Well, the truth happens to be counter intuitive. Innumerable abnormal individuals in this planet have in fact normalized abnormality! Am I tinkering with words? Hell No, I am no wordsmith. But seriously, don't you think over-discipline enforced in schools (read it as arcane systems) is the real culprit? I see people coming to work as though they are having hangover from school.
Do team T-Shirts really improve team spirit? NO WAY!
Our dream, a custom team T-shirt was finally brought to fruition while more critical work assignments were put on the back burner. The most important task was to come up with an innovative artwork and a catchy phrase. The artist of the team (Modom) rose to the occasion to deliver a cool design. Right from the beginning we knew it was going to be a self funded project. That only meant one thing - our imaginations could run wild and uncensored:)
Off to T-shirt shopping: Everyone wanted to influence the T-Shirt color resulting in a status quo. Clearly a taxing exercise to zero in one color (true Indian spirit - unity in diversity; in our case you can say chaos). Eventually the most neutral ash color was picked. But, the shop failed to accommodate our XXL, XL, L, L, L, L and M combination. So, we had to compromise on two strikingly different colors (ash and the other one I am not sure; I am really color blind)!
Next, we had to go find a vendor in Bangalore who would show a little enthusiasm in printing our custom t-shirts (8 in number). First, we visited GK Vale, a photo-finishing vendor who was quoting 400 INR (inclusive of T-shirt cost). It was a sin to even think of spending 400 INR, when our plain branded T-shirt costed us only 200 INR.
After some more talking around, we came across two more vendors - one was located in Chennai (http://www.onlycasuals.com/) and the other guy on Brigade road (http://www.labambagifts.com ). The Labamba offered to do an A4 (8.5 x 11) size T-shirt transfer for 125 bucks. When we tried to bargain, he insisted there was no margin for him and usually made profit by selling T-shirt fabric/cloth or whatever. He was clearly bull shitting as business for goodwill alone is like a V-I characteristics of an ideal diode. You would agree with me even if you hailed from an open source world;)
Somehow that triggered off an ROI analysis on T-shirt transfers. I am not an MBA guy, neither did I receive any formal training nor do I possess inborn abilities to fudge numbers. So you be assured about the consistency of the data below.
A typical T-shirt transfer backend comprises of
1. Color Printer (check with your printer vendor to find which ones are suitable)
2. A special paper called T-shirt transfer paper ( best thing to do is buy paper from your printer vendors like HP, Canon, Epson)
3. Iron box or a more sophisticated heat press (costs 300 - 500 USD for 15x 12)
Here is the cost calculation:
1. The ink cost per print comes to 20 INR on a higher side. I used the HP color print cost calculator for our T-Shirt design that has 30% coverage. My friend felt the tool should have been smart enough to calculate the cost realtime for the image/doc we upload.
Suprisingly li'l googling tells me that there is no extra ink cost for printing on T-Shirt Transfer paper (*dispute* me if I wasn't using the right search string)
2. T-Shirt transfer paper costs 10 USD for a 12 pack ie approx 40 INR ($0.83) per unit. Note: The transfer can be used only for white and light colors *only*! However, it is only slightly expensive for any color fabric T-shirt transfer paper!
3. Heat press at high temperatures. Your iron box would suffice; Read HP's instructions for T-shirt transfers.
A quick back of the paper calculation tells you that the cost per transfer is 70 INR ($1.5). The Labamba guy who claimed break even pricing made at least 50% (without even considering economies of scale)!
We went back to GK Vale to renegotiate the price. This time he came up with a new magical number 200 INR ($4.5) per transfer. Of course no guarantees if T-shirt got burnt or worst scenario caught fire, apparently, when heat pressed over temperatures as high as 400 deg Celsius! To better understand his pricing model, we asked a few simple questions. Here was what we came to know, they use printer/ink/paper from Epson and heating press. Some more googling; Epson transfer paper cost was comparable to that of HP's as well as Canon's. Then why the extra cost? Probably GK vale is recovering their new heat press investment (roughly about 200-250 transfers at their current premium cost).
But GK Vale had options like 4x6 (95 INR)- 8x10 (200). This is a good because its variable costing takes into consideration the ink cost. But still its exorbitant pricing is not justified.
About the Only casuals online service, it has some really cool flash interface to design T-shirts. You can either choose from their templates or you can upload your image. But the bad part is you cannot choose you favorite branded t-shirt make.
Here is a business idea; let us call it say "DIO-T shirt" online service. A typical workflow would look like -
1. Pick your t-shirt size/color/model (tie up with many vendors). We must also make baby T-shirts. Seriously, we didn't find a vendor who did custom baby t-shirts. Don't you think they deserve the cool designs most of all?
2. Choose artwork or upload your own. Ask our expert to comment or fine tune the design (free of charge). Ideal thing would be to a build a software that provides a What You See Is What You Print (WYSIWYP) interface. This is useful because heat processing on fabric has fading effect.
3. You can also share your design and get royalty for it.
4. Print your T-shirt.
5. It gets Shipped to your home
Most of the existing players in T-shirt printing market are also providing other services like print to - fabrics, mugs, mouse pads, key chains, coaster, pillows, cushions you name it!
