
Hi, I’m Neil, the CEO of Ramp (we’re trying to make the process of buying custom t-shirts for your team quicker, smarter, simpler and more transparent), and we recently spent three days with a significant presence on the front page of one of the greatest platform for promoting services in Technology. I’d like to share with you what happened, and how we’ve benefited.
You can read a million and one blog posts about how to “win” on Product Hunt. This isn’t one of those. This is just putting some simple, honest numbers around what happened to us. I can’t be sure whether our success was down to our, ahem, genius or dumb luck. Or a mix of both.
Some great artworks used as a t-shirt design inspiration
Before you get started, bear in mind that creating a logo or artwork shouldn’t be a quick job, especially when you’re going to use it for your t-shirt design. Think about how you want to represent your brand and whether what you’ve created fits with your style. After all, this will end up adorning most of your merch. An instantly recognisable logo or a clever piece of eye-catching artwork can help you stand out from the crowd.
![Uniforms improve job satisfaction and efficiency [Research]](https://ramp.fm/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/workbold-white-on-black-Premium-Large-e1494427748159.jpg)
