How can we sell our shirt on your site?

[Brian]

Many of the firehouses are creating their own shirt to raise funds for the families in their firehouse.

In an effort to help get exposure for those shirts, and a way to make all the shirts available together in one place, we would like to get every firehouse's shirt on our site.

This will be a slow process, as there has been a tremendous loss, and there are going to be quite a number a shirt designs available.

As of December, we have 2 company shirts right now. One from Engine 225, and a new one from Ladder 61.

If you would allow us to offer your company shirt on the site, we'd be grateful, and the people looking for more shirts will be grateful. The money raised from the sale of your design will be directed to the fund of your choice, and noted on the site.

For more details, please contact me: brian@fallenbrothers.com

[Brian]

We would need from you the artwork and a couple of sample shirts, if you've already had the shirts made up.

The artwork.
Send the artwork data files to file@fallenbrothers.com
The files should be in the original format, like Photoshop or Illustrator. Zip them if they are too large for you. If you can't get the original format, a LARGE .tiff or .gif or .jpg will do.
But, it needs to be large, so the details are not lost when transferring to the shirt.
Your 'artist' should know about this. Have them send us the original. If you have a slow connection, you could send it to us on CD.

Sample shirts
We need 2 sample shirts, if you've already made some up. This is for comparison, so that we make sure our shirts match your shirts as closely as possible.

This is not a quick process, and we are overloaded with work, so the sooner the process gets started, the sooner your shirt can become available online for the rest of the country to have.

Direction of Funds
Money raised by your shirt will be directed to the fund of your choice. So, if you have a specific fund setup for your own brothers, we would need the name and address of the fund.

If you'd like it to go into our general fund, that is fine also. Our general fund will be distributed to different funds as we determine. One such fund will be the Elsasser fund. Also, we'd like to have some money to the side so when we lose a brother in another state, we are able to help out their family.

[Brian]

We use our own printer right now, which streamlines the process for us and allows us to handle the volume of orders. Each shirt is folded, bagged, and bar coded for individual sale in the warehouse.

You should still use your current printer for the shirts you process in the firehouse, and for events and the like.

Your local printers have been there in the past, are there for you now, and will be there in the future. They have given everyone incredible deals to help out with the fund raising.

We have spoken to several of our 'regular' local printers, as we wanted to try to keep our production local. At this time, it is not possible to use them for our process, due to the bag and tag, and shipping to a warehouse in Texas where our orders get processed.

We are trying to keep costs down, frustration down, workload down, and keep things as streamlined as possible. As things settle down a bit, we will re-address this issue.

For now, if you'd like your shirt on our site, please let us know.

[Brian]

If you are not from FDNY, and you have a design for a shirt, and you'd like us to consider using it for fund raising, please send me the design, as per the instructions above.

send to file@fallenbrothers.com

Our main focus for now will be to help get the FDNY firehouses get their shirts the exposure, but if we can slip your design up in the meantime, we will consider it.

[Kevin]

Of course. It's 'your' shirt. If you just want to do a limited run, we can do that. And when we run out of inventory, we're done. Or, we can keep it up there. Normally, we'd try to keep the older shirts on the site. We are about to put the Fowler shirt back up. He died in 1999. We keep it up there, since there is always someone that might be looking for the older shirts, like a new probie class.

In the case of the WTC, this is completely new ground. We suspect that different shirts will be phased out, and one or two favorites will stay around for the long haul. Whatever the public and the artists want.

[Kevin]

No. In most cases the manufacturers are making shirts for you to deliver to members and local neighbors through the fire department or vendor shows. Fallen Brothers can fill these orders at any time for this reason, however we focus on single sales of shirts with national attention. So we can reach concerned and generous citizens that much of your members would want to reach but don't have the manpower to handle.

[Kevin]

If you get us the artwork and shirts, we estimate that we might have them on the site within one month. We have new items coming into the shop currently, so all of them require time to process. Also, as more firehouses are starting to contact us about getting their shirts on the site, we've got to try to manage the new designs slowly and not overwhelm the system.

[Chris]

can I help in any way with the graphics coming in from firehouses for the t-shirts? checking size, resolution, format, etc?

Response from Brian:
Thanks.
Right now, if we get the original artwork from the artist that creates the shirt, then we shouldn't need any help.

However, perhaps we could use you if someone only sends us a shirt without the digital artwork. Maybe you could then scan it or otherwise recreate the artwork.