Potential customers - Companies, T-shirt manufacturers, etc? Tell me what you think of this?
We know they are there in every organization; we just don't know what to do with them!
The other day my colleague came to up me and posed a question "What happens to a star engineer in a company?" Taming my ego, I replied "Superstar, what else!". To that he said "Superstar and then what?" By now I knew that was a trick question for which he already had a well thought answer. Without wasting much time, I asked him to unravel his secret. He beautifully drew parallel with stars in the galaxy to those in an organization. His theory was "Every star has a life time before he or she becomes a black hole".
Small stars proceed to become neutron stars, extremely dense items about the size of a Manhattan that retain most of the mass of the original star. Unlike black holes, neutron stars are not dense enough to restrain light. Larger original stars become black holes -- the weirdest of the weird! [Source - The five-minute guide to black holes]
I totally agree with black hole phenomenon looming at large in teams. They are very easy to identify and are most probably your senior staff sucking up all resources to produce anything but significant. You can find them bragging about their big blasts (successful projects) from past. The best thing would be to fire them. It is easier said than done. But, I don't have a more amicable solution at this moment.
For those who wonder what it takes to become a star engineer, here is a very well researched and written article "How to be a star engineer". According to Robert Kelley star engineers are made not born. He came up with nine interlocking work strategies on becoming a star engineer. I don't subscribe to all but nevertheless; I have extracted his work and added a few cents of my own.
Taking Initiatives
Stars create a work environment that values small initiatives, as they believe whopper initiatives tend to follow a long string of lesser efforts.
Intelligent Networking
I remember my colleague providing us effective solutions putting his networking skills to task. With so much information overload its more about finding the right answer. Many hackers like me, averse to networking can get quality answers from experts on Google answers.
For wannabe star networkers, here is some advice:
Star networking entails building, maintaining, and operating within a group of experts who share knowledge for mutual benefit. Stars' networks differ from typical workers' networks in two important respects. They have the right people in them, and they are faster. Better-connected and faster networks allow the stars to turbo-charge their productivity, so that they outpace the average performers, who might have similar talent, but do it alone.
Proactive self-management
Increase your own value while creating more opportunities for your company. To me it sounded more like personal branding. Check out the e-books written by Rajesh Shetty on personal branding and 25 ways to distinguish yourself.
Getting the big picture
Towards the other end of myopic vision there is tunnel vision. As engineers we get so engrossed in technology that we tend to forget the actual users. We always want to work with cool tools and the next technology fad. These cool projects are notoriously known as resume driven projects;)
Average performers see the world from their viewpoint only and keep pushing the same points over and over again. Stars, in contrast, step outside their own viewpoint and adopt a variety of perspectives: "How do my customers think about this? What do my competitors think? How about my colleagues? What about top management or the shareholders?" Because they can evaluate the relative importance of a variety of viewpoints, they are able to improve on the product or develop better solutions to problems.
The simplest and easiest, yet least attempted method of getting bigger picture is talking to your customer;)
The right kind of followership
They are actively engaged in helping the organization (and usually the leader) succeed, while exercising independent, critical judgment about what needs to be done and how to do it.
Dilbert comics would have gone out of business if everybody subscribed to the above thought;)
Teamwork as joint ownership of a project
Star producers see it as a complex series of skills that involve taking joint "ownership" of goal-setting, group commitments, work activities, schedules, and group accomplishments. It also means being a positive contributor to the group's dynamics--helping everyone feel part of the team, dealing with conflict, and assisting others in solving problems.
On the contrary what is happening is engineers work as individual contributors always wanting to score over one and another. Healthy internal competition is good but it should compliment the overall development effort.
Small-l leadership
Star performers view leadership as a work strategy that builds on expertise and influence to convince a group of people to unite on a substantial task. The undertaking can involve a range of efforts--helping the group create a clear vision of where they want to go along with the high commitment and trust necessary to get there; finding the resources to accomplish the task; and shepherding the project to successful completion.
Big Ls are much too focused on their own ideas, their own work styles, their own goals. Small-l leaders know they need to take into account the needs, skills, aspirations, and power of their co-workers on a project or team.
Leadership must emphasize on meritocracy and leverage upon uniqueness of engineers rather than stereotyping them as identical code generating machines.
Street smarts
Average performers focus overly on ingratiating themselves as the surest way to get ahead in the workplace. They also pay obsessive attention to office politics or patronizingly ignore it. Star producers know that any large organization has legitimate competing interests. Organizational savvy enables them to steer their way amid these clashes, to promote cooperation, address conflicts, and get things done. It can involve expertise in managing individual or group dynamics, understanding when to avoid conflicts and when to meet them head on, and knowing how to make allies out of potential enemies.
Show and tell
Average performers think Show-and-Tell means getting noticed by upper management through slick presentations, long-winded memos, and public displays of affection for their own work. They focus primarily on their image and their message, not on the audience. Star producers use a series of skills involving selecting which information to pass on to which others and developing the most effective, user-friendly format for reaching and persuading a specific audience. At its highest level, Show-and-Tell involves selecting either the right message for a particular audience or the right audience for the particular message.
Let me sum up by saying "Long lasting stars constantly reinvent themselves"
