Campaigner Spotlight–Jamie Corcoran

Jamie Corcoran is a campaigner from Berkshire, UK who has been selling on Fabrily since September 2014. He currently sells custom apparel part time in the evenings and weekends with his wife while also running a small construction business. He hopes to make this his main income stream because he finds it a lot more fun and less stressful! 

How/why did you get into selling custom apparel online?
I got into the t-shirt business by accident really. After dabbling with the idea of internet marketing for a few months without doing anything about it, I subscribed to a few mailing lists and I received an email in May 2014 with the headline “guy makes $250k in 3 months selling t-shirts on Facebook”. My instant reaction was “yeah right” but like all newbies I still bought the course! Then began researching all I could on the subject…

What were the biggest challenges you faced when you started?
Like the majority of people we first tried selling into the U.S where competition is much greater and the audience is much more accustomed to seeing t-shirts in their Facebook newsfeed. We only tipped one campaign (at a loss) out of about 25 but the experience it provided was worth it.

How did you overcome those challenges?
We didn’t let the setbacks faze us and just carried on researching, launching more failed campaigns and joined a load of t-shirt related Facebook groups. I also invested a small amount into a few t-shirt courses which did help, although the experience of actually being pro-active proved to be the best teacher.

What has been your experience so far selling in Europe?
Our turning point came when we discovered Fabrily in September 2014. Our first campaign that we launched was aimed towards the U.K and sold 4 on its first day which was a personal best at the time (although it didn’t sell any more). That got our attention and we thought we’d try a foreign language campaign.

We launched a campaign aimed at Germany on a Saturday afternoon and by the Sunday morning it had sold 6! It went on to sell another 15 that day which was amazing to us and we quickly capitalized on it by launching 4 more similar campaigns within the same niche. By the end of the week the first 5 campaigns that we’d ever launched into foreign language markets finished on 91, 62, 51, 47, and 33 sales, we were quite excited to say the least!

From that week onwards it’s been an upward curve, apart from the odd up and down moment as we test new things and try out new niches.

We managed to sell as much in January as we did in October, November and December combined and we’ve already beaten January’s number in the first 2 weeks of February! Thanks to the guys at Fabrily we’ve managed this without being able to speak a word of the language (although I’m starting to pick a few words up now)!

What advice would you give to new internet marketers on Fabrily?
The biggest piece of advice I can offer for people starting out is the old cliché of never giving up. It took 3 months before I had any success and there were plenty of times I could’ve given up and tried something else, but I think the reason I’ve started getting results is that I’ve focused on this, and this only during that time.

With regards to actual campaigns, make sure you re-launch successful campaigns, this has played a big part in my recent success and if you aren’t re-launching then you’re leaving money on the table. I’ve got campaigns that are on their fourth run that are still selling consistently today.

How has this business changed your life?
It’s changed our life in a number of ways, I can’t go into a clothes shop now without taking pictures of the t-shirts I like, which attracts a few stares and embarrasses my children! On a more serious note it’s enabled me to have more and more time at home with my family and as I look to scale it up even more it should be able to give me the freedom to spend even more time with them and enjoy a lifestyle that’s much more rewarding!!

Click here to start earning extra income with Fabrily!

Spot the difference: Cheetah Conservation Fund’s campaign a huge success

The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) recently ran a campaign with Fabrily featuring an incredible design… an illustration of KhayJay, one of their current resident cheetahs, filled with the names of 25 years worth of cheetahs that the CCF has saved. The campaign smashed its goal of 20, in the end selling over 440 items! It was so successful in fact that the CCF decided to relaunch the campaign for 7 days only which has already sold 50+ items in the first 24 hours.

The original CCF tee.

Heather Ravenscroft, Chapter Liaison and Communications Assistant at the CCF was kind enough to sit down with us and explain her campaigning experience with Fabrily:

Can you tell us a little bit more about the work the Cheetah Conservation Fund does and how the funds raised will be used? Cheetah Conservation Fund is a non-profit based in Namibia with a very small office in the US and some volunteer run affiliates in Europe, UK, Australia, Canada, and an energetic start-up in China.

