News

Yes, you guessed it. Everyone here at Fretshirt HQ is still playing around with the new system for mocking up images, just like the people in the cover image for this week's blog.

Okay, so that's a mock up we did for our Brexit Designs page and not really us, or Fretshirt HQ. We just don't really get the chance to sit around a table having a chat, especially not at this time of year. Well, that and we don't actually have a table to sit around. Other than that though, it's perfectly true. Honest!

Anyway, if you've been paying attention to Fretshirt.com you will have noticed that the new mock up have started to make an appearance as page headers on several of the more popular collection pages. 

Brexit, I've mentioned, but take a look at those for: Drink, Zombies, and, of course, Christmas. With some more to come.

What's more, if you scroll down the front page, you'll see an entirely new section has been added of our Instagram feed, which naturally features nearly all the mock ups along with other images. Like the new page intro - you noticed we changed that, right? - says: Follow / like us on our social media if that is your thing, or don't if it isn't. We don't mind!

Speaking of social media as predicted in the last blog our Facebook Shop is back up and running. Not everything is there yet - in indeed will be - but there is currently 294,400 items as Facebook counts each variation (i.e. Size / Colour) as a different item.

More will be added once we work though those designs Facebook's automated systems have flagged as being - get this! -  "Dating Ads" or containing "Nudity" (someone have something against bare arms in T-shirts?). All of which we have to appeal for an actual human to approve. But we'll get there, don't worry.

Then, once we've done that, we'll restart our Instagram store, and no doubt go through the entire procedure again.

Oh well, such is the life of an online garment retailer.

 What else?

Well, in case you hadn't noticed the Christmas - or C-word as it's known in these parts - is starting to ramp up, with all the major UK brands spending ridiculous amounts of money on extra long television adverts, that no one understands.

We at Fretshirt don't do that. In fact, other than our social media, we don't do adverts at all as we believe that it's best to keep our outgoings down, so we can keep our prices & costs low.

Anyway, the point I was going to make, before admittedly I sidetracked myself, was that, we may not be fancy, here at Fretshirt, we will always take the Fret out of your shopping.

But you know that? Didn't You?

Until We Fret Again.



This week at Fretshirt we've been having way too fun with our new mock up system, creating some rather stunning images to use on our social media and eventually here on Fretshirt.com as well.

What? You thought we had special photographs taken of each of our 6,000+ designs, on each type and colour of garment?

No, we don't alas, at that would just take way too much time, no mention being rather wasteful, once you work out just how many individual printed shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts we would need for that. Not to mention baby grows and other items.

Instead - here's a trade "secret" for you - everything is done digitally using a mixture of actual models - mostly members of staff both past and present - and stock images of the blank garments supplied by the manufacturers, onto which our designs can be added.

These templates have been evolving over the nearly decade we've been doing this, and now we are trying out the latest generation of high quality images, in real life settings.

So, what do you think?

Would you have noticed they were mock-ups if I hadn't told you? Go on. Be honest. Would you?

We wouldn't. And we did them. Still, we're not quite sure if we are going to replace all the images here on the main site, as that would take a long time, but we might do.

For now, if you follow our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest & Tumblr accounts, you'll be able to see more of them as we play around with the software.

For now, you can see a few or our tests scattered around this blog, including our, so far, all time fav, of the Star Wars Ugly Sweater design, at the top. (You didn't miss that did you?)

What else?

Well, speaking of social media, literally minutes before I started this post, our Facebook Shop went live again and is now configuring itself, so should be ready to use by the time you read this. No, we still don't know what went wrong with it in the first place - & Facebook Tech don't either apparently - but hopefully it's sorted now.

Don't forget that our new lower shipping prices for the USA is still a thing, as you can see from the image below.

 Yes, we even ran that through our new mock-up software. Well, why not?

Until we Fret Again.

Well, that's the Halloween rush dealt with here at Fretshirt HQ,and we hope you all had a good scary time in your suitably frightening shirts, sweaters and hoodies.

