Shop of the Month: Dad’s Life

Becoming a dad changes the outlook on life in various ways. Roman and the guys from Dad’s Life managed to make a success with what it means to become a dad. In just a few months, their Shop und website managed to attract a huge group of followers while achieving impressive sales. Brimming with deadpan humour and wisdom, the designs in Dad’s Life capture the attitude towards life that only a newly minted father can feel. Check out how Roman brought Dad’s Life to life.

Hello Roman! And thank you for taking the time. We’re intrigued – how did you come up with the idea for Dad’s Life, and who’s behind it?

We’re three fathers, and our 5 kids are between 0 and 12 years old. We go back a long time, way before any of us had any kids. Since we’ve always wanted to kick off a project together, the idea came to life after all of us had become fathers. You’re best at doing things that you engage in yourself – and there‘s nothing we’re more concerned with than our kids and our role as a dad. And Dad’s Life only started about a year ago, initially as a Facebook page.

You’ve obviously found your niche on the subject of family and becoming a father. Were you looking for this kind of offer before you started Dad’s Life?

We’ve not really done any market survey before we got started. And we really didn’t feel like providing the umpteenth self-help page for fathers. We rather wanted to facilitate a forum for likeminded dads to exchange opinions – experiences, worries and every-day banalities. The community has grown immensely fast, we’ve reached a lot of fathers and received a bunch of feedback. We put this into practice as we went along. One of those ideas was a T-shirt shop for dads. We picked up on the idea of setting up a T-shirt shop for fathers a couple of weeks later, and after that we started creating baby bodysuits.

The domain dadslife.at doesn’t only offer a Spreadshirt Shop, but also lots of submissions on the life of kids, product tests, a father forum and a lot more. How do you coordinate tasks when faced with this huge amount of content?

Thankfully, Dad’s Life is not a one-man show. Like I said, we were 5 people from the start, and now there are so many helpers in our community that I’ve lost count. We also managed to get new dads on board with every new idea. Some fathers come across funny baby-related stuff online and send it to us, others write texts and send us lists with heaps of father products, and then there are those who design our T-shirts and baby bodysuits. Our inbox is brimming with contributions every day. Sometimes a couple of beers and a good chat lead to the best ideas. We’re trying to coordinate everything as well as we can.

Danke #dadSTEPHAN: Wenn man mal eine Sekunde nicht aufpasst und die Tochter die Schminkutensilien der Frau findet, entdeckt die ihre kreative Phase. #dadslife #kids #kinder #spaß

A post shared by Dad's Life (@dadslife.official) on Jun 25, 2017 at 5:20am PDT

Do you pursue a marketing strategy for your Dad’s Life community on Facebook and Instagram? Do you do promo campaigns or paid marketing?

Dad’s Life has turned into somewhat of a campfire, and fathers keep gathering around it. The more people catch wind of us, the bigger the appeal seems to become. And we communicate Spreadshirt’s campaigns with newsletters on Facebook to target fathers directly. Whenever we think that we want to reach out to the whole community, we spend money on an advert campaign on Facebook. That’s absolutely necessary.

Nur noch heute gibt's 15% AUF ALLES im Dad's SHOP! Hier entlang: www.dadslife.at/shop

Posted by Dad's Life on Donnerstag, 23. November 2017

Does Dad’s Life and being a father consume all of your time, or do you still have a day job?

Dad’s Life is a project with a public benefit. The money we make gets reinvested in new ideas for the community. The effort we put into it in terms of work and time is spread on many shoulders, so we can all do our day jobs without a problem.

Which designs do particularly well? And when do you sell the most?

Slogans printed in typography designs work best. We’ve only run the Shop for a few months, so it’s hard to tell when the best time for selling our designs is. But as far as I can tell so far, Christmas seems to be a a top event towards the end of the year.

How did you get aware of Spreadshirt? And what do you like about it?

I’ve actually known Spreadshirt for quite a while already. About 10 years ago, I was playing in a band and we had T-shirts printed through Spreadshirt. And when I got in touch with fellow Austrian Shop Partner Kerstin from Gscheade Leibal last year, I was absolutely wowed by her Shop. This made the decision for Spreadshirt an easy one to make.
We attach great importance to quality since you don’t buy a dad’s T-shirt every day, and that you don’t want to dress your kids in rags. The quality of Spreadshirt’s products and prints had us convinced.

Vielen Dank für die Zusendung #dadTOM ? #dadsSHOP #dadsLIFE #vaterundsöhne #vaterundtochter #väter #vatersohn #vatertochter #papa #elternsprüche #elternsein #elternzeit #babys #babybody #babystuff #sweetbaby #kinder #kinderwunsch #grosseltern #opa #dadsFUNcollection #dadsVIEW #dadsLOVE #dadsFUN #familienleben #familie #dadsFASHION #familienzeit

A post shared by Dad's Life (@dadslife.official) on Aug 5, 2017 at 12:36am PDT

3 tips for Spreadshirt newbies – what advice would you give?

Keep uploading new designs to your Shop – new designs always work better than old ones.

Don’t try to come up with crowd pleasers! Create designs for your special target group.

Start building a community on social media channels, and keep fostering the community. Collect email addresses and write newsletters. And don’t forget to feed your website with valuable content.

What have you learnt from being a father?

Fathers know that good humour gets you through the day.