Miscellaneous Interview with Jason Sadler of I Wear Your Shirt.com
Interview with Jason Sadler of I Wear Your Shirt.com
Written by Sarah Shepherd Thursday, August 27 2009 14:52
Jason Sadler is revolutionizing the promotional t-shirt. He’s the man behind Iwearyourshirt.com, a business in which Jason “outsources his wardrobe” to companies and individuals who want to spread their message to the world at large. The idea is simple: you buy a day and on that day, he’ll wear your shirt. Days are sold at face value, so January 1st is $1 and December 31st is $365. Jason utilizes the power of social media (Flickr, Ustream, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) to chat it up with people all over while providing welcomed exposure to the companies and people who pay him to wear their shirts. We were lucky enough to snag an interview with Jason, just one week after he was interviewed by CNN about his growing business.
Sarah: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today
Jason: Oh, sure I’m glad to.
Sarah: We were really excited to find out about Iwearyourshirt.com, because we’re in the promotional products business and we love promotional t-shirts. So, once we found out that you were wearing promotional t-shirts for a living, we were very interested.
Jason: I appreciate it. I think it’s a fun idea regardless, but obviously for a company that promotes things, via shirts and other items, it works pretty well.
Sarah: Exactly! So, I just wanted to ask you first of all, where did you get this idea?
Jason: You know, it was one of those ideas that happen to come to me, late at night. I’ve always been a fan of the million dollar homepage, and other quirky marketing ideas that work. I’m a marketing and advertising guy by trade. I just thought of all the times I’ve been to conferences and seen companies giving shirts out. All these companies make all these shirts and you see everyone wearing a shirt that they’ve paid for, and I thought, I could get people to wear shirts for really cheap. I thought of a way to promote it via social media and put an angle on it that helps other people, so that was it.
Sarah: You mentioned promoting via social media. What exactly are all the methods in which you promote?
Sarah: That’s great.
Jason: I’ve developed a bunch of audiences in different places, so it seems to be working pretty well.
Sarah: Yeah, you have over 15,000 followers on Twitter. How many friends do you have on Facebook? Last time I checked, I think it was over 1000. Maybe I’m wrong.
Jason: Yeah, I think I’m at 16,500 on Twitter and growing steadily, and on facebook I’m just under 2,000 friend. I’ve got like 1930 something, so I’m getting close to the 2000 mark and just making friends everywhere I go, or at least trying to.
Sarah: What shirt are you wearing today?
Jason: So today is Sexy Slang. It’s basically charades and pictionary, but it’s got a naughty twist to all the cards. Very interesting shirt of the day, they sent me a bunch of really funny shirts that I showed in the live video show. It’s a fun board game for adults and that’s exactly who they’re looking to market to.
Sarah: That’s pretty fun. Now you mentioned getting more than one shirt and that actually was a question that popped into my head. Do companies send you more than one shirt, because what happens if you spill something?
Jason: Yeah, I usually get one from each company, but I had one company send me 50 shirts. I had a company the other day send me 8 and I wore all 8 at one time and kinda peeled them off throughout the day, and they gave away an Amazon Kindle for that. Like today, the company sent me maybe 7 or 8 shirts and I’m wearing one. I gave one to my buddy Evan who’s in town for a couple days and no promises from me to wear them all, but if something happens I have a backup.
Sarah: I think that’s great, having a backup because everyone spills things and everyone drops things and you never know what’s going to happen.
Jason: I frequent a Mexican restaurant here and whenever I’m wearing a white shirt, I’m like I know this is gonna get salsa all over it one of these times, but it’d be funny and everyone would at least laugh at it.
Sarah: Now I read that you will wear the t-shirts under a tux if you are going to a wedding. Have you had to do that yet? Have you had to wear a t-shirt to a formal event?
Jason: Well, I had Easter Sunday earlier this year and I wore a full suit with just the t-shirt on underneath it. I had a funeral, which was obviously unfortunate, but I was able to throw the shirt on under that as well and no one paid attention to it, but I’ve got a wedding or two coming up at the end of this year so it should be interesting to see how those pan out. I think it’s just a good talking point. You know, I’ll be the only guy there wearing a shirt under a suit jacket and people will be like “what is going on here?”
Sarah: That’s definitely a way to get people to talk up the company. So what’s the most well known company that has sent you shirts to wear? I know that I think you had said Zappos.
Jason: Yeah, I would say Zappos is probably up there. Intuit had me wear a shirt, and they create Turbo Tax, Quicken, Quickbooks, so the products that they work on are pretty well known. Lifelock.com was a great shirt. They sent me a shirt that lit up via 9 volt battery for my birthday. Then my first shirt of the day was Ustream, which I use their live video services and they’re starting to get some pretty good notoriety.
Sarah: What’s the most interesting imprint that you’ve seen, aside from the light up shirt which seems awesome? But I know that you don’t just do companies. You’ll wear shirts that anyone sends you, so they could say Happy birthday Mom or Happy Birthday Grandma, things like that.
Jason: Well, I wore a tuxedo shirt for my buddy, whose good friend was getting married in Alaska, so I wore a tuxedo shirt for them. Obviously, I wasn’t coming up to Alaska, but I felt like I was there hanging out with them, partying all day, so that was a fun one. I had a tank top a couple weeks ago that said Urban Cowgirl on it. I wore that and I even picked up an Urban Cowgirl hat at the store. I wore that little get up all day and when I visited the UPS store to pick up my boxes, they were all just laughing hysterically. They were like, “You have no shame do you?” And I was like “It’s just a fun outfit.”