But, time moves on, so now we turn our attention to the busiest time of the year, and yes, I'm talking about Christmas even though October has barely gone. That's just the way it is for an on-line trader.

Before that however, we do have something of a big announcement to make, which those of you following our social media should have noticed. If not, then there's something of a not-very subtle hint at the top of this post.

That's right, lower shipping costs for all our customers in the United States of American. How have we done this?

Simple, we've teamed up with a company very similar to ourselves over in Texas, so now not only will American Fretters, pay less for their shipping, but they should be getting their almost as fast as the Brits and Europeans do.

Why?

Easy, the orders aren't just being shipped from Texas they are being printed there too by a lovely lady printer who you wouldn't want to mess with.

So, if you are in the USA, then your shirt, hoodie or sweater will have been Made in the USA.

Oh, speaking of social media, we have some news on that front too.

First not so good in that our Facebook & Instagram pages both went a bit whopsy (technical term) so we've had to replace them, so apologies if that's your favoured route to our store, but we'll have them back up and running again, just as soon as we can.

On a more positive side, we've started up a tumblr page to highlight some of the more artistic aspects of our designs and our designer. You can find it via the links at the top and bottom of most pages on Fretshirt.com or directly here: https://fretshirt-com.tumblr.com/

Until We Fret Again

Well, well, well, and just in case you missed it, Well!

It's been a while since there was anything on this blog for you Fretters to read, so I hope you didn't miss us too much? (This is where you say you did although I'll assume you did anyway, just so you don't have too! See how much time we can save you. Although we just made you read all this, so perhaps not!)

Anyway, you're probably wondering what's been going on at Fretshirt HQ over the last [check's blog-log], wow, five months. So here's a brief update to fill you in.

As you will be aware from earlier blogs, we moved our main warehouse some months ago, and then, because we enjoyed it so much, we did it again. (No, really, that's what I was told!)

At the same time as doing that - which with hindsight probably wasn't the best idea - we also updated quite a lot of our machinery and processes. Some of these proved not to be quite as effective as they could, or indeed, should have been.

Finally, we parted company with one of our longest serving members of staff which, when there's only a handful of people to start with, causes rather a lot of distraction, as those who remain juggle their existing duties with covering for those of the missing person.

However, despite all of that, we are somewhat smug to say that we still managed to fill all the customer orders, in the timely fashion you expect from us. So, Yey, us!

Not been resting on our  laurels of course, as that just isn't the Fretshirt way. Things move on. Things get changed. So here's a few of those changes.

You probably already noticed that we learnt how to make .gif animations (or re-learnt) which is why you can see all the colour variations of our Brexit Halloween design flashing away on a ladies shirt at the top of this post.

There's also been a little re-design on Fretshirt.com, both on the front page and elsewhere within the site, to make things easier to navigate for you Fretters.

As part of that we've added a new BEST SELLERS page so you can, see what other people are buying, or have bought, as it counts up everything that's been sold and shows them in order of popularity. The top ones may surprise you. I know it did us.

We also installed a clever little gismo (that's the technical term - honest!) so you will see out wonderfully low prices, in your own currency. Unless you're using a VPN to pretend to be from somewhere else, of course. Or, actually in the UK, in which case, you won't notice a change at all.

And, of course, there's loads of new designs been added to the site, and not all of them are about Brexit!!

No, there's Halloween, some new Pride, and as the year rolls towards the end, we're gearing up for launching a whole load of new Christmas stuff your way.

However, I can't show you those yet, so here's the best selling Christmas design from last year.

There's so much more to tell you, but I've gone on for long enough now, and anyway, I want to save something for the next blog.

Until We Fret Again.

It's like a 1960's Summer movie here at Fretshirt HQ this week, well apart from the weather, obviously.

Why's that? You ask. (You did, right?)

