Breaking Christmas Rules

ART 1. THE SANTA PRINCIPLE and the Christmas sales graph.
Christmas is a full on trading time for everyone … here at Arcade we’re printing our asses off as are most t-shirt printers around the place but we’re late in comparison with the big chains who have been pushing Christmas since August and October and while the elves have been importing since the year before that and planning product and surveying for 3 years and before that, forecasting your every move so Santa knows where you will be on Christmas night to drop presents and what presents you already bought yourself (What’s left on your credit card) and most importantly, if you’ve been naughty or nice.
Why do they do all this planning? You ask. Well the big guys already have all he meta data and it says that (in some industries) 80% – 90% of all trading is done at Christmas. So naturally they want Christmas to be a friendly A B Demographic personal co-brand by the time you get there.
The ultimate open source co-brand logo in the world being ‘Santa’, in his green and white outfit was created by a political cartoonist Thomas Nast rumoured to be shifted to red and white for Coca-Cola to sell cocaine in liquid form and is based off St Nicolas who incidently wasn’t always very bloody happy about anything in real life, but is portrayed as a very holy German gift giving guy who traditionally wore green and a very unorthodox and impractical hat … blah blah blah (Really from Turkey worth noting in current political climate) but who cares when the graph says let’s sell as much as we can and everyone wants the line on the graph the CEO is pointing to to beat the line he was pointing to last year … to continue the ever expanding western sales model economy (Share holder dividends / swimming pools) into infinity. Apparently. St Nicolas also bent to the western world and it’s expansive ways having started out with one reindeer and expanding in true entrepreneurial fashion to a bigger sled and logistical necessity of 8 reindeer into a star studded line up including several well cast household names of the period. My favourite being ‘Blitzen’ alluding to the ‘Coca Cola’ cross ‘snowy’ references which may explain Rudolph’s red nose, confident swagger and need to be the centre of attention to a certain extent.

PART 2. THE SMALL ENTREPRENEUR / FOOTBALL PRINCIPLE – Where’s the friggin’ goal.
So … it’s the season to be jolly and around here unlike the big chains based on imported products, it’s the season of the little guy making shit real. People starting T-shirt labels and working artwork and hitting markets or people using t-shirts, or posters or whatever to promote other products and parties and events to generate some healthy business energy and goodwill into the New Year.
And just maybe in this big wide internet world of ours push some product over seas. It depends on what you want and how you want to do it but it does take some planning and action as this stuff rarely happens when you are in a hammock or asleep. They say the number one thing venture capitalists look for in an entrepreneur is big audacious goals as it show’s they are up for making a difference. In this case – exporting as opposed to importing. Imagine doing Certton Australian made shirts into China – the massive middle class over there don’t want to buy ‘Made in China’ – they want quality and they want to buy Australian and that is one of untold real opportunities for the brave out there.

(insert funny & off key image (appropriate to universal and timely feelings)(designed to promote attention and re-focus) here).

PART 3. RE-SET get ready 2017 it’s practically here already.
So how do we get to and through Christmas while breaking all the rules in 2016.
It’s been a pretty crazy year of wars and elections and lots of people of note kicking the bucket with the year of the Monkey and his trademark MO mischief is far from over yet so I thought the Far Side cartoon above was pretty apt. Especially the last line where everyone get’s to relax and re-set. Re-set your goals and what you think can be done. The sky is not falling.

(Insert motivational text (Whatever you’re thinking) (better than that) here)

One of the coolest and probably not so much in the public ‘motivation’ psyche is a Re-set / challenge story I hold dear to my heart is about the Japanese inventing something quite radical. It’s a lesson on deciding to do something and going about it like it matters regardless of who is supposed to make the rules. In this case with the Japanese, the U.S. always held a tight tight grip on supply and markets which makes the masterstroke even better.
The story is after spending every cent they had losing WW2 the Japanese had to pay war reparations to the U.S. (and everyone else). They had to rescue their decimated economy with a seriously depleted workforce and had 2 atomic bombs dropped on them so their industrial sector was trashed and they had to pay the U.S. firstly $550 million and later $525 million in 1943 U.S. dollars. For those that study history, you’d also be aware that the Japanese almost had to go to war as America had an oil embargo on the country for 3 years prior to the war even beginning.

So they built the Japanese car export industry to ‘export foreign debt’.

… think about that … they built the Japanese car industry to ‘export foreign debt’.

… that to me is the most serious goal setting example and total disregard of the rules in history … and created one of the most dominant new industries in the world.
Icing on the cake, although it took a while to get there is the name LEXUS. Which stands for ‘Luxury Export U.S.’

So while it’s about cool ideas and rushing around and building something great, it’s also about master strokes of market interpretation and planning but also having a red hot go. Setting goals that go way past Christmas and making sure your red hot go has longevity so when everyone thinks you’re spending too much time glazed over on the couch after spending copious hours in the trough with Rudolph and Blitzen scattering your shitzen …. we’ll all know you’re planning a very merry and original (ignoring al the rules) stratospheric 2017.

THE END

P.S. This is the newsletter sales bit. We’re very busy.
They (Yes those guys) say, if you need something done – give it to someone who’s busy.
That’s us – we print cool t-shirts in waterbased inks for the nicest people. If that is you or interests you … click here for an Arcade price product guide.