Urban Banyan

The New Logo is Here

We have a new logo. You can probably see it on top of the page. Our promise of eventually bringing out “Wacky t-shirts for Fun People” is slow, but will happen soon. 

This fantastic logo was designed by Prasad Bhat of Graphicurry. We gratefully acknowledge his brilliance in helping us come up with something simple and yet, elegant.

There’s been some changes on the operating model front thanks to other full time commitments that both people involved in Urban Banyan have and hence the slow start will be slower than you’d give us credit for.

But good things come to those who wait. The wait will be worth it. 

We promise. 

Brand Identity

We needs it. Real bad. 

This means getting a proper representative logo to use on all collateral (both online and offline) and also getting something visual that people can connect instantaneously with Urban Banyan.

Facebook, Twitter et al.

Our facebook page has 25+ likes and so we’ve got a chance to register http://www.facebook.com/urbanbanyan

Given how a significant percentage of our proposed target audience is on facebook (and by on facebook, we mean constantly so), the evolution of an appropriately done-up facebook page is paramount. 

There have been enough people that have begun to support and follow Urban Banyan’s endeavours and help plug it among their circle of friends in turn. We appreciate it immensely. 

The list of people to thank is large and you can check our twitter account / facebook page for grateful acknowledgements. 

Things To Do in the Days Ahead

So the website URL has been registered and online presence has been parked on tumblr / facebook / twitter. Urban Banyan intends to use these as a way to market our t-shirts in due time.

What needs to be done right now is as follows:

1. Register the company. Need to work that out.

2. Get designers on board. The rudimentary ideas and paint jobs (literally, all the five designs right now have been done on MS paint) need to be dispensed with. More professional design ideas need to be in place.

3. Contact suppliers of t-shirt material and work on sizes and fits. 

4. Costing - this entire setup has costing at multiple levels. One of them is the actual manufacturing cost of the t-shirt, which will count as an important part of the t-shirt pricing process. The other costs, such as website, marketing, promotion, supply chain establishment and maintenance, inventory management and others will also need to be taken into account. 

Some of the work involved entails being in touch with people. Some others involves getting completely wacky and unleashing creative madness to get t-shirt designs transferred from one’s head onto paper. The other requires revisiting B-school subjects related specially to financial and managerial accounting (for now). Marketing related tasks and subjects need to be revisited slightly later during the day.  

Exciting times ahead.

Also, please help spread the word. Either through twitter, facebook or through link love. You never know how good internet Karma works these days. 

Urban Banyan - spinning the yarn

I like t-shirts and I cannot lie.

I have always been fascinated by t-shirts because they are comfortable and trendy. One can use a t-shirt to make a statement and they are an apt reflection of one’s personality.

Just like everyone else, I want my t-shirts to be unique and ‘cool’. The coolness factor associated with a t-shirt is inversely proportional to the number of people wearing it. That is one of the reasons why, starting 2008, I began getting my own designs and having my own t-shirts done.

This continued all through B-school in 2009 and 2010 and I’ve taken great pride in collecting weird / funny / interesting (all synonyms as far as I am concerned) t-shirts.

From a career perspective, I’ve been strongly mulling over the idea of moving towards a portfolio of jobs in the future. The idea is to work on a few things that will serve as revenue streams instead of banking on a single source of income. In addition to diversifying risk, this approach tackles the need to satiate the needs of the left and right brain too, or so I hope.

It is with this intent that my friend Krithik and I have started off on a t-shirt firm named Urban Banyan. The name came about when Krithik and I were having a fun discussion on random t-shirt ideas. Being in Gurgaon does strange things to normal people. The name too, resulted from similar circumstances. The Banyan bit refers to the vest and not the Banyan tree, and must therefore be pronounced accordingly.

We’ve registered presence on facebook, twitter and on tumblr in addition to getting our URL registered. Please follow us on twitter, “like” us on facebook and keep us bookmarked for when the time is right.

To ensure that the coolness quotient associated with an awesome design doesn’t drop, only 200 prints per t-shirt will be manufactured. There are lots of ideas afoot, but all will be revealed step-by-step in good time.

One of the interesting things that I would like to do, in addition to getting this t-shirt design + manufacture venture off the ground and up and running is to open-source the entire process of setting up an online retail firm.

While providing those that read this blog with updates on Urban Banyan, it will also give other aspiring internet entrepreneurs a real-time, ringside view of how to go about setting shop. They can learn from mistakes that Urban Banyan makes and also help provide us information to correct our course midway in case we’re going FUBAR extreme.

In addition to getting good internet karma, an involved audience will also help prevent us slack off too much. So if you’d like to know what is going on, bookmark this site / our tumblr blog on your feed reader and follow us.

Spread the word and see how things take shape. Get involved and help us when we’re on our way to make cool t-shirts for everyone!