Choke Debuts in 3 New Seattle Stores

Choke is now available in 3 Seattle area stores:

Rising Stars: a children's store
7321 Greenwood Ave. N

Venue Ballard
5408 22nd Ave NW

Solstice: Designs by Locals
1501 Pike Place #409

You should check them out and tell them how much you heart Choke!

Seattle AIDS Walk

Enough of this crap! It's time to start blogging again!

We successfully printed this year's Seattle AIDS Walk tees and helped sponsor our first major event! Check out the website here if you want to contribute to Lifelong.

Congrats to the winners of the Seattle Tee Raffle:

Amy Burdick
Claire Sullivan
Nancy Kincl
Heather Tritue
Ester Melmic

CONGRATS! We mailed out your select color and size of Seattle tee yesterday. Enjoy!

Choke Teams with The Man in a Van Project

Choke Shirt Co has teamed with the Man in a Van Project's Aaron Heideman to offer two new shirts. These two shirts were designed by Aaron and printed by Choke Print Shop.

Check out http://www.themaninavanproject.com/ for more info regarding Aaron's project.

Choke Announces Donation to Lifelong AIDS Alliance

Choke Shirt Co announces a donation of $300 to Lifelong AIDS Alliance from the sales of our CHOKE PRIDE tees. $5 from the sale of every shirt was donated.

Thanks to all of our customers who purchased these tees and wore them to Seattle's Pride 2009!!!

It's that time of year!

And CHOKE is celebrating with a new shirt!

Check it out:

Just in time to wear during this year's PRIDE PARADE!

The CHOKE PRIDE shirt comes in two different versions. One for you sassy gays (and their friends) and one for the rest of us. :)

The shirts are only $15 and $5 of that will be donated to Lifelong AIDS Alliance.

The shirts are available to order online OR you can check us out this weekend at the Capitol Hill Pride Fest on Broadway (Seattle)!

Apparently blogs don't write themselves...

We've had an AMAZING couple of months. Here are the hightlights...

1.) We launch Choke Print Shop. Who knew there was such a void in the Seattle area for a good quality Screen Printer? We have met some great new clients and have already had several return customers. You can check out the Print Shop webstie at www.chokeshirtco.com/printshop.php.

2.) We successfully launched out babyCHOKE line and have added several new designs (photos coming soon to the website.)

3.) We have launched several new unisex and women's designs. Here are a few:

4.) We launched several of our current styles in new colors:

5.) We launched out line of ORGANIC shirts:

We just had our most recent photoshoot two weekends ago and there's already several new items that are not online!! Pictures of those items should be coming soon.

Well, that's it for the CHOKE Blog update. We'll try to update more often, so you know what's going on at CHOKE.

Here we come ISSAQUAH!!

If you live on the Eastside, come check us out at the Issaquah Market on Saturday April 18th!

We're driving cross-country (and by country, I mean out of the Seattle city limits) to the Pickering Barn at 1730 10th Ave. N.W.

Google Map it and we'll see you there!

Seattle Times Finally Prints Something Worth Reading...

Just kidding! I heart the Seattle Times... but you should definitely read the article here about us.

New at Choke!

What do royal blue, mermaid green, purple and lime have in common? They're the newest colors at Choke Shirt Co.!!!

We're printing some new designs soon (boombox, on the wire, aviation, planet no. 2) in bright Spring colors, along with some of your favorites (poppy, giraffe, Choke scarves) back in new colors as well!!

Check out http://www.chokeshirtco.com/ in the next few weeks to see what's new!

Until then, here's a bad iPhone picture of a sneak peek:

NEW!: babyCHOKE

Available now at http://www.chokeshirtco.com/!

New Page on ChokeShirtCo.com!

Check out our new LINKS & PRESS page on www.chokeshirtco.com.

It has links to our favorite networking websites and you can also check out some of the reviews that local and national bloggers have posted about us. Hopefully we'll be in People Magazine soon!

Here we come again PDX!

After a very very eventful Sunday market in Fremont two weeks ago, where our tent was destroyed by a freak wind storm, we took last weekend off to work on a few special projects that we have going on.

But, with our new (hopefully sturdier tent) we'll be back on the market circuit this week!:

March 28th at the Portland Saturday Market!
March 29th at the Fremont Market in Seattle!

We hope to see you there!