Sarah: Exactly, it’s like the naked cowboy out in Times Square.
Jason: I love that guy! I bought that guy a couple cups of coffee when I used to work in Times Square back in high school, I was interning there. He is a dedicated human being, that’s for sure.
Sarah: He is. That guy’s out there in the freezing cold when it’s snowing, all the time.
Jason: Yeah, I prefer to get paid to wear shirts, not just to wear underwear.
Sarah: That’s more of a smart idea. Does he even get paid to wear that?
Jason: He would have to get paid. Someone has to pay that guy to wear just underwear in Times Square and play a guitar.
Sarah: That’s true. Ok, so you have worn…how many promotional t-shirts have you worn at this point?
Jason: I couldn’t tell you the exact day of the year, I think we’re somewhere around 235. But yeah, 230ish days so far this year of shirt wearing, obviously haven’t missed a day and I’m gonna keep on wearing them through 2010.
Sarah: I know that you’ll be wearing ours on April 3rd 2010.
Jason: There you go, that sounds like a great day.
Sarah: We’re excited for it. So since you’ve worn a bunch of promotional t-shirts, do you ever pay any attention to the brand that you’re wearing to find out which ones the most comfortable, which ones not comfortable, what colors you prefer, things like that?
Jason: Oh for sure. I’m a huge American Apparel fan. I always talk them up. I didn’t know about them when the project first got started and from people sending me a bunch, it’s definitely the best fitting shirt, at least for me. Shirts fit people differently, but I’m a taller guy, kind of a trim guy so I need a shirt that will fit my shoulders and has a little bit of stretch to it. American Apparel works well, and I actually just had my first Tultex shirt, they were the company that sent me 50 and that was a comfortable shirt as well. Now that I know that, I try and steer people clear of the Hanes and even some of the Gildan shirts because when a shirt fits like crap, it’s a completely different day.
Sarah: Exactly. You have to be comfortable in what you’re wearing and you have to like what you’re wearing.
Jason: Exactly, and sometimes someone’s only making one shirt so it’s negligible the amount of price difference. And by the way today is the 237th day of the year.
Sarah: Ok, so you’ve worn 237 t-shirts, except probably more for that one day when you wore 8 t-shirts and took them all off.
Jason: Yeah exactly, well that’s the thing. People said “well, you’re gonna have 365 shirts at the end of the year,” and I’m like “no, no no.” I’ve had so many people send me 5, 10 extra shirts. I have at least 500 shirts now and there’s still around 130 days left this year, so there’s going to be a lot of them at the end of the year.
Sarah: So at the end of the year, what are you doing with all these shirts?
Jason: I’m going to donate them. That was one of the first things that I decided to do when I started this project. I knew I could probably sell them on eBay for a dollar a piece, and I thought, that’s not worth anything. Let me do something, at least try and do some good because I try not to offer any discounts for any non-profits. Not because I don’t think they deserve it, but because I want to give equal focus to the single moms and everybody else who is scraping by to buy a day. But yeah, I’m going to donate all the shirts at the end of the year. I’ve got a company who goes to Africa that I wore a shirt for earlier in the year, and they’re gonna take a lot of them. We haven’t talked about how many, but they’re definitely down to take a whole ton of the shirts and they said everybody there is going to just going to love having them because they love getting shirts from the States. So they’re going to take a bunch. Maybe I’ll make a quilt out of some of them, you know. We’ll see.
Sarah: That would be awesome.
Jason: Yeah, I use a room upstairs for my live video everyday and I’ve thought about covering all the walls in the shirts from 2009. It won’t take much, maybe about 50 shirts so we’ll see. That might happen as well.
Sarah: Especially if you have over 500 shirts, you could easily do that with 50. That’s prett much all I’ve got, so thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Jason: Definitely, can’t wait to get a shirt for you and talk about you. And my buddy Evan will be obviously wearing a shirt as well.
Sarah: Yeah, and Evan does skydive in these shirts, that is what I heard, right?
Jason: He is, yeah. We originally said one Saturday a month, next year and the requests have been pouring in for him to do that. We may have to up that to two Saturdays a month. We’re gonna have to see what we can do, but we’re not making anymore promises than one during the month.
Sarah: Exactly because it can’t really be that healthy to go skydiving more than twice a month.
Jason: I’ll tell you what, I’m not doing it ever, so I’ll leave that up to him. I’ll continue to couch surf.
Sarah: That’s the way to go. So if you are couch surfing and Evan is sky diving, and you add a third person, what would that person do?
Jason: I don’t know. That’s a good question, what would that person be doing?
Sarah: Because you can’t really beat skydiving.
Evan: They’d have to be really good at either the moonwalk or the worm.
Jason: Yeah, we’d have to get someone who’s a very good dancer. So they can dance in the shirt in the video of the day. I don’t know, we’ll think of something fun.
Sarah: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for talking to us
Jason: Sure, sure. Look forward to reading the interview!
To keep up with Jason, check out the following links:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JasonSadler
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iwearyourshirt/
Twitter: @iwearyourshirt
Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwearyourshirt-daily-shirt-show
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