Planet Money Crew Merges T-Shirts And Journalism

from the hey,-that-sounds-familiar! dept

Just a day after we announced our combined plans to save journalism and sell some t-shirts, the always excellent Planet Money team at NPR did an entire show about their own plans to get into the t-shirt business. Planet Money, we’ve noted in the past, has really taken the concept of experiential journalism to new levels, by not just reporting on certain subjects, but getting really involved in the topics to better understand them. This is great.

And, their latest plan is to get into the t-shirt business to better understand what it’s like to manage such a business. Of course, we’ve noted in the past that there’s actually a ton of money to be made in the t-shirt business, even as some of our critics have mocked our business model ideas as being limited to just selling “looooooots of t-shirts” and little else. In response, of course, we sold a ton of t-shirts with that as the slogan (I’m wearing mine now).

The Planet Money podcast about t-shirts highlights a few interesting points that again fit in with plenty of the things we talk about here. For example, they spend time talking to a “trends” expert, who notes that the big thing in selling high end luxury t-shirts, is to include a “story” with the shirt. It’s the story that gets people willing to buy the shirt. She mentions how some of the shirts have huge tags that include a detailed story about where the shirt was made. This kicks off a discussion among the Planet Money crew about how their whole business is telling stories, and they should be able to tell a good story with their shirt. This actually reminds me of the Significant Objects project that we’ve written about a few times, where a group of fiction writers sold random trinkets on eBay… but did so with a fictional story about the object. That fictional story (given away for free) made the little trinkets much more valuable, and they were sold for much higher than nominal prices.

It was yet another example of an infinite good (the story) being used to make a scarce good (the trinket) much more valuable. It’s neat to see the same thing happening in t-shirts as well, as it sort of ties a bunch of these different ideas together.

Oh, and one last thing. In the podcast, they discuss how high end t-shirts, with high quality cotton, can sell for over $200, and talk about how their own t-shirt, which they insist will be a hell of a lot nicer than your typical cheap NPR t-shirt, will probably be sold for about $50. Given all of this, I should note that our own t-shirts are also high quality American Apparel shirts that are crazy soft and comfy… and are offered at the bargain price of just $25… including a one-year subscription to the Techdirt crystal ball feature. It’s a bargain. So, if you’re interested in t-shirts and journalism, you can pick up our high-quality “paywall” t-shirt to make sure people have to pay you to keep talking:

Or just sign up for our brainstorming event on saving journalism, where you’ll get the t-shirt as well… and maybe we’ll even figure out a way to discuss t-shirts and journalism.

Filed Under: business models, journalism, planet money, t-shirts