Visit our Fremont Store this weekend and cash in on our 40% off Blowout T-Shirt Sale. The neighborhood is hosting its annual Fremont Fair, and we’re celebrating with a huge sale on everything in the store. Don’t miss your chance to save big on all of our local t-shirts, women’s t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, hoodies and even kids tees.
See you at the Solstice Parade—who doesn’t love a naked bicyclist!
Wow, have we ever had a record week! The New York Times Magazine column about Destee-Nation has sent countless new customers our way, resulted in lots more press and inspired a whole helluva a lot of you to fill out our new Suggest a T-Shirt Form. We’re absolutely thrilled and hard at work printing and shipping and responding to all of you.
Here are a few of our favorite magazines, newspapers and blogs that have mentioned us this week:
Time flies. It’s already been over a month since our scouts were on Oahu looking for the top landmark establishments on the island. Until recently, our Hawaiian t-shirt collection has been predominantly from Kona on the Big Island. But our scouts finally had time to do a little island hopping, and we’re slowly rolling out the new designs.
Our latest additions include: Honolulu Scuba Co., Matsumoto Shave Ice, Like Like Drive Inn.
And coming soon to a t-shirt near you:
When columnist and author, Rob Walker contacted our founder a couple months ago for a piece he wanted to do, we quickly did our research and discovered a kindred spirit. Rob’s new book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, strikes a deep chord and articulates so many of the original notions we embraced when we started this little t-shirt company. We feel honored to be the recipients of his attention and powerful words.
Go read Rob Walker’s great piece about Destee-Nation in his New York Times Magazine column Consumed! You can also visit his blog Murketing.com to read an archive of Consumed and so much more.
We’re finally ready to announce our big news: Destee-Nation t-shirts are now on sale at Nordstrom! After a few months of meetings, planning and some grueling production decisions, we shipped our first order to Seattle-area and Southern California Nordstrom stores earlier this week. Next up on the agenda: Northern California and Hawaii, with Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Florida all on the docket later this year.
In spite of its nation-wide presence and household name, at heart Nordstrom is a family-run and privately operated company, and we have felt that energy resonating from everyone who has been integral in this process. Everyone we’ve worked with has been super helpful and accommodating, and if you’ve ever shopped at Nordstrom, you’ll know the sales team members are knowledgeable about their products and take great care to assist their customers.
We feel confident our relationship with them will be lasting and rewarding for all of our Destee-Nation member businesses, whether their t-shirts are sold in Nordstrom or just benefit from the added buzz to our t-shirt shop.
We’ve been on a bit of a blog hiatus these last few months, but it in no way reflects how busy we’ve been. New shirts are rolling off the presses every day, and our stores (Seattle, Kona and online) had a great holiday season. As we enter into the new year, there are lots of big deals on the horizon, including possibly distributing to major, national retailers. Stay tuned!
Countless doughnut runs and a few extra pounds later, we recently decided Top Pot Doughnuts needed to be a Destee-Nation. They’re a little bigger than most of our members—they’ve got a few shops and they distribute doughnuts to several places around town, but they’re still locally-owned and loved. Nothing wrong with success…
We’re also thrilled with their lovely treatment of our logo on the Top Pot website. Very cool site design too.
Fremont’s Oktoberfest is finally here again, and Destee-Nation is lending our support with some very cool t-shirts, only available at the event*. This year’s beer-happy line-up promises to be a full weekend of boozing and schmoozing, and whether you want to go for the gold in the 5K, bring the kiddies to watch the chainsaw pumpkin carving or just stumble around the beer garden all day, there’s bound to be something to quench your thirst for fun. USA Today called this local Seattle Festival one of the Top Ten Oktoberfests in the world. So, be there or be sorry, this weekend starting tonight from 5pm-midnight; Saturday, from 11am-midnight; and Sunday, the 23rd from 11am-6pm.
*Volunteers get a free t-shirt…
We’ve been noticing that a lot of our new customers land on our website after searching for vintage t-shirts. Many of them find what they’re looking for and buy a couple t-shirts. Some of them, however, click away when they don’t see the t-shirts they were expecting. The way we see it, we’re one of three distinct varieties of vintage t-shirt shops online. There are:
- The place it represents has been around for a long time. Many of our member businesses have been selling their t-shirts since the middle of the last century.
- The represented business is a historic monument or landmark of some kind.
Recently, in our attempt to play fair with the shops that don’t have authentic vintage shirts, we decided to add our t-shirts with vintage styling to our featured list of vintage tees.
So check them out and, if you’re so inclined, let us know what you think about the term vintage.
A question our Kona staff heres over and over again is, “Do you guys have hats for these places too?” And now we do. Well, almost anyway. We currently have five of our favorite Hawaiian Destee-Nation designs (plus a couple from our store) embroidered on quality baseball caps, and more are on the way for many more of our member businesses.
Yet another way to show your local pride!
The Destee-Nation Shirt Co. Expedition is on a perpetual road trip seeking vintage t-shirts from locally-owned and operated businesses. With our trusty Nikons in hand, we capture images from these places to accompany the written story that is displayed with all of our t-shirts.
Learn more...