SUCCESS!

The Portland Saturday Market was a success!

Special thanks to our friend Pete for tagging along with Matt and helping him set up and tear down. I had to spend the day getting all moved in to our new apartment and hanging out with the pup.

Matt got all set up in the last spot underneath the bridge and with the rainy weather that day it's a good thing! He was lucky enough to have a couple of neighbors that let him borrow some lights, otherwise it would have been a dreary day. Portlanders loved our new Freedom hoodie and we almost sold out of the 24 that we originally printed. We DID however sell our last "Shut the..." tee.

So we bid farewell to the tee that garnered our first (and only) national exposure when it was posted on pinkisthenewblog.com last December.

Sunday at the Fremont Market we saw the last "Poppy" hoodie go and it brought up a good question that we had been quietly dealing with since we started Choke...

Should we or shouldn't we reprint our designs??

Our first instinct is to make them "special" by only having a limited number of designs printed. We also want to be able to keep adding new, fresh designs and don't want to be stuck reprinting the same designs over and over. But the business side (and our customers, for that matter) tell us that that is ridiculous! If people are willing to buy the designs, why not have them available?

So we decided that we will make the decision on a case by case basis. "Shut the..." has seen it's last run, but we are moving forward with a new run of "Poppy" and "Freedom". They should be available by the week of the 22nd!!

So if you didn't have the opportunity to buy one of these two hoodies, come back in the next few weeks to order one!

PDX

I know it's late notice, but if you're in Portland today (March 7th)... Matt is down at the Portland Saturday Market until 5pm tonight!

Check out our tees and hoodies as they make their debut in PDX!

Depending on how it goes, we may be there a couple of times a month...........

2 New Designs

As I mentioned earlier last week... we have 2 new designs that we've launched.

Here they are:

So far Freedom has proved to be very popular. I really like it on the Asphalt grey color. But that's most likely due to the fact that I already have a million blue hoodies.

Just Dance, which by the way, was originally designed and named WELL BEFORE the recently popular Lady Gaga song (thank you very much!) Not that I don't like the song, because I do. And we actually just bought her new single Pokerface, which I really like too. But anyways, Just Dance, might have been a little premature with the sleeveless hoodie (it is winter after all), but has received some good attention as well.

Check them out online and let us know what you think: chokeshirtco@gmail.com

Where's the heads at?

So we've gotten a lot of feedback about the new site!

Thanks so much to everyone that checked it out. It was a lot of work, but I'm happy that we did it. It's a lot more user friendly that it used to be, so I really appreciate that.

One thing that we heard A LOT was that the shopping pictures didn't show the heads of the people. Haha... well if you check out most of the major shopping store websites (Urban, GAP, Nordstrom...) none of them show the heads of people. So I was just following in line with everyone else.

But you let us know that you wanted to see the heads! So they're back. Well, actually the never went anywhere... I just cropped them off before... but I'm digressing... and they're back now!

We had a photo shoot today with our good friend Arden, so that we could get the 2 new designs on the site. I've mentioned them before, but I'll post those pics as soon as we get them. Heads and all!

Other than that we've been working on putting together our next big project! More on that soon!

CHOKEspotted #2

And here's another round of CHOKEspotted.

Send in your pictures of you in your CHOKE tees and hoodies to chokeshirtco@gmail.com!

What do you think???

Coming Soon!

We have two new designs coming soon!

I can't give many details (mostly because we're not really sure what we're going to print yet) but I can tell you that one will be printed on an American Apparel zippie hoodie and the other will be available on a crew neck tee and a sleeveless zippie hoodie.

I know, I know... it's crazy. But you're going to love them! More info soon...

SPOTTED!

Want to see what real people look like in your favorite CHOKE tee or hoodie...

Check out the newest page on http://www.chokeshirtco.com/: CHOKE spotted.

Now all of our customers, online and in Seattle, can share photos of themselves wearing the CHOKE brand.

Here are the first few pics to check out:

If you have a pic of yourself or a friend in a CHOKE tee or hoodie, send it to us at chokeshirtco@gmail.com!

And if you don't have a pic in your CHOKE stuff... TAKE ONE!

WELCOME!!

WELCOME TO THE NEW CHOKESHIRTCO.COM!