Well, you see, it's like this:

I needed something random, and hopefully interesting, to open the blog this week, in order to get all you Fretters intrigued enough to read through to the end of the post.

Oh wait!

I wasn't meant to write that bit, was I?

Instead I should have said something about how we were putting the band back together like they always do in those old movies and then lead into talking about our newly expanded Legends series.

Guess I've ruined that now, so let's just get on with it, and pretend that never happened, shall we?

Anyway, a couple of blogs back, I told you we were adding to our ever popular Guitar Legends design, with Vocal Legends and Drum Legends. Well now we've not only completed the band line up with Bass Legends and Keyboard / Piano Legends but we've added a couple more to the range as well.

What's more, for these latest ones, we've even included the full list of names our designer used to make them, to save you having to see if your favourite was included. Mind you, the chances are that they were, as the designer is THAT good at what he does, even if he didn't keep the lists from the earlier designs.

Still, we've tried to include at least one person from every genre of music, so there's people from Rock, Jazz, Heavy Metal, Progressive, Rhythm n Blues, and even some "pop" stars in there going right back to the original days or good old Rock n' Roll.

One musical genre that wasn't represented was Classical Music, so not wanting anyone left out, and seeing there's a lack of guitars in symphonies, sonatas and the like, our designer did what he does, and got all creative to brings us, and you, Composer Legends.

As with the others, all the greats are there. Beethoven, Mozart, and a lot of others I'm not even going to attempt to try spelling.

Guess what? The designer didn't stop there - no, of course he didn't - as he then turned his attention to the world of literature, novels, and authors to came up with the design that heads this blog post. Literature Legends.

Thankfully we've now managed to distract him with something shiny, so he's moved onto other items, or who knows where he'd have ended up doing. Still if anyone has any ideas for a new Legends design, then let us know, and we'll unleash the designer once more.

One of those things we distracted him with was, yet another, set of BREXIT designs, as that continues to roll on, and on. However, with feelings running high on both sides, he came up with something that we've been able to use to celebrate Europe Day, which also happened to be this week, in the Can We Still Be Friends design.

What else?

Well, our merchandising friends have been busy with their own updates and expansions.

Following the launch of our merchandise for their new, up and coming game The Riftbreaker [riftbreaker.com] last week, the wonderful team at Exor Studios, unleashed the very first live Riftbreaker stream on Mixer, [mixer.com] and yes, Fretshirt was there. So see if you can guess our usernames in the recorded chat.

Not to be outdone, the solo dev - yes it's just the one of him doing everything - over at Mashinky [official site] released a major update, which takes the game into the long awaited 5th Era of train transport. This adds not just an extended time frame to the game, but new locos, quests, industries, cargoes, sounds and even camera positions.

Only thing is now, we'll have to come up with new Mashinky Merchandise to encapsulate - that's a great word don't you think? - the expanded version of the game. Still it will keep the designer busy, which is what we all want.

Of course, our little Fretshirt Family wasn't the only one welcoming new content, as Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor arrived not to far from where Fretshirt is based. 

Naturally we did had some designs ready, - Including this cheeky, Instructional baby grow - because, well, that's what we do, and why else would we have been expanding our Baby Clothing section?

By the way, what's your preferred name for this type of garment? Baby Grow? Onesie? Body Suit? Something else?

 And finally - yes I'm going to stop soon - we hope everyone in the UK had a decent Bank Holiday weekend, and managed to get all your little jobs done? Still don't worry if you didn't as there's another Bank Holiday in a couple of weeks.

Personally I made the mistake of buying a new God Game just before the extra day off and then... well, see the screen shot.

Yes, I did indeed, spend thirteen hours, playing Raymond Doerr's (gotta love the solo indie devs of the world) Rise to Ruins, [risetoruins.com] something I've not done since the days of Civilisation II, III & IV (yes I'm old).

Now, wonder if Ray wants any merchandise, as then I can write all that time off as research?

Hey, that's what happen with most of our other Merch Partners!