CCF Namibia uses multiple different strategies to help cheetahs and other predators live side-by-side with human populations. We have a campus located in Otjiwarongo where we have a genetics and veterinary lab, visitor centre, model farm, a cheetah run for exercising our cheetahs, and both staff and visitor housing with a campsite to accommodate school groups. Our work with local farmers is particularly important to ensure a sustainable strategy for increasing the cheetah population, as Namibia has a lot of livestock farming.

While our primary mission is to keep the cheetah in the wild, we can’t always return every rehabilitated cheetah. We have 36 cheetahs on CCF grounds at the moment that cannot be released and will be cared for throughout the remainder of their lives. The shirt we decided to make was a representation of the individual cheetahs we have cared for in the past 25 years of CCF.

How did you initially hear about Fabrily? Why did you decide to use the platform? Fabrily had heard of the great work we were doing and contacted us directly. We had just held a sock campaign with a different company and had some success with it. In an attempt to minimise the expense of fulfilment and keeping stock for sale, we are always looking out for innovative ways to sell merchandise.

How did you promote the campaign so that it reached its goal? Did one marketing channel work better than another? We used Facebook, and an email campaign. Facebook did very well but our email campaign was the most effective. We got so many responses right after an email went out.

 

An example Facebook post the CCF used to help promote their campaign.

What fundraising methods have you used in the past (if any)? Was there anything that really stood out to you about using Fabrily? We primarily raise funds using mailing campaigns and holding events. We do sell merchandise through an online retailer and we sell merchandise at events. Fabrily was easy to use and the support was great, even down to help with setting up our page. They even helped us with the design!

Overall, how was your campaigning experience with Fabrily? Would you recommend it to other small charities? It has been great so far. Yes we would.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers? Support the cheetahs!

Interested in launching your own Fabrily campaign? Visit fabrily.com and click “start a campaign”! If you need assistance or have any questions please contact us at campaigns@fabrily.com

FABRILY 2014 PART 2: CHAPTER AND LNADJ FUNDRAISER PUTS A SMILEY ON BEN’S FACE

Hi everyone, my name’s Ben and I’m a Campaign Manager here at Fabrily. So, we come to the end of 2014. It’s been an incredible year personally and professionally, and I’ve been super lucky to be able to spend the latter part of 2014 working at Fabrily.

In my time with the company, I’ve been able to work with some incredibly interesting people from a range of different backgrounds. I’ve seen tiny organisations empowered (watch this space) and thrilled to be able to offer something new to their supporters. I’ve appeared on podcasts with Sarah Weldon from Oceans Project, a very inspiring woman who is going to undertake the first ever solo row around Britain.

Despite all of the above, I need to pick but one highlight for 2014…it was such a tough choice, but it was hard for me to go past the ‘Chapter Smiley’ campaign that the Last Night a DJ Saved My Life Foundation (LNADJ) ran in November.

The popular Chapter ‘Smiley’ tee

LNADJ is a charitable foundation providing a platform for the dance music industry to make a positive impact to communities across the world – changing lives, saving lives.

I reached out to LNADJ in October, and immediately they could see the potential in what we do. Understandably they had the usual questions about the model and how it works. Knowing a number of designers and artists however meant that they were willing to give it a try.

They decided to run a T-shirt campaign featuring a popular design created by the incredibly talented Chapter, a famous street artist. The original artwork was sold at the Smile Britannia Auction of 2013 to none other than Fatboy Slim!

Scott Gray aka Chapter with Fatboy Slim and the original ‘smiley’ artwork

What really set LNADJ apart was their commitment to making the campaign a success. They tirelessly got the word out to their supporters, used their network to promote the campaign and took full advantage of their social media channels. Facebook worked particularly well for them, with their posts being shared a number of times by fans of the organisation, boosting sales.

The result was the campaign was a resounding success! The campaign ran for 9 days, and raised GB£1400 (US$2000, €1700). Over 100 people bought the tee and can now act as walking billboards for LNADJ. More than this though, was how inspired the campaigner had become.

