Downtown Cartel, in partnership with Always Creative and Matt Fruge, will be launching DesiredHearts.com in the near future. Part of the unique value Desired Hearts is bringing to the online t-shirt business model is the idea of building a donation to charity into the price of the product. With every shirt purchased, a portion of the revenues will go towards a charity of the t-shirt designers choosing.

I have not seen this done in many cases online, but I do feel that it’s a socially responsible thing to do. If more businesses followed this model, where your dollars go directly to charities for things that affect us all, such as the American Cancer Society or Oxfam International, even a fractional percent of sales would add up really fast considering the $14 trillion economy we have in the US alone. The question, and risk of this model, is would you choose to shop at places where you knew that a fixed amount (5-10%) would be going to a charity - or would you shop around to save a few bucks?

An added value that can emerge from this model is the free marketing your products receive if you work in conjunction with the charities you are raising money for. For instance, if you donate $600/mo from your sales to a charity with a large distribution network, like Oxfam International or similar, there is a distinct possibility of having your products marketed throughout their extensive distribution network on a continual basis because of the benefit they receive from your increased sales.

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

I will be attending the Magic tradeshow in Las Vegas in two weeks. You may be thinking to yourself “Cody, you are a grown man, what are you doing playing Magic the Gathering”, but I’m proud to say that is not the case. Magic is the premeir, twice a year, tradeshow for the fashion industry.

So, now you may be asking yourself “Cody, you are involved with a software company, what are you doing going to a fashion tradeshow?”. I will be there with Desired Hearts, a t-shirt label for now, learning about the industry and promoting our soon-to-launch website that Downtown Cartel built.

I’ve been to a few fashion shows, and been to plenty of boutiques in the different metropolitan areas I’ve lived in, but I’ve never been on the “industry side” of things.

What I’m Expecting To Learn

I want to learn how the different companies pitch their ideas. How they separate themselves from each other. I’m also wondering if there is something to learn about how we do our own service/product pitches by looking at a wildly different industry. I’ll be taking lots of notes and really digging into the techniques.

I think it will be a wildly different type of tradeshow than I’m used to, to say the least. I mean Linux World doesn’t quite have the same sort of feel that this one will.