Well, not welcome here... but welcome to the new site at http://www.chokeshirtco.com/ We launched the Choke 2.0 website late Thursday night after a couple weeks worth of collaboration between us and some friends (both new and old).

We had a photoshoot last weekend and the shots look amazing! It was killing to have to wait to put them on the site, but we wanted to wait for the relaunch. I was able to finish up the design and layouts in the past couple of days, so there it is.

I'll post some of my favorite shots later, but out of the 1500 photos that we took that day there were some amazing photos.

Thanks to Pete Lorimer, our photographer; Paul Stazel, our makeup guy; and all of the models that helped us: Arden, Jason, Talia, Jasmin, Sherra and Sara.

What do you think about the new site?

Your Wait is Over!

I know, I teased everyone a couple of days ago with our new Choke Logo Design on some hoodies that, well, you can't buy even if you wanted to... but your wait is over! The Choke Logo Scarves are in and they are toasty warm. The silly things are 8 feet long! Check them out:



Here's Matt sporting one of them in Eggplant. This is a totally off the cuff photo that we took this morning with my iPhone, so parden the bad lighting. A better photo of it is on our site. It also comes in brown. And to top it off it's only $15!

In other news... you might notice that the layout of the scarf on the site is different from the other pictures. Well, this is the new layout that we will be using when we relaunch the website in a couple of weeks. I know, it's only been a few months but I've learned so much about developing websites that I have a few plans to make it look a ton better. Plus, after the photoshoot that we had this weekend, we have a TON of good photos to use. I think people will find it much easier to shop tees and hoodies when they can see pics of them on REAL people! What do you think?

More on the photoshoot later...

I have bad news and I have good news...

What do you want to hear first?

Bad news! We got our newest design in today. Unfortunatly for you (well, most of you anyways) it was a Limited Edition print on a couple of hoodies for some special customers (and us) that preordered.

Check out the design:


You likey? Well here's the good news! It's available in a couple of American Apparel Fine Jersey Scarves. Let me tell you, these scarves are amazing. A couple of photos will be posted later. But for now, imagine these scarf colors: Eggplant and Brown...

I know, how will you make it through the day?

And if that wasn't enough!!...

Hello again! Two posts in one day, I know, I know... I should get a hobby.

But I have some great news! We are now able to offer a cheaper shipping option for our U.S. customers.

So here are the options (new and old):

USPS First Class Mail (3-6 days) - $2.50
USPS Priority Mail (2 days) - $5
Hand Pick Up - $0 Available for customers buying shirts online, to pick up at the Fremont Market, an event or from one of the two of us personally.

The First Class Mail option cuts the shipping cost in half and only adds one more day!

You've waited this long for your Choke Tee... another day is nothing!

NEW HOODIE: Giraffe's a bit warmer now!

We had an amazing day at the Market yesterday!

The sun was out and so were all the people. It was the first time that we weren't freezing for 8 hours. I was super thankful for that. And we definitely have a better time with each other when we're not both so pissed that it's cold outside :).

We launched the Giraffe Hoodie yesterday on the website and at the market to rave reviews. People love it and it's definitely hoodie weather right now!

It's an American Apparel hoodie (of course!) in Dark Heather Grey and it comes in sizes from extra small to large. It's the same design as the original Giraffe tee, but the printing changes from hoodie to hoodie because of the pocket seams. It looks really great and we've alerady sold a few of them! Check it out on the website!

What's Been Going On?

Well, a lot has happened since those first few days.

We haven't really enjoyed the success at the market as we did our first three weekends, but that is to be expected. It's January now and people are holding their wallets close to their butt pockets. We expected it to happen. It's hard to sell tees when you're freezing your butt off. We're excited for the day when we can actually wear the tees to the markets, without 3 layers on top of them.

Anyways, we're getting ready to start the process of a Spring/Summer line. We decided to combine the two since we should have been working on Spring last fall. Oops! It's time to play catch up now! So our Spring line might include a few new tees, a hoodie and some scarves! We're excited about the new designs and we'll share them on here as soon as they have been chosen. (We definitely have a few good designs to choose from.)

In the mean time, we just ran a reprint of the Giraffe tee. We had it printed on some women's heather grey tees and a few hoodies, too! It should be updated on the website by the weekend and will be available at Sunday's Fremont Market. Hope to see you there!

Practice makes perfect!

Practice makes perfect!