Jonny Lee, the co-founder, remarked to me that using the platform in the future had the ability to change lives, and could contribute greatly to their well building projects in India. A well, for example costs £1500 and provides clean water for 1000 people for 10 years. They almost hit £1500 in their first 9 days using the site! The plan for the organization is to launch a number of campaigns in 2015, so we look forward to moving on to bigger and better things! Jonny also mentioned how easy the process was and how willing Fabrily were to assist them every step of the way.

Working with inspiring organisations like these is why I get up in the morning. I love working with Fabrily, as I get to engage with all sorts of people using the site for all sorts of reasons. I’m really looking forward to 2015, as I’ll be able to help empower more and more organizations to raise money through the platform, so that they can deliver on their wonderful work. What’s more, they can do all this with no risks, costs, or hassle. Bring on 2015!

Mel Langton: Artist and ‘roller derby girl with no mercy’ raises funds with Fabrily

Mel Langton, artist, illustrator and roller derby enthusiast decided to put her skills to the test by creating this wonderful “Roller Derby With no Mercy” tee. Despite this being her first campaign Mel was able to surpass her campaign goal and sold over 30 items!

Since the success of her last campaign Mel has gone on to create her own campaign store to showcase more designs and fund her personal projects. Currently she has several edgy and one-of-a-kind designs available:

Mel found that Fabrily was an ideal tool for artists to be able to showcase their work, and was kind enough to share her experience with us.

Can you please tell us a bit more about the “Roller Derby with No Mercy” campaign – how you came up with the design idea and how the funds raised were used?
As a freelance Illustrator in my spare time, I wanted to try and create a campaign where I could showcase my artwork and get it out to a wider audience, along with raising some funds to create new work for a couple of art shows I’ve taken part in recently. As I’ve also been playing Roller Derby with the Lincolnshire Bombers Roller Girls for coming up to 6 years, the theme of Roller Derby features quite heavily within my artwork, and so the ‘Roller Derby With No Mercy’ design was a natural choice for me to create, not only to show my artistic skills but also to help raise the awareness of the wonderful sport.

How did you initially hear about Fabrily? Why did you decide to use them to promote your artwork?
I had seen some of Fabrily’s t-shirts advertised through Facebook, targeting specific audiences, and as Roller Derby is such a fast growing sport with a strong fan-base I thought my design could potentially prove quite popular to trial. With a little more research in to Fabrily I decided it seemed like the perfect way for me to get my design printed on a range of garments whilst having no set up costs or stock to try and cover and without the hassle of running to the post office to deliver orders or deal with the customer payment side. It just seemed like the perfect solution with nothing to lose. I just needed to give it a go! 

How did you promote the campaign so that it reached its goal? Did one social media channel work better than another?
I promoted my design primarily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but also added it to my website and Pinterest pages. I asked my friends to share my posts, which was a great help. The experience really became a great learning curve for me in discovering how to try and market myself as an artist, along with creating my own little adverts and interesting images to show off the design on different social media sites, so I really felt I have gained some useful tools to my belt! I even ended up doing a series of different little Instagram images for the last 10 day countdown to keep the momentum of interest. Since going through the process it has had the bonus effect of increasing my social media fan bases, which in turn has lead to further commissions and, most excitingly for me, a collaboration is now on the cards with a Roller Derby company in the USA, who spotted my designs on Twitter!

Overall, how was your campaigning experience with Fabrily? Would you recommend the platform to other artists?
The Fabrily Team was incredibly helpful with any queries I’ve had throughout the process and I’ve been greatly impressed with them and also the amount of advice you can find about creating campaigns through their online tutorials. They have also helped by sharing my tweets on Twitter.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
You really don’t know unless you give it a go. Try not to be disheartened if things don’t take off straight away and keep at it, as you really have nothing to lose 🙂

For more art from Mel Langton visit her website and connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Want to launch your own Fabrily campaign? Register here and click “start a campaign”! Find easy and quick video tutorials on using the TeeMaker here, and visit our success stories page for promotional guides & tips!

APOPO: Raising Funds and training rats to save lives!

Raising funds is important for many causes and the team at APOPO have attacked the fundraising front with a very well planned approach – and it shows! Within the first 24 hours of launch, three out of four “RatWear” campaigns had already reached their selling goal!

