- Bantam Apparel
Infobox_Company
company_name = Bantam Apparel
company_
company_type = Private
foundation = May, 2004 inVancouver, Canada
location =Vancouver, British Columbia ,Canada
industry =Fashion
products = T Shirts
homepage = [http://www.bantamapparel.com Bantam Apparel]Bantam Apparel is the parent company of a set of topical
website s that sellt-shirt s.Although branded separately, the individual sites themselves
Ice Cold T-Shirts ,Echelon Shift , andAjanta.org operate through a centrally management system that distributes and to some extent markets sales gathered by each unique store. Its logos have been featured in numerous popular magazines, includingRolling Stone andCracked Magazine.History
Officially launched in spring of 2004, Bantam Apparel was originally branded solely within
Ice Cold T-Shirts . It enjoyed mild success and was featured in a number of popular magazines includingRolling Stone and theSan Francisco Weekly . One of its more popular designs was "We can't stop here, this isbat country " which was released shortly after the death of authorHunter S Thompson . Although creating a small following,Ice Cold T-Shirts did not reach mainstream success due to the sudden influx of other online t-shirt stores includingBusted Tees andThreadless . Additionally, problems with new algorithm changes taking place inGoogle and the introduction of thesandbox effect made it very difficult for businesses launched after 2004 to compete with larger more established websites.Development
In around the summer of 2005 the decision was made to separate
Ice Cold T-Shirts into individually branded websites. Although the details of the individual sites themselves were not fully realized until later, the development of a more evolved and efficient product delivery system was initiated. The primary focus of these developments was to take into account what restrictions existed in the current infrastructure that could prevent expansion in the future using current business practice as reference.The development period of this infrastructure was undefined but eventually reached finalization approximately a year later in the end of the summer of 2006. Officially launched on August 15th, 2006, Bantam Apparel was fully functional along with three stores.
tores
Ice Cold T-Shirts was re-branded with a new look and logo and focussed on the entertainment portion of the original website. This included the categoriespopculture ,clubbing andmovies andtelevision .Echelon Shift took over the political, revolutionary and religious aspect ofIce Cold T-Shirts and was launched with variousLibertarian and controversial logos. In addition to the logos themselves,Echelon Shift provided informational links and articles that introduced supporting evidence or thought provoking ideas related to the logo.Ajanta.org was launched with a focus on the spiritual aspect of the originalIce Cold T-Shirts , with strong ties toHinduism ,Buddhism and othernew age concepts. Similar toEchelon Shift ,Ajanta.org provided informative articles relating to the particular logos. Due to the nature of the original site,Ajanta.org was released with very few logos as compared to the other two stores. However, this did tie in with the store as it was branded as a boutique shop more than an online t-shirt shop.Controversy
Many logos distributed by Bantam Apparel and its stores have received criticism by visitors in the form of
hatemail . Political shirts such as the "Bush Nazi" ("Bush" with the "s" replaced with aswastika ) shirt, the "I had an abortion" shirt, and the "Unions Suck - If you don't like your job, go get an education" shirt have sometimes been the target of criticism.Efforts to market the stores have sometimes been difficult with some of the content being marked as inappropriate to minors and generally offensive. On occasion, attempts to contract printing jobs have met with problems as some screen printing firms have been unwilling to print the content they deemed inappropriate.
tore links
* [http://www.icecoldtshirts.com Ice Cold T-Shirts]
* [http://www.echelonshift.com Echelon Shift]
* [http://www.ajanta.org Ajanta.org]External links
* [http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/sitepromotion/wpn-3-20040826WhatisTheGoogleSandboxEffect.html Google sandbox]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.