Glasgow Shirts for Glaswegians – Get Around Glasgow Interview

I really like what Get Around Glasgow is doing. When you think about city shirts, you imagine a simple I Heart city design or, even more mundane, the city name plastered across the chest. Chris and Adam go beyond that with their Glasgow shirts. They go über-local, focusing on designs and themes that non-Glaswegians would scratch their heads at. But those aren’t their customers.

This kind of shop is exactly the kind of niche t-shirt approach we preach about here at Spreadshirt. Add some great t-shirt designing and a good use of social media to that and and have a great recipe for success. I ask them how they started up, how they market their shop and even try to sneak “the question every Glaswegian gets asked”, without even asking it. Our interview with Get Around Glasgow:

When and why did you open a Spreadshirt shop? 

I had helped my brother Andrew set up the  WeKnowSFA football blog and as it become more successful we had to move servers to cope with the bandwidth demand. This had an obvious financial impact and we had to find a way to cover the costs. 

I had always wanted to design t-shirts and this seemed like a great way to scratch my design itch and hopefully not lose too much money on the football blog.

We opened our first Spreadshirt shop in Feb 2010, the WeKnowSFA t-shirt shop, and we have added a few other Spreadshirt sites along the way.

What’s the idea behind Get Around Glasgow? Who are your customers? 

Get Around Glasgow was supposed to start as an informative website giving people useful and interesting information about the city of Glasgow.
 
The T-Shirt shop was planned to launch at the same time but due to time constraints and various other issues the website is still under construction but we decided to launch the t-shirt shop as we really liked some of the designs we had and wanted to the share them with our friends and the wider public.

How much time do you invest in your shop? Do you create the designs yourself? 

It’s hard to calculate how much time is invested in the site as we pass ideas back and forward in the pub, family gatherings or via emails and twitter messages.
 
Once we agree on a few ideas I go to work in Photoshop and try and to come up with something that we are happy with, some ideas can go from initial spark to live on the site in 30 minutes whereas others can take weeks of work with lots of revisions.

[Show as slideshow]

“The Shine on Ruchazie Diamond” T-shirt is probably my favourite at the moment as I do love a good pun. But if you asked me the same question tomorrow you would probably get a different answer.
We both like bad puns and good music and our favourite t-shirts combine that. ‘Shine On Ruchazie Diamond’, ‘Interstellar Onslow Drive’ and ‘All Tomorrow’s Particks’ are examples of t-shirts that really made us laugh when coming up with ideas.

Do non-Glaswegians understand your shirts? 

Doubt it.
 
A lot of Glaswegian’s don’t even get them! Probably not, there are some based on minor roads in Glasgow and the Glasgow dialect and humour can be quite insular. It’s just as well there are so many Weegies and ex-pat Glaswegians all around the world.

What’s your favourite part of Glasgow? 

The Merchant City area of Glasgow, which was once a run down area adjacent to the city centre that the local council decided to invest lots of money into over the last 20 years. Our favourite pubs and restaurants are all within easy walking distance from here and there is also some stunning architecture from the end of the 19th Century that has been restored to it’s former glory.
 
There are a lot of great places in Glasgow that are worthy of a mention but The Merchant City covers a lot of bases.

Which US sports team would you root for: Boston Celtics or N.Y. Rangers? 
 

That’s as loaded a question as asking “What school did you go to?” which every Glaswegian has been asked at least once in there life. Those that know us know exactly what the “real” answer is but to answer your question, not sure. We’re not fans of American sports, basketball probably edges it in terms of likable sports but New York is one hell of a town.

What do you like about Spreadshirt and what could we improve for shop partners? 

What I love about Spreadshirt is the way I can have an idea for a design and have it launched on the site within the hour.
I would love if there was a way to have a group template that would let you add a design and all the associated information to multiple products as we ususally have the same range for all our designs.

How do you market your shop? 

Until the launch of the Get Around Glasgow site we have had to use Facebook and Twitter as our main marketing tools for the Get Around Glasgow site.
 
Luckily we have managed to gather a reasonable following on Twitter in the short time we have been live. The feedback and response on Twitter has been amazing and has also inspired us to add more designs as people keep requesting t-shirts about their area of the city. 

Have you ever seen someone you don’t know walking around with one of your t-shirts? 

Yeah we have both have had a few occasions now where we have seen strangers wearing our designs, first time it felt a bit surreal but it’s starting to feel a bit more normal. I’ve still to pluck up the courage to go and speak to the people wearing the t-shirt but Andrew has spoke to someone at a football match and got some photos of the T-Shirt wearing chap.

Which question have you always wanted to be asked and what is the answer? 
 

I think we’d both agree that the fewer questions asked of us the better but Andrew would say if Sienna Miller ever fancied asking him for a weekend away, the answer would be yes….as long as it was in the football close-sesaon!

Thanks guys! Good luck with your shop!