How was APOPO able to achieve this? Paul Delbar, APOPO’s public fundraising manager, has kindly agreed to provide insight on how his team prepared for this fundraising campaign as well as some of the successful promotional methods they are currently using.

To begin, please tell us more about APOPO and your amazing HeroRATs.
Our mission is to leverage the exceptionally strong sense of smell of the African Giant Pouched rats for humanitarian purposes. We breed and train them to detect the TNT that is a key component of landmines and all kinds of ammunition, so we can find and remove them from the land. When we are done, the land is once more available for the local communities to grow food, graze cattle or to let children play.

But we can also train them to recognize tuberculosis, and increase the speed and accuracy of detecting this widespread disease. Detection is important, because every TB patient can infect 10 – 15 other people every year when he or she is not treated.

Why did you decide to use Fabrily for this fundraising campaign?
We regularly received requests for merchandising, but as we are a global organization with a limited staff, we did not want to handle fulfillment and sales ourselves. There are many different partners and as many different business models available, but the campaign model Fabrily uses appealed to us, as did the level of shipping cost across the globe.

How did your team develop the idea for the “RatWear” campaigns? Do you plan to offer more merchandise to your supporters in the future?
We are keen to maintain a strong brand image, and the concept of a HeroRAT-branded line of apparel was fairly logical for us. Calling it RatWear (and BratWear for the junior line) makes it easy to catch the concept of the campaigns: APOPO-branded apparel relating to our work, covering both the fun part and the deeper issue with slogans. We plan to run more campaigns on a regular basis, run design contests and involve our audience to pick the best ones, while maintaining a recurring base set of designs people will always be able to buy.

Can you tell us how you prepared for your Fabrily campaign?
When it comes to deciding on tee designs, everyone becomes an expert. We felt it was best to ask the audience, so Robin Toal, our social media guru, set up a Facebook poll where we asked people to give feedback on three types of designs: case-related slogans, arty designs or fun designs. In two days time, we had hundreds of people voting and telling us what they liked, and provide very useful feedback in the process. Because of the strong feedback, we launched the campaign on Facebook only – yes, we do have an email list, but the people who voted get ‘first pick’.

Were there any specific actions you took during campaign preparation and promotion that you feel helped you to achieve your campaign goals so quickly?
You could say that asking people for input created some form of expectation, and we followed through within weeks. We also limited the choice of designs, because we had no real idea how many people would actually order. Our final designs are close to the ones we asked input on, but they were adapted based on the feedback we got. The main success factor is that we have a crazy, engaged, enthusiastic Facebook supports crowd!

APOPO displayed their fundraising items on their website with eye-catching images and text which linked to their campaign store

How has your campaigning experience been thus far?
Once designing the tees is done, the fun usually stops. From that point, it’s debating design file specs, arguing prices, passing user complaints on … usually. In this case, our Fabrily rep (Kate) was always only a Skype-call away, and whatever the question we asked, the answer came within minutes. That makes all the difference – being able to leave the operational side to people who know their business, let you run yours and provide advice and input where needed (even to keep you from doing the wrong thing). So yes, the experience was very positive. 

Can you offer any advice to other organizations and individuals looking to raise funds and awareness through Fabrily?
We’re still at the beginning of our journey with Fabrily, but a few things are quite clear already. First of all, ask your audience what they want, and deliver that. Second, run a trial as we did, and get real numbers on what volume is realistic. That helps decide how often you can run a new campaign. Third, use Fabrily as more than simply a logistics partner – we got some real good advice on what works and what does not, how to position a campaign.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
We sold 130 tees, hoodies and onesies in less than a week, using only Facebook as a promotional tool. That’s way more than we expected, but we could not have managed the promotion effort and the Facebook interaction if we had had to also keep an eye on the fulfillment. I’m glad we chose Fabrily as a partner, and I’m looking forward to new campaigns, new Fabrily features and more sales!

The Fabrily Team would like to extend a big “thank you” to Paul and his team at APOPO for providing insight and advice on their campaigning experience. To learn more about this wonderful organization please visit their website and connect with APOPO on Facebook and Twitter. You can reserve your own “RatWear” item too – visit their Fabrily campaign store today!